To the embarrassment of U.S. diplomats, the latest exposé by the WikiLeaks media organization digs into tens of thousands of cables from American embassies around the world—including the one in Rīga, Latvia.

Details regarding what’s in the dispatches from Rīga have yet to emerge, but they apparently are nothing compared to cables from embassies such as the one in Ankara, Turkey. Only about 700 cables from Rīga are in the database available from WikiLeaks, compared to more than 7,900 from Ankara.

WikiLeaks, whose parent company Sunshine Press is registered in Iceland, has more than 250,000 cables in the data set from 250 American embassies. About half of the cables are described as secret or confidential.

The cables from Rīga date from March 2006 to February of this year, according to data made available by London’s Guardian newspaper through Google Fusion Tables.

News organizations such as The New York Times have been digging into “Cablegate,” but are not publishing all details because of security concerns.

Based on the “tags” that help diplomats categorize the nature of information contained in the cables, the most popular topics of messages from Rīga dealt with external political relations and internal government affairs. However, without access to the text of the cables, that does not say very much.

Media in Latvia, such as the daily newspaper Diena and the weekly news magazine Ir, are not reporting much at this point except to say that the country’s name appears in some of the dispatches.

The Bank of Latvia’s latest commemorative silver coin contains a small piece of amber. The Amber Coin, designed and modeled by Aigars Bikše, celebrates the significance of amber throughout Latvia’s history.

The coin was issued Nov. 15. As noted in the accompanying booklet, Latvian amber comes from a time 40 million years ago when pine resin fossilized, and, since then periodically washes up on the beaches of Latvia.

The proof quality coin has a face value of 1 lat, and has a mintage of 7,000 pieces. The coin has a silver fineness of .925, weighs 20.7 grams, and has a diameter of 35 mm.

So far in 2010, the Bank of Latvia has released silver commemorative coins celebrating Duke Jacob of Courland; the 20th anniversary of the May 14, 1990, declaration of independence; and the Latvian ABC book. Scheduled for release by the end of 2010 is the third “Coin of Time,” containing both silver and niobium.

Commemorative coins can be purchased at all offices of the Bank of Latvia, as well as at certain numismatic shops in Latvia. For further information, visit www.bank.lv.

Latvian passenger carrier airBaltic is giving readers of its blog until Nov. 5 to offer their opinion on what a new Rīga terminal for the airline should look like.

From a list of 125 submissions by architects from around the world, airBaltic’s jury has selected the 10 best designs.

The concepts vary from an industrial-looking terminal, to one focused on sustainability, to one that resembles a big wing. The new terminal is expected to eventually serve 14 million passengers annually and become “a permanent architectural symbol of Latvia,” according to airBaltic. Certainly for many visitors to Latvia the terminal would the first—or the last—place they see.

The airline announced the architectural competition in August, according to the Delfi news portal. The winner is to receive an EUR 100,000 prize.

The Top 10 designs may be viewed on airBaltic’s blog, blog.airbaltic.com.