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VILNIUS (AP) — Later this year, a ship the size of an aircraft carrier will arrive at Lithuania's port of Klaipeda on the Baltic Sea. The 300-meter (984-foot) vessel is not a warship, but a floating natural gas import terminal — aptly named "Independence" — that will be key to the Baltic region's plan to reduce its reliance on Russia's energy supplies. The choice of a floating gas terminal is a sign of the urgency felt in the region. It was two years faster to build than on land, and at $330 million, was some 50 percent cheaper. It will...

As a specialist in prehistoric underwater archaeology, Dr Jonathan Benjamin looks at rising sea levels differently from most people and his fascination with this global phenomenon began when as a PhD candidate at Edinburgh University he came across the work of the Danish archaeologists Anders Fischer and Søren H Anderson. In the 1970s and 1980s, Fischer and Anderson recovered some of the most well preserved material ever seen from sites such as the 6,500-year-old settlement at Tybrind Vig. This was the first submerged settlement excavated in Denmark and from 1977 was the scene of intensive archaeological activity. Lying 300m from...

BERLIN, A postcard dated May 17, 1913, and found in a bottle by German fishermen appears to be the oldest such message ever found. Konrad Fischer, captain of a fishing boat from Schleswig-Holstein, told Kieler Nachrichten, a local newspaper, that he was about to throw the bottle back in the sea when someone told him it was not empty, the Local.de reported. "When I saw the date I got really excited," he said. The postcard, from Denmark, had German stamps on it. It was signed by Richard Platz and addressed to his own home in Berlin with a message asking...

Washington (AFP) - The United States plans to expand military cooperation with Poland and Baltic states to show "support" for its allies after Russia's intervention in Ukraine, Pentagon chief Chuck Hagel said Wednesday.

As they map Germany's changing coastline, members of a research team called SINCOS are learning about settlements that were covered by water 6000 to 8000 years ago On a warm afternoon in September, archaeologist Harald Lübke looked out from the pilot house of the Goor, a bright red dive boat moored 200 meters off Germany's Baltic seacoast. Three meters below the water's glassy surface, divers in bulky drysuits were excavating a prehistoric hunting camp. A deafening motor mounted on the Goor's deck powered a pressure pump, which they were using to suck sediment from the sea bottom into mesh bags....

Due to the background of Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the half-Chechen half-Avar brothers who bombed the Boston marathon, many Americans are suddenly very interested in the tortured history of the North Caucasus. I can’t credibly claim to be an expert on the multitudinous ethnic and linguistic groups that populate the area, so if you’re looking for in-depth analysis of Chechen politics, a data-driven account of the economics of Dagestan, or a blow-by-blow account of the past 20 years of the region’s history you should look somewhere else. If you’re still wondering “where in God’s name is Chechnya?” or “why are...

Object is raised about 10 to 13ft above seabed and curved at the sides like a mushroom. Hole is surrounded by an strange rock formation that expedition team can not explain. Stones are covered in something 'resembling soot' which has baffled experts. Divers say phones and some cameras switch off when close to the object. The divers exploring a 'UFO-shaped' object at the bottom of the Baltic Sea say their equipment stops working when they approach within 200m. Professional diver Stefan Hogerborn, part of the Ocean X team which is exploring the anomaly, said some of the team's cameras and...

A Swedish expedition team has found an unidentified object at the bottom of the Baltic Sea, leaving some to believe it’s the remnants of an extra-terrestrial ship. Scientists went off on a deep-water dive to debunk some theories about the underwater object, but were left with more questions than they had answers. The divers found that the object was raised about 10 to 13 feet above the seabed, and curved in at the sides. “First we thought this was only stone, but this is something else,” Ocean X team diver Peter Lindberg said in a press release. The object had...

Explanation: Waiting years and traveling kilometers -- all to get a shot like this. And even with all of this planning, a good bit of luck was helpful. As the Sun rose over the Baltic Sea last Wednesday as seen from Fehmarn Island in northern Germany, photographer Jens Hackmann was ready for the very unusual black dot of Venus to appear superimposed. Less expected were the textures of clouds and haze that would tint different levels of the Sun various shades of red. And possibly the luckiest gift of all was a flicker of a rare green flash at the...

People often talk about the Baltic Dry Index as being a "canary in the coal mine". But right now, maybe "elephant in the room" might be more fitting. The index of shipping rates for dry bulk commodities - such as iron ore, coal and grains - has long been considered by market afficionados as an advance warning system for changes in economic fortunes. When the index surges, it means shipping demand is spiking, a strong sign for a pick-up in economic activity. When the index plunges, it means ships are sitting empty - a sign of evaporating demand for goods....

The Sideshow: A team of salvage divers has discovered an unexplained object resting at the bottom of the Baltic Sea near Sweden. “This thing turned up. My first reaction was to tell the guys that we have a UFO here on the bottom,” said Peter Lindberg, the leader of the treasure hunters. Sonar readings show that the mysterious object is about 60 meters across, or, about the size of a jumbo jet. And it’s not alone. Nearby on the sea floor is another, smaller object with a similar shape. Even more fascinating, both objects have “drag marks” behind them on...

Estonia is the euro's newest member and also has the eurozone's fastest growing economyMost European leaders would be delighted if their economy was growing as fast as Estonia's.The small Baltic state's economy is forecast to have grown by 8% during 2011, according to the EU's official statistics body. That's more than five times faster growth than the European Union as a whole. But Estonia is still regaining the ground it lost during a financial crisis that struck it and its Baltic neighbours in 2008-9, when a property bubble burst spectacularly, causing the economy to shrink and unemployment to rocket to...

On June 19, maritime treasure hunters -- who were looking for priceless submerged hooch in shipwrecks -- discovered a 60-meter-diameter circle 87 meters under the Baltic Sea. Are these the remains of an alien vessel or Cthulhu's personal pan pizza? Next to the circle is a 300 meter long slide track -- as if the circle has traveled across the seabed before it has settled [...] They rule out theories that there is a depth bomb or mine from the First World War -- or a symmetrical [algal] bloom [...] The most likely scenario is still that there is a...

On Saturday, Estonia completes its trip from Soviet republic to full-fledged member of the euro zone. In the first minutes of the new year, Prime Minister Andrus Ansip will slide a bank card into an automated teller machine installed for the occasion in front of the opera house here in the capital. He will withdraw some euro bills, and Estonia will officially become the 17th member of the zone.

While environmentalists are sharply opposed to the construction of the new Baltic Sea pipeline, archaeologists are delighted. The massive Nord Stream project to bring natural gas from Russia to Germany has uncovered dozens of shipwrecks and other historic artifacts. In the early 1940s, engineers of the Third Reich conducted a series of tests that involving firing Henschel HS 293 glider bombs into the Baltic Sea. They were disheartened when the tests failed, because the steering systems of the massive projectile didn't work properly. Now, almost 70 years later, one of the bombs -- weighing in at about 1,000 kilograms (2,200...

More than 50 ships, including large ferries reportedly carrying thousands of passengers, were stuck in ice in the Baltic Sea Thursday evening, and many were not likely to be freed for hours, Swedish maritime authorities said.

KALININGRAD, May 13 (RIA Novosti) - Russia's newest frigate, the Yaroslav Mudry, has started state-commissioned sea trials in the Baltic Sea, a spokesman for the Yantar shipyard said on Wednesday. The frigate is the second vessel in the 11540 Yastreb series after the Neustrashimy, which recently took part in an anti-piracy operation in the Gulf of Aden. "After the trials, the ship will undergo a final inventory check, and will be handed over to the Russian Defense Ministry in mid-June," the official said. Earlier reports said the frigate was due to enter service in April. The construction of the Yaroslav...

Riga - The economic gloom afflicting the Baltic states got several shades darker Tuesday with a fresh forecasts revising expectations downwards. Until mid-2007 the so-called 'Baltic Tigers' of Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia recorded Europe's fastest growth rates, but their economies have stalled spectacularly in the wake of the global downturn. According to a spring forecast from the Estonian Ministry of Finance, the economy in the smallest of the Baltic states will contract by 8.5 percent in 2009. "Estonia is undoubtedly at a difficult time. At the same time this gives us a real opportunity to use the downturn to create...

This is the time for Bush and other NATO leaders to give high priority and visibility to discussions with Finland, which is considering joining NATO. If Finland joins, Sweden might follow, Swedish officials say. Alliance members also should move now to bolster the defenses of the three Baltic NATO members -- Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania -- as Kurt Volker, the U.S. ambassador to NATO, has recently suggested. The holding of no-notice joint maneuvers with the Baltic states would be one way to catch Russia's attention.

Fred Kagan, the intellectual author of the successful US "troop surge" plan in Iraq, believes Nato's presence in the Baltics must be massively strengthened to pre-empt the risk of them being invaded in the same way as Georgia. Such measures would infuriate Moscow, which last week warned that the installation of a US missile defence shield in Poland would ignite a new "arms race" between East and West. But Mr Kagan, an expert on the Russian military who has the ear of hawks within the US administration, said that the West needed to match words with deeds if it was...