Commentary
The 'Latvia Weekly' podcast is back with another review of the week's news in English, a very useful source of discussion on topical matters here in Latvia.
The 'Latvia Weekly' podcast is back with another review of the week's news in English, a very useful resource if your ears are demanding some weekend listening.
Since regaining our independence from the Soviet Union, Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia have been under constant Russian pressure.
As the horrifying images and stories from Bucha are published, the West is grasping to process what has been done there by the Russian army. Some even try to question if it’s real. After WW2 the entire world said “Never again”. But here we are. Again.
'Latvia Weekly' has another podcast ready on the Spotify platform if you are in the mood for a dose of topical listening.
The price of freedom will always be high. Although the military offensive is currently ongoing in Ukraine's territory only, the information and economic warfare has been taking place on the global stage already for quite some time.
'Latvia Weekly' has another podcast ready if you are in the mood for some weekend listening.
March 17 is the national day of Ireland, St. Patrick's Day. To mark the occasion the independent 'Latvia Weekly' podcast has a special edition featuring an interview with the Irish ambassador to Latvia, Eimar Friel.
As the stars on Freedom Monument glittered in the spring sun, tens of thousands of people marched on from Milda, as the sculpted woman on the monument is affectionately called, to the Ukrainian Embassy in Rīga on Saturday in a show of solidarity with tens of millions facing senseless war in a peace-loving country.
Tuesday in northern Latvia was sunny, but still quite cold. The ice gave the impression it couldn't decide whether it should melt, and so would wait a bit longer before committing itself one way or the other.
Former Latvian President (1999-2007) Vaira Vīķe-Freiberga has given LSM her response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. As usual it is articulate, insightful and very much to the point. It is reproduced below.
Anyone on the look-out for an English-language podcast to add to their playlist might like to check out 'Latvia Weekly' which, it will not come as a surprise to learn, is both weekly and about Latvia.
Businesswoman Lubomila Jordanova is Co-Founder and CEO of environmental consultancy PlanA and is Head of Jury at the Rimi Baltic Sustainability Awards. Here she offers her blueprint for companies serious about a sustainable future.
In this opinion piece, Armands Broks, board member of the Latvian startup association, and a well-known fintech founder with the TWINO company, says the clean-up of Latvia's banking sector should not become an obstacle to legitimate business and investment.
In this opinion piece, Marija Rucevska, chair of the board at TechChill and co-founder at the company Helve, offers her prognosis for future growth based on a digital economy.
The economy in the Baltic States is heading for its worst year since the financial crisis 2008 and will be hit harder than elsewhere in Europe. Or maybe not?
Latvia's search for its 'Nokia' has been a protracted one. For those not familiar with the term, the search for "Latvia's Nokia" has been around since the days when Finland's Nokia was the big success of the Baltic region and has been used as shorthand for a concept combining Sir Gawain's quest for the Holy Grail, the Conquistadores' search for Eldorado and Austin Powers' bid to regain his mojo. As with all these examples, the hunt for Latvia's Nokia went on a bit longer than was strictly necessary.
One of the strangest things about the tedious phenomenon of "fake news", by which in most cases we mean badly-written fiction posing as factual reporting, is the way in which reporters are almost forced to write about it.
In the book, How Latvia Came through the Financial Crisis, current Vice President at the European Commission Valdis Dombrovskis stressed that the economic crisis and the solutions to tackle it have left a lingering effect for many years. This is perhaps the only conclusion drawn in the downturn-era PM's book that I fully agree with.
New research published by the Latvian central bank (LB) ponders the likely impact of Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies on the financial sector and wider society.
It sometimes seems that life was easy for those who were responsible for setting the strategic goals for Latvia in the 1990s and 2000s. All they had to do was look at a list of international organizations and pick which which one we should join next. We pocketed WTO membership in 1999, and pulled off an impressive stunt in 2004 by ticking off both the EU and NATO.
We would like to take the opportunity to wish "Priecīgus Ziemassvētkus" to all of our readers around the world. Whatever you celebrate and however you celebrate it, we hope you have a wonderful time.
Latvian President Raimonds Vējonis will face a tricky decision in the near future when he will have to nominate a potential Prime Minister to attempt to form a new government coalition.
With more than nine-tenths of the results in Latvia's 13th Saeima elections counted, the share of the vote won by each party looks clearer by the minute. Harmony topped the poll with 19% of the vote followed by newcomers KPV LV on 14%, the New Conservatives on 13%, For Development/For! on 11%, the National Alliance on 11%, the Greens and Farmers Union on 10% and New Unity on 6% (based on incomplete data).
With so much attention currently focused on parliamentary elections due to take place October 6 - despite the common opinion that that they will result in very little change - it is possible that some more important, if less obviously significant events are taking place under our noses right now.
In Brussels on February 23 Latvian Prime Minister Māris Kučinskis was on a damage limitation exercise. For a week newspapers across Europe and beyond had been running front-page stories about sensational developments in Latvia's financial sector involving allegations of money-laundering, bribery, conspiracy, corruption and even, according to the government's own sources, a "probable" co-ordinated campaign to defame Latvia's name - which is a bit like saying everyone is making too much out of the money-laundering, bribery, conspiracy and corruption.
Next time a bank tells you how clever it is, how it uses all the latest technology, how its accounts are super secure and how slick and smart and highly-trained its employees are, you might choose to disbelieve the claim.
February 1 saw the launch of new research from the Center for East European Policy Studies (CEEPS or APPC in Latvian) examining the similarities and differences between Latvian-language and Russian-language coverage of international news in the Latvian media space.
"Smile, it's going to be alright!" Riga vice-mayor Andris Ameriks (Honor to Serve Riga) told me, happily, as he went back to a meeting where the 2018 Riga budget was being passed on a late Wednesday afternoon, after he had had a hearty meal at the Rātslaukums cafe opposite to the City Hall.
On October 2, we ran a story about an extraordinary series of emails published online between American oncologist David Gorski, and Lelde Lapa, Assistant of the business development department of the International Virotherapy Center (IVC) which has an office in Riga but is officially based in Dubai.
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