Baltic Sea

The team behind the Baltic Sea discovery that has sparked B-movie descriptions among excitable media -- is it an alien spaceship? Underwater Stonehenge? -- has no problem ramping up the drama. A news release last week from Sweden's Ocean X Team said the "circle-shaped object in the Baltic Sea" looked like a "huge mushroom," rising 10 to 13 feet from the ocean floor. It had a hole in the top -- "as an opening," the team said. In addition, there were "strange stone circle formations, almost looking like small fireplaces ... covered in something resembling soot.

Here's a quiz derived from National Council for Geographic Education curricula and questions devised for the National Geographic Bee. The bee, celebrating its 25th anniversary this year, will draw the winners of state contests to Washington, D.C., to compete May 20 to 22 in the nationals. First prize includes a $25,000 college scholarship and a trip to the Galápagos Islands. No prizes given for correctly answering these geography-related questions, just bragging rights. (Note: The questions get progressively tougher.)

Amoco Corp., which is being bought by British Petroleum Co., said it will stop looking for oil in the Baltic Sea because of poor results and a change in strategy. Chicago-based Amoco, the fifth-largest U.S. oil company, said its Amoco Latvia Petroleum Co. subsidiary told the Latvian government it will look for a buyer for its interests in the Baltic Sea, which is north of Poland and west of Latvia. The company has been exploring there for about 20 years without success, Amoco said.

The team behind the Baltic Sea discovery that has sparked B-movie descriptions among excitable media -- is it an alien spaceship? Underwater Stonehenge? -- has no problem ramping up the drama. A news release last week from Sweden's Ocean X Team said the "circle-shaped object in the Baltic Sea" looked like a "huge mushroom," rising 10 to 13 feet from the ocean floor. It had a hole in the top -- "as an opening," the team said. In addition, there were "strange stone circle formations, almost looking like small fireplaces ... covered in something resembling soot.

The last time Baltic Sea cities banded together for their common good, in the Hanseatic League that dominated regional trade through the Middle Ages, this Danish capital was excluded and rivalry eventually drove the neighbors to war. No one is making that mistake again. A new regional alliance of Baltic Sea states that has swiftly transformed ex-Communist basket cases into thriving and reliable partners is a club deeply committed to inclusion.

Battered by hurricane-force winds and towering waves, rescuers tried in vain Thursday to board a capsized Polish ferry on the slim chance that survivors might still be trapped after a Baltic Sea disaster that left 54 people dead and nine injured. But German police casualty figures released late Thursday appeared to account for all the passengers, meaning the search would not have to be resumed this morning.

Three rafts with 36 people aboard were found in the Baltic Sea off the southern tip of Sweden, a news agency reported. Most of the people on the rafts were from Afghanistan, police said. Larger boats in the area were being checked to see if smugglers had put the rafts in the water outside Sweden.

Nearly half of the oil that spilled into the Baltic Sea last week and soiled Danish beaches has been cleaned up, officials said Sunday. The spill was caused when a freighter rammed an oil tanker Wednesday off southeastern Denmark. About 764,000 gallons of the tanker's total cargo of 9.7 million gallons poured into the sea. Cleanup crews have been aided by good weather along the Danish coast, said Joergen Holst Hansen, a representative of the country's Emergency Management Agency.

"Tervist!" That's the way to say "cheers" as the Estonians do -- and you'll want to do that once you sip a Baltic Sea Martini at Nic's & the Martini Lounge. Nic's stocks more than 40 vodkas from around the world and offers nearly two dozen variations on the martini, but this new creation is a house favorite, in part because Turi, the only super- premium vodka distilled and bottled in Estonia (which has produced vodka for 500 years) for the U.S. market, has a remarkably smooth taste.

Leaning across the wooden helm of his tiny boat, Vello Mass scans the Baltic Sea to the horizon and muses about the treasures lying beneath the cold, gray waves. "There are hundreds of Viking ships out there, hundreds of old trading ships, hundreds of warships," the 63-year-old wreck-hunter said. "The Baltic's an archeological paradise."

SERIES America's Next Top Model: In this new episode, the models participate in a photo shoot for Ford's "Warriors in Pink" campaign against breast cancer, with a spot in a national print ad on the line (8 p.m. KTLA). American Idol: The nine remaining contestants perform songs from the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, accompanied by hall-of-fame guitarist Jeff Beck (8 p.m. Fox). MythBusters: Adam and Jamie get realistic replicas of their own faces made to see whether such masks can thwart security systems as they did in the movie "Mission: Impossible," while Kari, Tory and Grant re-create a scene from the action film "Shoot 'Em Up" in the season premiere (9 p.m. Discovery)

A wayward humpback whale has been swimming in the Baltic Sea near Rostock city, but marine biologists said it may be doomed. "There's not enough food for a humpback whale in the Baltic Sea," said Klaus Harder, a biologist in Stralsund.

The tear gas is stocked and the police are helmeted and ready for tens of thousands of anarchists and anti-globalization protesters who are planning rallies and guerrilla-inspired mischief to disrupt the upcoming Group of 8 summit in this Baltic Sea resort.

A helicopter carrying 14 people, including two Americans, crashed in the Baltic Sea off Estonia on Wednesday, and all aboard were believed to be dead. The U.S.-made Sikorsky S-76, operated by the Finnish firm Copterline, was on a commercial flight from Tallinn, the Estonian capital, to Helsinki, the capital of Finland, when it went down near the Estonian island of Nais Saar, about three miles off the coast, officials said.

Each day at 4 p.m., the trawlers return, alive with giant bass, mackerel and squirming eels, at the end of a food chain that links family dinner tables to poisons in the sea. Besides mercury, which can damage the brains of fetuses and young children, and can affect healthy adults, there are PCBs, dioxins and flame retardants with unknown long-term effects.

Re "His Former Kingdom for a Parking Spot," July 13: It seems that Eugene Gomberg and Stanislav Razumovsky have a major problem on their hands. Although nobody asked them to restore the statue and nobody wants it, a very simple solution could be to bury the statue in the Baltic Sea halfway between Latvia and Sweden. That way the graves of 60,000 killed and buried in Riga during the Northern War would not have to look up to "the Great Liberator" and his statue would be on the way to fight more Swedes.

Uto, Sweden I have always been drawn to islands. The journey to reach them is half their allure, and the approach to each is different. If they have a sense of peace and solitude and aren't too taken with themselves, I am smitten. Sweden, I discovered, is an island lover's dream. Stockholm alone boasts 14 islands. But the one that claimed my heart was Uto. It's a near-perfect little isle that, among other delights, takes a pleasant while to reach.

Two boats arrived here late Wednesday night carrying 32 survivors of a sunken Estonian passenger ferry who had been scooped from the swollen Baltic Sea. Their arrival at the chilly harbor-front terminal brought whimpers of relief from desperate relatives but also brought to a bittersweet close the most tragic day on the Baltic since World War II.

Leaning across the wooden helm of his tiny boat, Vello Mass scans the Baltic Sea to the horizon and muses about the treasures lying beneath the cold, gray waves. "There are hundreds of Viking ships out there, hundreds of old trading ships, hundreds of warships," the 63-year-old wreck-hunter said. "The Baltic's an archeological paradise."

"Tervist!" That's the way to say "cheers" as the Estonians do -- and you'll want to do that once you sip a Baltic Sea Martini at Nic's & the Martini Lounge. Nic's stocks more than 40 vodkas from around the world and offers nearly two dozen variations on the martini, but this new creation is a house favorite, in part because Turi, the only super- premium vodka distilled and bottled in Estonia (which has produced vodka for 500 years) for the U.S. market, has a remarkably smooth taste.