Riga (dpa) — Mit einem Gesamtgewicht von 3280 Kilogramm ist in Lettland die vermutlich größte Salatportion der Welt hergestellt worden. 120 Köche verarbeiteten dabei unter anderem 940 Kilogramm Kartoffeln und 6000 gekochte Eier, berichteten lettische Zeitungen am Montag. Zur Würze des traditionellen Kartoffelsalats "Rasols" wurden 15 Kilogramm Salz und 500 Kilogramm Mayonnaise benutzt. Gut 4000 Gäste verspeisten den Salat anschließend in einer halben Stunde am Sonntag in einer Rigaer Messehalle, hieß es. Der bisherige Rekordhalter im "Guinness Buch der Rekorde" sei ein in in New York zubereiteter 2500 Kilogramm Caesar-Salat gewesen.
      Probably the largest salad portion in the world, with a total weight of 3,280 kilograms (about 7,225 pounds), was made in Latvia. 120 cooks processed, among other things, 940 kilograms of potatoes and 6,000 cooked eggs, reported Latvian newspapers on Monday. 15 kilograms of salt and 500 kilograms of mayonnaise were used as flavoring for the traditional potato salad "Rasols". 4,000 guests feasted on the salad afterwards for half hour, Sunday, in a Riga hall, it was said. The past record owner in the "Guinness Book of Records" was in New York, where a 2,500 kilogram Caesar salad had been prepared.

      VILNIUS, Lithuania (AP) — Lithuania this week launched a novel program to deal with a shortage of traffic police: It's cut new ones out of cardboard and propped them up on the side of streets to scare motorists into slowing down.
      About 300 of the cardboard cops have been placed at road crossings near 90 schools in Vilnius, the capital of this former Soviet Baltic republic, a spokeswoman for the municipality, Rasa Razgaitis, said Tuesday.
      She said the program coincides with the start of school in the nation of 3.5 million people. The life-sized replicas, painted turquoise green of actual Lithuanian police uniforms, are expected to stay in service for several months.
      It's the first project of its kind in the former Soviet Baltic states, which include Latvia and Estonia.
      Nearby Denmark tried something similar in the 1980s. But the program ran into trouble when many of the replicas of police sitting on motorcycles were stolen, apparently for souvenirs.
      The some 35,000 litas (dlrs 10,000) of materials required to fashion the police impersonators were donated by Kappa Packaging Baltics, a leading producer of boxes in this Baltic Sea coastal country.
      Razgaitis said anecdotal evidence suggests the sight of the replicas, first deployed Monday, has, as hoped, caused drivers to hit their breaks.
      She said Vilnius has made improving traffic safety a high priority.
      Lithuania registers among the highest road fatality rates in Europe, with over 700 people dying each year, or around 20 deaths per 100,000 residents. The average annual rate in European Union countries is under 10 per 100,000.

      Riga (dpa) — Der russische Rechtspopulist Wladimir Schirinowski, stellvertretender Vorsitzender der Duma, erhält kein Visum für die Einreise nach Lettland. Das bestätigte ein Sprecher des lettischen Außenministeriums am Mittwoch in Riga. Ein Grund für die Verweigerung wurde nicht genannt. Schirinowski war als Gast einer Fernsehshow eingeladen. Zeitungsberichten zufolge will Schirinowski nun die Ausweisung des lettischen Botschafters in Moskau verlangen.
      Die diplomatischen Beziehungen zwischen Lettland und Russland sind wegen des Streits um die russische Minderheit in dem baltischen Staat angespannt. Informierten Kreisen zufolge steht Schirinowksi seit 1993 in Lettland auf einer "schwarzen Liste".
      The Russian right-wing populist Vladimir Zhirinovski, deputy chairmen of the Duma, will not receive a visa for entry to Latvia. This was confirmed by a spokesperson of the Latvian State Department on Wednesday in Riga. A reason for the refusal was not given. Zhirinovsky was invited as a guest on a television show. According to newspaper reports, Zhirinovski will require being classified in Moscow as the Latvian Ambassador [in order to enter Latvia]. The diplomatic relations between Latvia and Russia is strained because of the controversy over the Russian minority in the Baltic state. According to informed circles, Zhirinovski has been "black listed" by Latvia since 1993.

      BRUSSELS, Belgium (AP) — The Czech government said Wednesday that a November 21 to 22 gathering of leaders of the 19 NATO nations in Prague is still on despite recent flooding that was the city's worst in nearly 200 years.
      The fate of the NATO summit, which U.S. President George W. Bush is expected to attend, was in doubt given the massive damage to historic buildings and to Prague's public transit system.
      However, at a meeting of NATO envoys, the Czech delegate "told us the Czech authorities would be pleased to host the summit" despite the recent floods, said a NATO official, who asked not to be named.
      At the summit, the NATO leaders are to invite East European nations to join the alliance.
      The three Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania along with Bulgaria, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia lead the list of candidates. Albania, Croatia and Macedonia are considered to be in a slower lane to NATO membership.

      PHOENIX (AP) — For three decades, an American Indian unit known as the Shadow Wolves has used its desert tracking skills to help stem the flow of drugs across the Mexican border.
      Now the Shadow Wolves, a part of the Customs Service, are taking their expertise to Eastern Europe in a U.S. effort to prevent the smuggling of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons.
      Three members of the 21-person unit spent three weeks last month in Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia, training customs officials, border guards and national police in how to detect and follow those suspected of carrying weapons components. Other Shadow Wolves traveled to Kazakstan and Uzbekistan earlier this year.
      Kevin Carlos, a Shadow Wolves team member who went to the Baltics, said his foreign counterparts learned to search for footprints, broken branches and other clues.
      "They all said they can now see the forest from a different point of view," said Carlos, a Tohono O'odham Indian who learned some of his tracking skills through deer hunting.
      The overseas trips are part of an effort by the State Department, Customs Service and other agencies to assist more than two dozen nations, most of them in the former Soviet bloc. The one-week training sessions consist of classroom lectures on tracking techniques and outdoor simulations.
      "They basically teach them how to pick up foot signs," Kyle Barnett, associate agent in charge of Customs' Arizona district. "The terrain in the Baltics is very similar to the Arizona desert. There's a lot of rocky terrain, so our trackers adapt well."
      The unit, headquartered in Sells, Ariz., consists of 19 men and two women, all Indians from nearly a dozen tribes around the country.
      It began in 1972 with around 12 Tohono O'odham Indians under a program created by Congress to foster relations with the tribe and help it patrol its Arizona reservation, which shares 76 miles of border with Mexico.
      "They have been a great asset," said Joseph Delgado, assistant tribal police chief. "They've helped us numerous times in everything from tracking down suspects in stolen vehicles to finding missing children. They assist us a lot."
      But its main mission is stopping smugglers hauling marijuana, cocaine or heroin on foot or horseback across the Mexican border.
      Instead of relying on high-tech equipment, the Shadow Wolves track the old-fashioned way, looking for such clues as disturbed rocks or fibers left behind by a burlap bag. And they do it at all hours of the day or night.
      Customs officials say the armed Indian trackers seize more than 70 percent of the drugs the agency finds on the 3 million-acre Tohono O'odham reservation. So far in the fiscal year that began Oct. 1, the Shadow Wolves have arrested 400 smugglers and seized 96,000 pounds of marijuana, said John Martelli, one of the group's supervisors.
      "It's their heritage. Those tracking skills have been passed on from generation to generation," Barnett said. He added: "These people are successful at whatever they trail. They're the best I've ever seen."
      — — —
      On the Net:
      Customs Service: http://www.customs.ustreas.gov
      Tohono O'odham information:
      http://www.itcaonline.com/Tribes%5Ctohono.htm
      — — —
      Phoenix newsman Jacques Billeaud contributed to this report.

      PARIS (AP) — Vlado Perlemuter, a world-renowned pianist who worked with Maurice Ravel and tried to capture the diverse colors and tones of a symphony orchestra in his solo playing, has died at age 98, his recording company said Friday.
      Perlemuter, best known for his interpretations of Ravel and Frederic Chopin, died Wednesday at a Paris hospital, said Adrian Farmer, music director at the British record label Nimbus.
      Over a seven-decade career, Perlemuter performed throughout Europe and in Asia, the United States and Canada. He was especially well-loved in Britain, where he often played and taught. However, he neither sought out nor attained the stardom of some contemporary pianists.
      Perlemuter worked to give his interpretations an "orchestral" sound, and he would endlessly try out new fingerings in search of new musical colors, Farmer said.
      As an exercise, Perlemuter practiced the last movement of Chopin's sonata in B-flat major -- a rapid-fire succession of scales -- with his hands crossed.
      Perlemuter was born in 1904 in Kaunas, now in Lithuania, to Polish parents. After coming to Paris as a child, and taking French nationality, he studied with the world-acclaimed teacher and performer Alfred Cortot and won first prize at the Paris Conservatory at only 14.
      In the mid-1920s, Perlemuter, already a success, spent months working with Ravel. Perlemuter's scores were covered with notes from the master, and the pianist was generally considered the keeper of Ravel's musical traditions for the piano.
      Once, for a Nimbus recording, Perlemuter sat down at the keyboard and played more than two hours' worth of Ravel's music, nonstop. The resulting recording was not edited or touched up, Farmer said.
      Perlemuter, a Jew, was forced to flee to Switzerland during World War II. It was an experience he preferred not to talk about.
      "It was the great embitterment of his life," Farmer said, especially because Cortot, with whom he was very close, did not leave France with him.
      Perlemuter gave his last performance when he was approaching 90. Farmer, who knew Perlemuter in the last two decades of his life, said the pianist would occasionally burst into tears after playing.
      "If you said, 'That was beautiful, what's wrong?' he would say, 'Yes, but I will never play it so well again.'"
      Perlemuter had no survivors, according to Farmer. Funeral arrangements were not complete.