Tallinn  - Three young Estonian men were handed suspended prison sentences in the south-eastern Estonian town of Voru on Thursday after they admitted desecrating what they took to be a Communist monument in the local cemetery in December 2008.

The three self-appointed patriots took offence at the presence of the monument and daubed it in the blue, white and black colours of the Estonian flag.

There was just one problem - the monument, called the Common Grave of Terror Victims, was actually dedicated to the victims of fascism.

Tallinn- Herman Simm, a former senior Estonian intelligence official was found guilty of treason charges on Wednesday and sentenced to 12 and a half years in prison.

Simm was also ordered to pay a fine of more than 2 million dollars for selling state secrets to Russia over more than a decade.

Harju County Court in the Estonian capital, Tallinn, released its verdict after a trial held in strict secrecy.

Tallinn  - The Estonian government survived a no confidence vote on Friday, which it had tied to plans for scathing budget cuts in a high-stakes bid to deal with the country's troubled economy.

The coalition government of Andrus Ansip won the vote in the national parliament, or Riigikogu, by 61 votes to 35.

It had tied the no confidence vote to plan for a special budget aimed at saving around 8 billion kroons (690 million dollars) from public finances.

Tallinn - The latest enquiry commission into the sinking of a passenger ferry - the Estonia - in the Baltic Sea in 1994 agreed Thursday with previous probes that a design and construction flaw was most likely to blame for the disaster.

The Estonia sank en route from Tallinn in Estonia to Stockholm in Sweden on September 28, 1994, with the loss of 852 lives. There were just 134 survivors from one of the world's worst maritime disasters.

An Estonian government commission established in 2005 concluded on February 19 that there was no evidence the disaster was linked to the covert transportation of Swedish military equipment on board the vessel.

Tallinn - The Estonian economy contracted by nearly one- tenth in the final quarter of 2008, according to a provisional estimate released Friday by the small Baltic state's official statistics bureau, Eesti Statistika.

"Gross domestic product (GDP) decreased by 9.4 per cent in Estonia in the 4th quarter of 2008 compared to the same quarter in the previous year," Eesti Statistika said.

The news confirmed that the Estonian economy shrank for three consecutive quarters after the former "Baltic Tiger" became the European Union's first member state to slip into recession in 2008.

Tallinn - The ruling coalition in Estonia is set for a make-or-break vote in parliament after it reached agreement on a money-saving amended budget in the early hours of Thursday morning.

The plan includes cost-cutting measures that would slash 8 billion kroons (685 million dollars) from state expenses.

Controversial measures include an across-the-board reduction of 10 per cent in public sector wages which would save an estimated 2 billion kroons (171 million dollars) and a provision to raise pensions by 5 per cent from April.