Riga- The foreign ministers of Latvia and Lithuania met in the Latvian capital, Riga, on Friday in a bid to resolve long- standing uncertainties concerning their mutual sea border, and plan how to link the Baltic states' energy systems to the larger European grid.

Newly-installed Lithuanian Foreign Minister Vygaudas Usackas admitted that he was already acquainted with his Latvian counterpart, Maris Riekstins.

Riga - A rail crash near the Latvian city of Ventspils killed two people Saturday and caused a huge fireball when up to ten tanks of diesel fuel ignited.

A train transporting diesel collided with stationary wagons, probably during a shunting maneuver, according to the state fire and rescue service, as reported on Latvian television. Up to ten large fuel tankers ignited, with flames leaping into the sky, visible from 10 kilometres away.

Riga  - The management of the Latvian national airline, airBaltic, will buy out the 47.2-per-cent stake of the company currently owned by Scandinavian airline SAS, the companies said Thursday evening.

An official airBaltic source confirmed the news to Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa after an SAS company statement said a deal had been reached.

Riga - While politicians in the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania concentrate on tackling the economic crisis with austerity plans, lending restrictions and even IMF loans, they may be neglecting another threat to their economic well-being which could eventually be just as damaging.

Figures released this week by the European Union's statistics office, Eurostat, showed populations in the Baltics are shrinking fast, with many more Balts dying each year than are being born.

While Estonia recorded the fourth-largest birth rate in the EU, with 12.2 births per 1,000 inhabitants, it is still losing people faster than it can replace them, with a death rate at 12.8 per thousand.

Riga- An online petition in favour of a Swedish invasion of Latvia is proving a seasonal hit - among Latvians.

Fed up with a government that failed to prevent the Baltic state lurching into a serious recession and unimpressed by belated efforts to get out of it, Latvian Roberts Safonovs took the matter into his own hands and set up an online petition calling on Sweden to take over.

Riga - Latvian members of parliament embarked on a lengthy debate Thursday over government proposals to slash the national budget in order to win approval from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for an economic assistance package thought to be worth up to 6 billion dollars.