A new scholarship for students from communities without Latvian schools has been established at the Gaŗezers summer high school near Three Rivers, Mich.

The USD 500 scholarship, financed by a USD 10,000 endowment, was established by Kārlis and Anda Šteinmanis of Cincinnati, Ohio. Laura Šteinmane, their daughter, is among this year’s graduates of the summer high school.

The annual scholarship, announced by Kārlis Šteinmanis during the post-commencement concert at the high school, will go to a studious, continuing student who comes from a community—such as Cincinnati—where no Latvian school is present.

Stephen Flanagan, a foreign policy expert with the National Defense University, answered listener questions about NATO enlargement and other security issues during a live Webcast from Washington, D.C., hosted by the Joint Baltic American National Committee.

Flanagan is director of the university’s Institute for National Strategic Studies.

The Webcast was the sixth such event organized by JBANC, a Washington-based lobby for Baltic interests. The organization has been hosting the Webcasts as part of its campaign to raise awareness of the Baltic states’ desire to join the NATO defense alliance.

Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, most observers agree, are sure to be invited to join the alliance during NATO’s Prague Summit in November. However, whether NATO members will ratify Baltic membership remains to be seen.

Latvians Online disappeared from the Web for about 24 hours due to problems with the Washington-based server on which the site is hosted.

A spokesperson for Interland Inc. said the server in Seattle, Wash., experienced a “catastrophic failure” on July 31, resulting in Latvians Online and a number of other Web sites disappearing from service.

Although the site was restored by early Aug. 1, a number of forum messages posted July 30-31 may have been lost. Interland, an Internet company headquartered in Atlanta, Ga., has provided Web hosting service to Latvians Online for more than a year.