NEXT YEAR'S MONEY DISTRIBUTED.
The Russian newspaper TELEGRAF wrote - the Latvian parliament shortly after 8 p.m. on Thursday adopted the national budget for 2004. While the ruling coalition and the opposition sharply debated education financing Thursday morning, the discussion subsided toward evening. This was one of the rare cases when adoption of the national budget in Latvia did not stretch late into the evening or even the night.

BUSINESS ASSOCIATE OF FORMER LATVIAN PREMIER DETAINED OVER DIGITAL TV AFFAIR
The first suspect detained by Latvian law enforcement authorities in connection with the multi-million US dollar deal to introduce digital TV, widely seen as a scam, is Harijs Krongorns, a business consultant linked with three-time ex-premier and prosperous businessman Andris Skele- DIENA wrote on Nov. 11th.
The former premier said that by detaining Krongorns the current Prime Minister Einars Repse was flexing his muscles to warn his political opponents.
The former premier thinks it unlikely that Krongorns had had anything to do with officials or politicians who signed the shady digital TV deal.
Skele again rejected his alleged participation in the British company Kempmayer Media Limited (KML), the contractor under the digital TV agreement.
The scandal over Latvia's digital television project erupted earlier this summer, eliciting harsh criticism by the government. Later the project was halted altogether and the state-owned Digital Latvia Radio and Television Center (DLRTC) that had signed the digital TV deal with KML in November 2002 , turned to the Stockholm International Court of Arbitration, seeking annulment of the contract.

FACT CONFIRMED THAT A LATVIAN STUDENT IS IN A JAIL IN IRAQ.
NEATKARIGA RITA AVIZE reported on Nov.14th.- Latvian student Maris Bergholds who headed for the Middle East early in June, is indeed in Iraq, held under arrest by the coalition forces. Such a confirmation was received by the Foreign Ministry through diplomatic channels, the ministry press office said. The Foreign Ministry agreed with the United States that representatives of Latvia's National Armed Forces in Iraq will meet with Bergholds.
In a letter to his mother recently, Bergholds wrote that he was in jail in Iraq most likely, as a result of a misunderstanding when he turned for help to the local police after his camera was stolen.


SWEDISH FORMIN: WE HAVE SIMILAR THINKING.
The Riga-born Swedish Foreign Minister Laila Freivalds made her first foreign trip to Latvia. Her Latvian roots give her a better understanding of the country. "We basically have similar thinking," she said to the press in fluent Latvian. In an interview in CHAS Freivalds said that Swedish foreign ministers usually head for Finland on their first trip abroad, but she had agreed with her Finnish colleague that this time she would visit the Baltics first, as a symbolic gesture of Sweden's will to expand cooperation between the Nordics and the Baltic states.