WHEN Peter the Great decided, in the early 1700s, that Russia needed access to the Baltic Sea, he built a port city on the river Neva, on the Gulf of Finland. 

DIEHARD Irish soccer fans might have to dig deeper than the players for the playoff against Estonia — and that’s just to get there.

A helicopter carrying two pilots and 12 passengers crashed and sank in the Baltic Sea off the Estonian coast today.

Powerful winds and heavy rain swept across northern Europe from Ireland to Russia over the weekend, leaving at least 15 dead by yesterday, inundating areas of Britain and disrupting air and sea transport. Hundreds of thousands of homes lost power.