Chocoholics needing to indulge themselves now will have a new venue—the new Emihls Gustavs Chocolate bar set to open Oct. 27 in the Old City district Rīga.

It will be the first chocolate bar in the Baltic states, according to a press release from SIA Emila Gustava šokolāde. The bar will offer not just sweets but also delicatessen foods, cheese and alcoholic beverages.

“The new chocolate bar has been a long-held dream of the company,” co-owner Zane Bērziņa said in a prepared statement. “We are very happy that there will be a place in Rīga where chocolate can be enjoyed in all its forms, for example, with chili peppers, delicatessen meats or alcohol.”

The bar will be located at Tirgoņu iela 8.

The company also is unveiling a new international brand name, Emihls Gustavs Chocolate.

The confectionary company was formed in 2001 by the same group that runs Stendera ziepju fabrika, a maker and retailer of luxury soaps.

Stendera earlier this year announced the further international expansion of its marketing into Marshall Field’s department stores in the United States. It already has stores in various European locations, including in Germany and Russia.

Latvia still is viewed as the most corrupt Baltic state, is seen as the second-most corrupt in the expanded European Union, but nonetheless has improved since last year, according to the latest Corruption Perception Index by the Berlin-based Transparency International.

Latvia ranked 51st on the list released Oct. 18, an improvement from last year’s ranking of 57th. The nation shared the spot with the Central American countries of Costa Rica and El Salvador and with the Indian Ocean country of Mauritius.

The Corruption Perception Index is based on polls of business people, academics and country analysts. A total of 159 countries are included in the index, which measures opinion about the level of corruption and is based on a 10-point scale.

Latvia’s score continues to improve, climbing from 3.8 in 2003, to 4.0 last year, to 4.2 this year.

But Transparency International, as well as its Rīga-based affiliate Delna, warned that scores below 5 indicate “serious levels of corruption.”

Among the three Baltic republics, Estonia climbed four spots to a ranking of 27th with a score of 6.7, while Lithuania maintained a ranking of 44th with a score of 4.8. Transparency International singled out Estonia as among those countries where wealth is not a prerequisite for controlling corruption.

Among European Union members, only Poland scored lower than Latvia. Poland ranked 70th with a score of 3.4.

Iceland this year edged out Finland for the top spot on the index, scoring 9.7. Finland and New Zealand shared the No. 2 slot, scoring 9.6. The United States maintained its 17th place ranking, but Russia sank to 126th, sharing the spot with Albania, Niger and Sierra Leone. Last year Russia ranked 90th.

Hijacking an airplane from Rīga International Airport, where security is not as high as in some Western European facilities, may have been explored two years ago by terrorists intent on striking Heathrow Airport in London, the newspaper The Sunday Times reported Oct. 9.

Citing British intelligence sources, who were responding to a White House list of Al-Qaeda attacks prevented by the United States and its partners, the newspaper reported that terrorists considered hijacking an airplane in Eastern Europe and crashing it into Heathrow, potentially killing hundreds of people.

The paper reported that “an Al-Qaeda cell had been spotted carrying out reconnaissance at an airport in eastern Europe, possibly in Poland, Latvia or Estonia.”

The list of 10 terrorist plots thwarted by the United States and its partners was released by the White House on Oct. 6 following President George W. Bush’s speech on the war on terror. No. 6 on the list refers to the Heathrow Airport plot.

“In 2003 the U.S. and several partners disrupted a plot to attack Heathrow Airport using hijacked commercial airliners,” according to the list. “The planning for this attack was undertaken by a major 9/11 operational figure.”

British authorities, according to The Sunday Times, considered closing Heathrow in response to the threat. Also suspected was a potential mortar attack against a passenger plane at Heathrow. The attacks were expected in February 2003.

About 712,000 passengers were served at the Rīga airport in 2003, according to the airport’s Web site. That number has almost doubled this year. A total of 19,504 aircraft movements were logged at the airport in 2003.