Latvia

Riga Vice Mayor Edvards Ratnieks announced to the press that he is urging illegal immigrants to leave Riga and Latvia in a month, as citizens reportedly feel less safe; migration was one of the issues highlighted in the campaign this year

13.481 people graduated from Latvia's higher education institutions, 4% less than 2023, according to latest Education and Science Ministry report; over 6.000 students was at bachelor-level, 3.000 completed college, almost 4.000 obtained master degrees

The concert "Te–aust" closed this year's School Youth Song and Dance Festival: it presents works of contemporary composers who have chosen lines written by prominent poets and sequences of Latvian folk songs for their compositions

Changing the system of service pensions, said Prime Minister Evika Silina, is necessary to restore equality with other recipients of retirement pensions; the retirement pension age was raised some time ago, but the age for service pensions hasn't

39% of Latvian internet users will spend Midsummer night in the countryside, according to an annual survey by the internet tech research company Gemius, a figure in line with previous years, as are the 19% of respondents who won't celebrate

A new team from the Estonian Police and Border Guard has been sent to assist the ESTPOL10 mission on the Latvian-Belarusian border; officers will be deployed to the Robežnieki area, where there have been the most illegal border crossing attempts recently

The robbery of a watch shop in Old Town Riga doesn't indicate an increase in crime in the country: it makes considerate more investment in security for exclusive goods shops, said Artis Velss, former Chief of the State Police

Construction of Rail Baltica Riga Central Station complex has been resumed thanks to funds from the European Union's Recovery Facility; the building should be completed by August 2026 and would start serving rail passengers in the summer of 2027

The 105th anniversary of the Patent Office of Latvia was celebrated on 8 April 2025 with the simultaneous visits of the World Intellectual Property Organization, the European Patent Office and the European Union Intellectual Property Office

One of the first in a series of new civil protection seminars was held in Teika, a suburb in Riga; according to the municipality, the response was excellent, but residents' assessment of the seminar's value was mixed

The victory of the animated film Flow by director Gints Zilbalodis as Best Animated Film brought the first Oscar award for the country