Latvian citizens in Canada anxiously waiting for their missing European Parliament absentee ballots should see them by June 7, weeks after they were mailed from Rīga, according to Latvijas Pasts. In the meantime, the Latvian embassy in Ottawa is trying to expedite the return of completed ballots to Rīga before the election deadline.

The election is June 12. Absentee ballots have to be received back in Latvia by the time polls close at 10 p.m. that day.

Rather than directly mailing their completed ballots back to Rīga, Ottawa-area voters may deliver them to the Latvian embassy by noon on June 10. The embassy has received permission to collect the ballots and return them to Rīga with an embassy official who is returning to Latvia before the election, said Irīna Mangule, first secretary for consular affairs.

The embassy is attempting to arrange with Honorary Consul Imants Rūdolfs Purvs in Toronto and soon-to-be-named Honorary Consul Roberts Kleišs in Montreal to help collect ballots from voters in those communities and return them to Rīga by express courier, Mangule added.

Canada Post on June 4 told Latvijas Pasts that it has now received all three mailbags containing 467 absentee ballots, representing all ballots sent to Canada by the Central Elections Commission, Latvijas Pasts Press Secretary Edijs Šauers said by telephone from Rīga.

It still is not clear why delivery of the mailbags was delayed, Latvijas Pasts said in a press release. The post office began an investigation after being told June 1 by the Latvian embassy in Ottawa that the absentee ballots had not been received by voters.

The investigation revealed that the three mailbags had reached Chicago, from where they were to be transported by Canadian Airlines to a mail distribution center in Montreal. On June 3, Latvijas Pasts was informed that only one of the bags had reached Montreal. Now, however, the other two bags have been found.

At fault might be the U.S. Postal Service, Mangule said, because the mailbags reached Chicago on May 16, but apparently did not leave there until May 27.

In all, 3,215 Latvian citizens have requested absentee ballots, according to data compiled by the Central Elections Commission. Of those, 2,310 live abroad; the rest expect to be abroad during the June 12 election.

Completed absentee ballots already are being received in Rīga, Šauers told Latvians Online.

The 10 countries with the largest total number of absentee ballot requests are the United States (958), Australia (513), Canada (467), the United Kingdom (208), Germany (179), Brazil (107), Belgium (106), Sweden (104), Venezuela (77) and Russia (50).

A total of 42 nations are represented among the absentee ballot requests, including places such as China, Egypt and Lebanon.

Only those ballots mailed to Canada were delayed, Šauers said.

Mail between Latvia and the United States and Canada normally takes about four to five days, according to Latvijas Pasts.

A Hong Kong-based company has acquired the well-known Drogas chain of health and beauty stores in Latvia and Lithuania, and a company official said the new owner plans to grow the brand regionally.

A.S. Watson, the retail and manufacturing division of conglomerate Hutchison Whampoa Ltd. of Hong Kong, said June 4 that it has acquired the 59 Drogas stores in Latvia and 24 more in Lithuania.

Drogas, established in 1993, controls 30 percent of Latvia’s health and beauty market, A.S. Watson said in a press release. Drogas expanded to Lithuania in 2001 and has plans to open three more stores there this month.

“This is an important milestone for Drogas as well as the country, being one of the first major foreign investments since Latvia and Lithuania joined the (European Union),” Andrejs Jernevs, general manager of Drogas, said in a prepared statement.

Ian Wade, managing director of A.S. Watson, said Latvia and Lithuania are a springboard to the Baltic, the Nordic market and the CIS. “The region’s recent accession to the EU gives it a new powerful impulse to the creation of a free, secure and prosperous economy. We see great potential in the markets,” Wade said in prepared comments.

Terms of the acquisition were not announced.

A.S. Watson operates 13 retail brands with nearly 3,700 stores. The company employs 64,000 people. Last year, it reported turnover of more than USD 8 billion.

The degree of economic development last year in Latvia was the lowest of the 25 member and candidate countries of the European Union and the European Free Trade Assocation, according to figures released June 3 by the EU’s Eurostat service. Luxembourg scored the highest.

In its analysis, the Eurostat survey found that Latvia’s per capita gross domestic product was just 42 percent of the average in the 25 EU member and candidate countries. Estonia’s per capita GDP was 48 percent of the average, while Lithuania was at 46 percent of the average.

The numbers don’t speak to the actual income of households in the countries, Eurostat said in a press release.

Luxembourg topped all nations by recording a per capita GDP that was 208 percent of the average. But Eurostat noted that Luxembourg’s figure “tends to be overestimated, due to the large share of cross-border workers in total employment.” While those workers add to the GDP of the country, they are not considered in the calculation that leads to the per capita GDP. In others words, Luxembourg’s figure most likely is lower than reported.

The three Baltic states and seven other countries officially became members of the EU on in May, expanding the organization from 15 to 25 nations.

Although Latvia’s per capita GDP was low, it was not the lowest in the Eurostat survey, which also included three other countries being considered for EU membership. Bulgaria, Romania and Turkey all scored lower, with Turkey recording a per capita GDP just 27 percent of the EU average.

The Eurostat service is based in Luxembourg.