Latvian news agency LETA hit by denial of service attack

The Latvian news agency LETA has been hit for several hours Thursday night by a denial of service (DOS) attack that blocked access to its main news website www.leta.lv. The business portal www.nozare.lv appeared to be working normally.
The attack came two days ahead of national elections October 2 to the Latvian parliament or Saeima. LETA  will be a major source of election news and returns and a threat at this late date creates uncertainty as to whether LETA or its
LETA editor-in-chief Pēteris Zirnis, citing the news agency's IT administrators, confirmed that a denial of service attack had been going on and efforts were made to stop it. DOS attacks, also called distributed DOS (DDOS) involve a large number of computers sending huge numbers of connection requests or specially-designed data packets to a target server, with the aim of overwhelming its capacity to respond.
While DDOS attacks are often launched for purposes of criminal mischief or extortion, it cannot be rule out that someone is testing their ability to disrupt the flow of news during the coming elections or at other critical times. In that case, there is a severe and ongoing threat to the free flow of information in Latvia.
As of 23:50 Thursday night, the main service was still down.

UPDATE: LETA service appeared to be restored at around 24:00 (midnight)

National Security chairman backs repression

Dzintars Jaundžeikars, chairman of the National Security Commission of the Latvian Parliament, the Saeima, has come out in favor of punishing rumor-mongers and making people "think before they speak" about matters of the national currency and economy.
His remarks during a radio broadcast were reported (non-Latvian speakers can try a Google translation from Latvian for a good laugh) by the Delfi.lv news portal, generating, as of this writing, more than 100 overwhelmingly critical and negative comments. Some comments, unfortunately, harked back to Jaundžeikars angry remarks about conspiracies against him and his family when his son was arrested for allegedly driving under the influence of drugs some time ago. This is not really relevant to the issue at hand, and Jaundžeikars remarks, even if imprudent and foolish, are covered by his right to free expression.