A total of 539 citizens have applied to vote by mail in the Sept. 17 parliamentary election in Latvia, according to data compiled by the Central Election Commission in Rīga. That is a nearly 40 percent decrease from the 890 persons worldwide who planned to cast absentee ballots in the last Saeima election.

Applications to vote by mail were due Sept. 2 and could be submitted to any of 21 Latvian embassies or consulates around world.

The greatest number of applications—174, or about 32 percent of the total—were received by the Latvian Embassy in Washington, D.C.

The Latvian Embassy in Oslo, Norway, was second with 121. That number typically includes Latvia’s soldiers serving in Afghanistan.

Third was the Latvian Embassy in Bonn, Germany, which received 83 absentee ballot applications.

The embassies in London and Stockholm both received 36 applications. The embassy in Ottawa, Canada, got 30 applications.

The embassies in Azerbaijan, Greece, Israel, Russia and Turkey received no absentee ballot applications, according to the election commission’s data.

Persons who applied for absentee ballots had to complete an application form and send along their current Latvian passport. Absentee ballots were to be mailed to applicants between Sept. 3-7.

Former Latvian President Vaira Vīķe-Freiberga will be one of two recipients of this year’s Truman-Reagan Medal of Freedom, the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation has announced.

Vīķe-Freiberga is scheduled to receive the honor Sept. 8 during a ceremony in the Latvian Embassy in Washington, D.C. The other recipient, U.S. Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, a Republican from Florida, will be attending a joint session of Congress and will receive her medal at a later date.

The medal is awarded each year to individuals and institutions that have demonstrated a life-long commitment to freedom and democracy and opposition to communism and all other forms of tyranny, according to a press release from the foundation.

Vīķe-Freiberga served as Latvia’s head of state from 1999-2007 and was the first woman president in post-communist Eastern Europe. Born in Latvia in 1937, she and her family fled to the West during the Second World War. Vīķe-Freiberga is a professor emerita of psychology from the University of Montreal in Canada. With her husband Imants she now runs the Rīga-based VVF Consulting, a firm that specializes in international relations, diplomacy, science, politics and negotiations.

Ros-Lehtinen, chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, in 1989 became the first Hispanic woman to serve in Congress. She fled her native Cuba as a child. According to the foundation’s announcement, “During her two decades of Congressional service, she has been a staunch defender of human rights around the world and a sharp critic of Fidel Castro’s dictatorial regime.”

The Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation was established by Congress in 1993 to build a memorial in Washington to commemorate the more than 100 million victims of communism. The memorial was dedicated in 2007. Two years later, the foundation launched the online Global Museum on Communism.

Latvian hockey player Kārlis Skrastiņš, who spent 12 years in North America’s National Hockey League, was among members of the Lokomotiv Yaroslavl team killed Sept. 7 when the Russian airplane they were traveling in crashed Sept. 7 on takeoff.

The airplane went down near Yaroslavl’s Tunoshna airport, about 300 kilometers northeast of Moscow, according to news service reports and a statement from the Kontinental Hockey League (KHL). The accident happened at about 4 p.m. Moscow time.

The airplane was carrying 37 passengers—including almost the entire Lokomotiv Yaroslavl team—and eight crew members. Lokomotiv Yaroslavl player Alexander Galimov and a crew member are reported to have survived the crash, according to various news reports.

The Lokomotiv Yaroslavl was heading to its first match of the Kontinental Hockey League (KHL) season in Minsk, Belarus. The game was scheduled Sept. 8.

Skrastiņš, a 37-year-old defenseman, this summer joined the Lokomotiv team after playing for the Dallas Stars. He started his NHL career with the Nashville Predators. Skrastiņš also played for the Colorado Avalance and the Florida Panthers, as well as participated in the Latvian national team when it played in the World Ice Hockey Championship and the Winter Olympics.

Latvian President Andris Bērziņš expressed his condolences to Russia’s president and to the family of Skrastiņš.

“This is a shocking and black day in Latvian sports,” Bērziņš said in a statement. He called Skrastiņš a great athlete and one of the cornerstones of the Latvian national team. “He will forever remain in our hearts as a man of iron and a Latvian patriot.”

A number of other well-known hockey players were on the flight, as was Lokomotiv’s new coach, Brad McKrimmon, according to a KHL statement. McKrimmon came from the Chicago Black Hawks to lead Lokomotiv in its 2011-12 season.

“We are only beginning to understand the impact of this tragedy affecting the Lokomotiv Yaroslavl club on the friends we’ve lost and the international hockey community,” according to a statement posted on the league’s website.

Within an hour of the first reports, the KHL’s Facebook page had 350 comments about the accident, including a number from Latvia.

Latvia’s Dinamo Rīga team plays in the KHL.

Latvian media reported that several hundred people, some wearing hockey jerseys or carrying Latvian flags, gathered at Arēna Rīga to honor Skrastiņš. There they lit candles and sang the national anthem. They then marched to the headquarters of the Latvian Hockey Federation, where a memorial event was held.

(Updated 07 SEP 2011 with additional details and new headline.)