The cover story in the March issue of Vanity Fair magazine is about the new wave of Russian and Eastern European supermodels. Although she isn’t one of the trio depicted on the cover, Latvias Inguna Butāne is among the eight models highlighted in the article and in the additional photos inside.

Butāne is represented by New York-based Women Management, which she joined in November, according to Hint Fashion Magazine. Butāne has appeared in several magazines recently, including Harper’s Bazaar and Surface, as well as campaigns for Armani Jeans and LOreal, according to Hint.

Brothers Aleksis and Jake Zariņš of Southwold in the United Kingdom were on holiday in the Unawatuna Bay area of Sri Lanka when a tsunami hit Dec. 26. Now they are being hailed as heroes for their efforts to help victims, reports the East Anglian Daily Times.

They helped bring victims to safety and also helped local authorities in the grim task of photographing and burying the dead, the paper reported in its Dec. 31 edition.

The brothers are the sons of Peter Zariņš, owner of Zarins Antiques in Southwold in South Suffolk.

Thanks for the link to Ieva McDonald of West Glamorgan, who writes of the brothers, “I don’t know how ‘Latvian’ they consider themselves, but it’s good to know that descendants of Latvian immigrants can behave so well in such awful circumstances.”

Hockey players from Latvia who are not in the National Hockey League have been getting some coverage in U.S. newspapers. Georgijs Pujacs of the Elmira Jackals of New York and Vilnis Nikolaisons of the Sun Valley Suns of Idaho have been featured in the past week.

Mike Strobel, announcer for the Elmira Jackals, e-mailed us with a link to a story on Pujacs that appeared Dec. 24 in the local newspaper, the Star-Gazette. Pujacs is a defenseman for the team and is one of two Jackals from Latvia. The other is Alex Andreyev. The Elmira Jackals are part of the United Hockey League.

Meanwhile, it has been a good year for Nikolaisons, one of the few Latvians in Idaho, writes Jeff Cordes in the Dec. 29 edition of the Idaho Mountain Express. Nikolaisons is a left wing for the Sun Valley Suns.