Town sold off

LATVIA sold a deserted town built around a Soviet-era radar station to a Russian investor who bid $3.1 million (€2.26m) at an unusual auction on Friday, officials said.

The town known as Skrunda-1 housed about 5,000 people in the Cold War but was abandoned over a decade ago after the Russian military withdrew from Latvia following the Soviet collapse.

Reports said the buyer was Aleksejevskoje- Serviss, a Russia-based firm.