Baltic Region

The story of gin: A spirited interview

2012-12-26 12:52:00

As we roll into the final holiday parties of the year, spirits are high -- and flowing. “The Book of Gin” by Richard Barnett traces the history of gin, which was once believed to prevent plague, ease the pains of childbirth and treat a lack of...

Russia's Putin lives like a 'galley slave' with jets, yachts, limos, report says

2012-08-28 18:12:37

Murray Seeger dies at 82; L.A. Times reporter led Moscow bureau

2011-08-31 00:00:00

Murray Seeger, a Los Angeles Times foreign correspondant who served as Moscow bureau chief in the early 1970s and was later director of information for the AFL-CIO, has died. He was 82. Seeger, who lived in Silver Spring, Md., died of pneumonia Monday in...

Taking a nostalgic ride on the world's oldest roller coasters

2011-07-18 05:15:00

Reporting from Lakemont Park in Altoona, Pa.-- My current� travels across the great American roller-coaster belt will put me aboard five of the oldest operating coasters in the world, including the very oldest at little Lakemont Park here in Altoona....

Beet poetry

2011-02-10 00:00:00

My paternal bloodline brims with soup: barley stews studded with black mushrooms and opaque as porridge; the thin tomato broth of our Polish Christmas Eve vigil, swimming with dumplings no bigger than a bird's eye; and the plain, milky, peasant...

Music review: Gidon Kremer and his Kremerata Baltica take a spiritual plunge [updated]

2010-11-02 16:32:52

Firefighters rescue deer stranded on Baltic Sea ice floe

2011-01-05 16:33:27

A Primeval Tide of Toxins

2006-07-30 00:00:00

The fireweed began each spring as tufts of hairy growth and spread across the seafloor fast enough to cover a football field in an hour. When fishermen touched it, their skin broke out in searing welts. Their lips blistered and peeled. Their eyes...

Gorbachevs heir

2007-04-17 00:00:00

One year ago this month I found myself in the unusual position of hosting lunch for Mikhail Gorbachev. It was a work meeting at the L.A. Times, not some kind of rubber-chicken tribute (the former Soviet president was in town to talk up his Green Cross...

Is NATO reaching too far east?

2008-08-26 00:00:00

Today's question: Did the U.S. overplay its hand in Eastern Europe when Russia was weak and reeling from the collapse of the Soviet Union? Previously, Moynihan and Meier discussed the extent to which Russia wants to exert control over former Soviet...

PASSINGS

2009-03-31 00:00:00

Arnold Meri Genocide trial subject Arnold Meri, 89, a decorated Red Army veteran charged with genocide for deporting hundreds of his Estonian countrymen to Siberia in 1949, died Friday at his home in Tallinn, Estonia. In 2007, Estonian prosecutors...

Dreams of an endless summer

2008-04-27 00:00:00

By Richard Rayner Off the southwest coast of Finland are more than 80,000 small islands left by the retreating ice 10,000 years ago. Some of the islands are mere rocks, washed by the cool waters of the Baltic, but many are covered in pine and fir trees...

of 800,000, Riga is the largest of the Baltic capitals. In many ways, it is also the prettiest. A river the Daugava runs through it, and it is rich in parks, which are bisected by a canal (once a defensive moat) crossed by 16 bridges.

2012-09-28 09:28:00

People look on after the gantry of the Baltic Container Terminal fell down onto shipping containers at the waterfront in Gdynia, Poland. Three people were injured in the accident.

2012-05-17 00:00:00

The MS Estonia was crossing the Baltic Sea headed for Stockholm when the cruise ferry hit severe weather and sank, killing 852 people in September 1994.

2012-01-18 19:14:05