Vizma Belševica, one of Latvia’s most admired contemporary poets and writers, died Aug. 6 after a long illness, according to the Latvian news service LETA and President Vaira Vīķe-Freiberga’s press office.

She was 74 and was born in Rīga in 1931.

In recent years, perhaps her best-known work was the “Bille” trilogy, autobiographical novels that told the story of a young Latvian girl’s coming of age from the 1930s into the 1950s. The first, Bille, was published in 1995, followed by Bille dzīvo tālāk in 1996 and Billes skaistā jaunība in 1999.

Belševica studied at the Gorky Institute in Moscow. Her first collection of poetry, Visu ziemu šogad pavasaris, was published in 1955. But in 1968, she ran afoul of Soviet authorities because of a nationalistic poem and for many years could no longer get her own work before the public.

One of her two sons, the poet Klāvs Elsbergs, died in 1987 after falling—or being pushed—out of a ninth-story window of the writers’ union building in Dubulti. Belševica’s other son, Jānis Elsbergs, also is a poet. Until 1999 he published under the pen-name Jānis Ramba, according to the Latvian Literature Centre.

In 1990, Belševica was named an honorary member of the Latvian Academy of Sciences. Five years ago, she was nominated for the Nobel Prize in literature, LETA said.

A U.S.-based charity that focuses on helping abused children in Latvia has fallen victim to an Internet scam that went as far as to clone much of the design and content of the charity’s Web site.

Jay Sorensen, president of the Kids First Fund in Milwaukee, Wis., said he first became aware of the scam on July 26, when someone in Great Britain forwarded an e-mail to him. Now he worries what damage the scam may have caused to his fundraising efforts and to the reputations of KFF’s board of directors, which includes such well-known individuals as hockey player Artūrs Irbe and Irma Kalniņa, director of the NGO Centre in Rīga.

The e-mail claimed to come from a woman in Latvia affiliated with an organization called the Hope Children’s Home. The writer, someone supposedly named Liza Nikauskas, gave a testimonial for a supposedly London-based group called the European Charity Union and listed the group’s Web site as www.europeancharity.net.

When Sorensen visited the group’s Web site, he said he was surprised to see that most of the content and design was the same as that of the Kids First Fund. Even a description of his family, part of Sorensen’s “message from the president,” was there, except that the president now was named Jason Soren.

“These culprits have associated the narrowly defined mission of KFF with their illicit activities,” Sorensen said in an e-mail to Latvians Online. “They have probably sent out millions of spam messages to potential donors throughout the world—to solicit funds and to seek representatives to conduct their fraudulent fundraising.”

Rather than seeking funds through online donations, as Kids First Fund does, the European Charity Union advertised for country coordinators to solicit donations, offering commissions of 5 percent to 7 percent of whatever they brought in.

The group registered at least three different Web addresses, europeancharity.biz, .com and .net. All three have been removed after Sorensen complained to the Internet service providers hosting the addresses.

Along the way, Sorensen got a lesson in how the Internet works and how easy it is to set up Web sites with false information.

As Sorensen began to track the owners of the European Charity Union sites, he found they provided false details about who they were and where they were located. The Web site europeancharity.biz, for example, supposedly belonged to a registered sex offender in Florida, whose name and address is publicly available information.

On its europeancharity.com Web site, the European Charity Union listed a contact address in London that is the same as that of a long-standing organization called the Family Welfare Association. But when contacted by Latvians Online, a spokesperson for the association was surprised to learn of the European Charity Union.

Helen Dent, the chief executive of the Family Welfare Association, said through the spokesperson that the FWA was founded in 1869 and has never been associated with the European Charity Union or any organization sounding like it.

The European Charity Union also is not registered with the Charity Commission for England and Wales.

“I intend to aggressively pursue any cloning and to shut down the offending sites,” Sorensen told Latvians Online. “I also hope news of this will cause those who regulate the domain registration process to tighten up the rules. It’s far too loose and that is the cause of most of the problems.”

He said he has contacted the FBI in Milwaukee about the scam. A spokesperson for the FBI was not available for comment before this article was published.

The Kids First Fund, found on the Web at www.kidsfirstfund.org, is a registered non-profit organization. It describes its mission as “supporting the needs of kids that are sexually and physically abused, abandoned or neglected.” Most of its efforts are focused on rural Latvia. Last year, according to its tax filing, the fund took in more than USD 60,000 in donations.

Latvian Prime Minister Aigars Kalvītis will lead a delegation Aug. 7-15 to the United States to meet with political and business leaders in two different Washingtons.

In Washington, D.C., Kalvītis is expected to meet with Treasury Secretary John W. Snow, Commerce Secretary Carlos M. Gutierrez, Labor Secretary Elaine L. Chao, Homeland Security Secretargy Michael Chertoff and Robert B. Zoellick, deputy secretary of state, according to the Latvian Cabinet of Ministers’ press office.

Continuing on to the state of Washington on America’s West Coast, Kalvītis in Seattle is scheduled to lead a delegation from Latvia’s information technology sector on an Aug. 11-12 visit to computer software maker Microsoft Corp. They are expected to discuss the potential for cooperation between Microsoft and Latvian IT companies.

The visit, according to the Special Minister for E-Government’s press office, is a followup to a meeting between Kalvītis and Microsoft founder Bill Gates in February in Prague. At that time, Latvia and Microsoft signed an agreement that calls on the software giant to pursue various philanthropic activities in return for Latvia eliminating piracy of Microsoft products within two years.

The prime minister also will visit airline manufacturer The Boeing Co., meet with representatives of the Port of Seattle, visit the University of Washington, meet with the leadership of the Gates Foundation and confer with Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels.

Kalvītis also will meet with the Latvian community in Seattle.