Sunday, 1 August 1999

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Latvian chat Sunday August 1 Date: 8/1/99 12:30:10 PM Eastern Daylight Time
From: Sturgalve

DL Time (32000 bps): < 1 minute

Sveiki visi!!

Nothing like getting the Lat chat reminder out last minute!! Happy August everyone, and I hope that all of you (us) that are still in the middle of this horrid heat wave are doing everything they can to keep cool. Of course, since it's too darned hot to be outside doing yard work tonight, hopefully many of you will join us on the chat, from approximately 9pm EST until....?? You can use the following link to access the chat: Town Square - Latvian chat

The attached article barely mentions Latvia, but it's interesting (and sad) that remnants of Chernobyl are still such a concern after 13 years. Pretty scary too that this article pinpoints wild mushrooms....which I eat every year in Latvia! Also, the attached picture was taken by Peters, and is of the seashore at Vecaki.

Hope to see you on the chat!! Ar visu labu....

BRUSSELS, July 29 (Reuters) — The European Commission said on Thursday it would tighten long-standing checks on mushrooms imported from 23 countries over fears they were still contaminated with radiation as a result of the Chernobyl nuclear accident in 1986.
It said "repeated cases of non-compliance with the maximum permitted levels of radioactive contamination have been recorded in consignments of certain types of mushrooms imported from a number of third countries."
It singled out wild mushrooms as being particularly prone to contamination and said levels of radioactive radiocaesium had "hardly declined and may well have increased in the case of certain species" since 1986.
European Union states would be legally obliged to carry out rigorous checks on mushrooms imported from outside the bloc and all products would have to be certified safe before they could be sold, the Commission said in the EU's Official Journal.
Countries whose mushrooms would be subject to the new checks were listed as: Albania, Belarus, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Moldova, Norway, Poland, Romania, Russia, the Slovak Republic, Slovenia, Switzerland, Turkey, the Ukraine and the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.
© 1999 Reuters Ltd. All rights reserved.

A picture from Peters' album of the Gulf of Riga seashore in Vecaki, a suburb of Riga (on the northeast side of the Daugava).