Baltic states

• Owned by financial firm Söderberg & Partners, Levler was launched in the Spring of '22 as a mutual funds trading platform.
• Last June, it expanded its services to include a wide scope of equity trading, alongside a totally redesigned user interface.
• "What makes this customer win special for us is that it's our first purely digital, cloud-native financial services customer.
• Lemontree played a pivotal role in both the implementation of the solution, as well as in its seamless delivery to Levler.

• With song we have been victorious.” These were the words of the newly elected president of Latvia, Edgars Rinkēvičs, at the closing ceremony of the 150th Latvian Song and Dance festival, held from June 30 to July 9.
• Rinkēvičs was greeted by an audience of 50,000 members of the public and 21,000 performers who cheered and waved Latvian flags.
• He spoke about the power of song to unite and give hope to the Latvian people and to reinforce its centuries old cultural traditions.

Joy about culture; sadness about history

• Next to me, two Ukrainian journalists wept as the orchestra played their national anthem.
• In the televised replays of the festival, cameras zoomed in on teary singers, dancers and musicians of all ages.
• On August 23 1989, two million people from Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia formed a human chain over 600 kilometres long to join their capital cities.

A free Latvia

• After the second world war, when Latvia was part of the USSR, the festival was used to promote Soviet ideology.
• Gaismas Pils (The Castle of Light), composed in 1899 by Jāzeps Vītols, tells of a sunken castle that rises to announce the rebirth of a free Latvia.
• Participants from Latvia and from abroad paraded in national costume along Freedom Boulevard, cheered on by enthusiastic crowds and unfazed by downpours of rain.
• Although I have been to Latvia many times, this was my very first experience of the Song and Dance Festival.

• Latvia's DEAC and Lithuania's Data Logistics Center (DLC) have been granted EUR 30 million 10-year loan by SEB Bank to further expand Baltic telecommunication infrastructure, focusing on data centers and fibre-optic networks.
• It will also go towards the expansion of the DLC data centers in Vilnius, Lithuania and fibre-optic networks," says DEAC and DLC CEO Andris Gailitis.
• "We remain firmly committed to the Baltics, building top quality, efficient and environmentally neutral critical infrastructure.
• The entire data center is being built using the latest and most efficient technologies to serve the growing data center power needs.

• This unique deal, worth more than A$1 billion, is driven by the demands for a rapid German rearmament after the strategic shock of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
• Germany doesn’t have adequate military production capacity to meet its suddenly pressing new defence needs.
• Then, if necessary, an airborne air defence fighter aircraft could be vectored to intercept the intruder.
• With this move, Australia will now share the burden of continual air patrols in Eastern Europe made necessary by the Russian invasion.

Bringing Germany and Australia closer together

• As part of the contract, the Australian government mandated Rheinmetall build the majority of the vehicles in Australia.
• The new Boxers being built for Germany will be based on the Australian Army’s reconnaissance vehicle design, but given a different name: “heavy weapon carrier infantry”.
• The Boxer deal helps to bring Germany and Australia closer at a time when Berlin is increasingly interested in Indo-Pacific defence matters.
• And later this month, Germany will send more than 200 soldiers to participate in the
  Talisman Sabre, a large, multinational, military exercise in eastern Australia.

Why the deal matters to both countries

• For Scholz, buying vehicles from the factory of a German arms manufacturer in Australia is more attractive than buying US-made arms.
• Moreover, the deal would seem pivotal in ensuring Rheinmetall Defence Australia is now chosen over South Korea’s Hanwha to build 129 new Infantry Fighting Vehicles for the Australian Defence Force (ADF).
• For Albanese, the Boxer deal is one of Australia’s largest defence export orders ever, which will create hundreds of jobs.
• However, the deal will have some direct effects on the defence force in the short term.

Could more deals be forthcoming?

• These deals were announced even before the NATO summit, so could there be more to come?
• Australia is reportedly in negotiations to potentially give up to 41 old Hornet fighter jets to Ukraine.
• Ukraine is apparently interested in the retired jets, if perhaps only to spur others into gifting it a much larger number of F-16s.