THE VOICE OF INTERNATIONAL LITHUANIA
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A car operating for Google Street drives through the old town in Vilnius on June 7, 2012. Lithuanian tax authorities said Thursday they would use the Baltic state's recently launched Google Street View platform to track tax cheats by identifying the real value of property holdings.
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LITHUANIAN PRIME MINISTER
ALGIRDAS BUTKEVIČIUS:
Cheaper gas if Gazprom is gentlemanly
The price of natural gas for Lithuania may go down if Russia’s gas company Gazprom seeks to maintain good economic relations with the Baltic country, says Prime Minister Algirdas Butkevičius.
Otherwise, the price of gas will not decline before the construction of a liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminal, he adds.
“If Gazprom’s executive took, if you will, a gentleman-like approach towards the maintenance of good economic relations with the neighboring countries, the price of gas applied to Lithuania could be brought in line with the prices applying to Estonia and Latvia, even in the near future,” he told the public radio by phone from Brussels on Thursday.
If the parties failed to reach a compromise, the price of gas could only go down at the end of 2014 with the completion of the LNG terminal in Klaipėda, he said.
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LITHUANIAN PRESIDENT
DALIA GRYBAUSKAITE:
Vladimir Putin makes only demands and that is no good sign for Vilnius-Moscow relations
Russia's attitude to Lithuania lacks respect and President Vladimir Putin makes only demands, which "is not a good sign," Lithuanian President Dalia Grybauskaitė has said in an interview to the Danish media.
Grybauskaitė says Lithuania wants better relations "but only with mutual respect preserved." The Baltic country is disrespected by Moscow, the Lithuanian president says.
Asked about relations with Putin, Grybauskaitė recalled their meeting in 2010. "I met with him and talked to him once about 15 minutes in Helsinki in 2010. The fact that he only makes demands for us is not a good sign," Grybauskaitė told the Politiken daily.
"No foreign policy can ignore another country's interests. We have to renew relations with Russia but on the basis of mutual respect. We miss respect from Russia. It's like a gap between the Western and Eastern way of thinking," the president said.
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Nord Pool Spot runs the leading power market in Europe, offering both day-ahead and intraday markets to its customers.
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Baltic dispute over Russian power may delay joint market
The final integration of the European Union’s three Baltic states to the Nordic power exchange may be delayed past June as Estonia and Latvia disagree over whether Russia should be given import preference.
Estonia opposes Latvia’s plan to reserve part of the power transmission capacity for trade with Russia, Taavi Veskimagi, head of the grid operator Elering AS, said by e-mail yesterday. That would worsen summer overloads on the Estonian-Latvian border and lead to more Russian imports of power by Latvia and Lithuania, he said. Lithuanian grid operator Litgrid AB (LGD1L) agrees, its chief executive said today in Vilnius.
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Qatar Airways recruits new cabin crew members from Baltic states
Qatar Airways has turned to Baltic Aviation Academy for the recruitment of new cabin crew members from the Baltic States.
The initial assessment, gathering participants from Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland, during which 100 finalists will be selected, is to be conducted on February 9-10 2013, in Vilnius, Lithuania. An additional selection for Belarus residents (due to time needed to acquire the visas) will be conducted on the February 24.
One hundred selected candidates will be invited to the second round, conducted by the airline on February 24-25 2013 in Vilnius. The airline will offer three year open-ended contract for the cabin crew positions based in Doha.
This is the second campaign of Qatar Airways admission in the Baltic States and Poland, conducted by Baltic Aviation Academy. On October 2012, the aviation personnel training centre scanned more than 500 applicants and led 83 of them to the airlines‘ interview, more than 10 of which were proposed with job opportunities.
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Vilnius through
Indian eyes…
The past is never too far behind in Vilnius — it whispers from the plaques outside the Museum of Genocide Victims located in the old KGB headquarters — one plaque for every person that was executed inside. A visit to the museum with its cells, solitary confinement rooms, torture rooms and even eavesdropping devices that were used, is a sobering experience.
Once Vilnius had a prominent Jewish community and was called the “Jerusalem of the North”. More than 90 per cent of the Jewish community was liquidated under the Nazis and today only one of the 105 synagogues survives. Walking along the winding Stikliu Street in the Jewish quarter, which was once the glass blowers’ street, is a pleasant experience. There are classy ateliers selling stained glass, jewellery and art. You can indulge your sweet tooth at the French patisserie Poniu Laime. On my last day in the city I take a funicular to the fortress on the Gediminas hill, and look down at the panorama of the city: red roofs jostling with spires and domes, providing a counterpoint to the glitzy new city across the river with steel and glass skyscrapers. The perfect metaphor for a city with its feet rooted in the past but its head firmly focused on the future.
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Milda Dargužaitė, general director
of the FDI promotion agency
Invest Lithuania
Lithuania has now the 5th fastest growth rate in the World!
“A boost in investments during the global economic slowdown marks a double victory”, says Milda Darguzaite, the head of Invest Lithuania.
Although the world is going through a decline in foreign direct investment, Lithuania is now among the best in the world.
According to the latest information from fDiMarkets.com, operated by the Financial Times, global greenfield investments fell by more than 22 per cent in the first ten months of 2012. Meanwhile, the number of foreign investment projects in Lithuania increased by 21 per cent in 2012 compared to 2011.
Lithuania ranks fifth in the world, third in Europe, and first among the Baltic States, according to this index.
Throughout the first ten months of 2012, the declared value of 29 FDI projects in Lithuania reached 927 million euros, creating 3,000 new jobs in the country, according to FDImarkets.com data. In comparison, during the same period of 2012, Estonia received 22 and Latvia received 6 projects that will create 1,942 and 783 new jobs respectively.
“The increasing number of FDI projects in Lithuania last year is an excellent proof that Lithuania remains a very attractive location to investors. It is a double victory that Lithuania managed to advance even when the global trends were going in the opposite direction, overall amount of investments decreasing”, says Milda Dargužaitė, general director of the FDI promotion agency Invest Lithuania. “This is a great testament to Lithuania’s potential.”
According to fDiMarkets.com, the largest share — 76% — of foreign investments in Lithuania in the first ten months of 2012 were new greenfield investments, and 24% were designated for the development of existing projects. One-fourth of the investments, or 24%, will go to the manufacturing sector, and the rest is comprised of investments in the service sector.
Last year the IT service centres such as Call Credit, the UK consumer risk management and credit control company, finance and IT competence centers of Paroc Group, one of the largest European manufacturers of stone wool insulation products and COWI A/S, a Danish engineering consultations and planning company started operating in Lithuania. Last year the service centres of Barclays and Western Union expanded significantly as well, and Danske Bank, the largest financial services group in Denmark, announced that it would establish a new service centre in Lithuania.
Foreign companies are the most desirable employers in Lithuania. In 2011, as many as 19 of the 20 most desirable employers in Lithuania had foreign capital. The average wage paid in foreign companies operating in Lithuania is more than two times higher than the average wage in the country.
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Chevron set to win Lithuanian shale gas license
U.S. energy giant Chevron is poised to win a license for shale gas exploration in Lithuania, officials in the Baltic state announced Tuesday.
The license is for a field in western Lithuania, an area near the Baltic Sea where several small firms extract a tiny amount of crude oil. Last year Chevron bought a 50 percent stake in one of these firms, LL Investicijos, which owns a license to a neighboring field. Chevron officials have said they hoped to begin exploration work this year.
For Lithuania, shale gas – a form of natural gas trapped underground in porous rock and difficult to extract – represents a rare opportunity to decrease its energy dependency on Russia, which currently supplies all of the Baltic state's gas.
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Fortum plans to build 3rd power plant in Lithuania
Lithuania's Fortum Heat Lietuva, controlled by Finnish energy concern Fortum, plans to build a combined heat and power plant (CHPP) for 500-700 million litai (around 145-200 million euro) in Vilnius.
"Today we officially announced in print that we are starting to develop this project. The power plant should be in the industrial district," Fortum Heat Lietuva chief Vitalijus Zuta told BNS.
Fortum Heat Lietuva is considering building a CHPP with heat capacity between 60 and 150 megawatts and electricity capacity between 30 and 50 MW. The specific technical terms will be determined after research is performed, he said.
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New York Times:
Lithuania on the top 46 list among places to visit in 2013!
"The Old World is webbed with well-traveled beer trails in places like Belgium, Germany and the Czech Republic. But in the past few years, rumors have swirled about an overlooked historic beer trail in Lithuania. Centered around the town of Birzai, a town in the country’s north, some 50 to 70 farmhouse breweries are producing earthy, unusual ales, often employing techniques not seen elsewhere, and fermented with types of brewing yeast that — as the Canadian beer writer Martin Thibault has discovered — appear to have different DNA from all other known strains. To get a taste of what the Lithuanian beer trail offers, sample the wares at specialty beer bars like Bambalyne, Alaus Namai and Snekutis in the capital, Vilnius. After that, the truly intrepid can seek out countryside breweries." — Evan Rail
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Soviet version of 1991 events in Vilnius survives to this day in Moscow
Twenty-two years ago today, as all independent investigations have confirmed, Soviet forces shot and killed 13 unarmed Lithuanian demonstrators at the Vilnius television tower, an event that galvanized the independence movement in that Baltic republic and triggered drives for independence from the USSR elsewhere.
But at the time of those events and shortly thereafter, pro-communist and pro-Soviet writers came up with an alternative explanation: they insisted that the Lithuanian Sajudis movement had organized the entire event as a provocation to the point of having its own operatives shoot and kill their fellow Lithuanians.
And some of those have even insisted that this conspiracy was part of a broader plot involving Vytautas Landsbergis who supposedly saw such a step as a necessary precondition to establishing a “fascist” and anti-Russian regime in Lithuania and even the United States which supposedly wanted a distraction as it moved to attack Iraq’s Saddam Hussein.
The most hyperbolic of these conspiracy theories have fallen as a result of their own internal inconsistencies – Landsbergis is no fascist and Washington’s Desert Storm campaign in fact limited its response to Moscow’s actions in Lithuania – but others have enough plausibility for some to discredit Lithuania’s drive to recover its de facto independence and its subsequent policies.
Such conspiracy theories about the Vilnius events of January 13, 1991, would be of limited interest were it not for two things. On the one hand, they continue to circulate among some writers in the Russian capital. And on the other, the thinking of Soviet leaders that stood behind them, if not the specific details, appear to be informing Moscow’s policy now.
On Friday, the portal of Moscow’s Strategic Culture Foundation featured a 1500-word article by Nikolay Malishevsky that repeats most of the claims against Lithuania, Sajudis, and Landsbergis by the conspiracy theorists and provides what he says is proof of all of them (www.fondsk.ru/news/2013/01/11/...
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BaltCap invests in Coffee Inn
Coffee Inn was established in Vilnius in 2007 by the group of Lithuanian entrepreneurs. Today, the company operates 28 branded coffee shops and expects to have sales over €3 million in 2012. Coffee Inn shops are located in Vilnius, Kaunas, Klaipeda, Palanga, Siauliai and Riga, Latvia.
Vygantas Maksele, the CEO of Coffee Inn said: “We are very pleased with having attracted BaltCap as new investor in Coffee Inn. With BaltCap’s financial and strategic backing, we are confident that the company will continue its strong growth in the coming years. Regional market for branded coffee bars is at a very exciting stage of its development and we should capitalize on this opportunity.”
"We believe that Coffee Inn has the strongest growth potential among local chains of branded coffee shops in the Baltics. We look forward to working with the competent management team of the company, who has demonstrated an impressive record over the last four years in both expanding the chain across Latvia and Lithuania and building highly loyal customer base." said Kornelijus Celutka, Investment Director at BaltCap.
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Lithuania’s NEW Parliament Speaker, Vydas Gedvilas:
Lithuania must be friends with Russia as United States is too far away to provide gas
Speaker of the Seimas, Vydas Gedvilas, says Lithuania needs to improve its relations with Russia and "take care of our own people", adding that America is very far and Lithuania will not get any gas from there.
"We have to think about our own people as America is far away from us. We need to take care of our own people. We have very close economic relations with Russia. We buy gas, a lot of gas, and electricity, and oil. This cooperation gives us a lot. We're not going to get gas from America," Gedvilas told the Svoboda radio station when asked to comment on a recent statement by US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton that the United States would resist Russia's plans to create another Soviet Union under the guise of Russia's economic integration.
"We are not the only ones who talk about bilateral relations with Russia. Finland, Poland, and Germany also make a lot of contracts. We also have to solve our problems. So it seems one way from a long distance, and it’s a different view from here when we are neighbors," the speaker said.
Gedvilas believes democratic processes are Russia's own business, and economic and cultural relations need to be improved.
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US Senate approves new ambassador to Lithuania
Deborah Ann McCarthy
The United States Senate has agreed to the nomination of Deborah Ann McCarthy to be the next US ambassador to Lithuania.
According to the US Embassy, the endorsement in the Senate was one of the final steps in the appointment, and the Embassy in Vilnius and its staff will be welcoming McCarthy very soon.
McCarthy is a career diplomat who currently serves as principal deputy assistant secretary of state for economic and business affairs. Her previous positions include various diplomatic posts in France, Nicaragua, Greece, and Haiti.
The new ambassador will replace former head of the diplomatic mission Anne E. Derse who served in Lithuania between October 2009 and the fall of 2012.
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State of emergency declared in western Lithuania hit by flood
A state of emergency has been declared in Lithuania's western municipality of Pagėgiai on Monday due to ice jams and rising water.
The army will be asked to provide an amphibian vehicle to get access to households in flooded areas.
"It has been decided to declare a state of emergency," Vaidas Bendaravičius, director of administration at Pagėgiai Municipality, told BNS.
According to him, ice jams are not abating and freezing water is impeding access to households in flooded areas. All in all, 21 homesteads with 72 people are now cut off.
A state of emergency was earlier declared in the neighboring Šilutė Municipality.
An unexpected flood started in the final days of last year due to warmer weather and ice jams.
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Abraham Sutzkever (1913-2010)
Poetry translation contest to be introduced at this year’s Summer Literary Seminars in Lithuania
Summer Literary Seminars has announced its Abraham Sutzkever Translation Prize, marking the centennial of the birth of one of the most acclaimed Yiddish poets of the 20th century.
“To me, he is the leading Yiddish poet, the epitome of Yiddish literature in the 20th century,” Mikhail Iossel said of Sutzkever. Iossel, a Soviet émigré and associate professor of English and Creative Writing at Concordia University in Montreal, is the founder and director of the literary, creative writing and historical workshops that have taken place in St. Petersburg, Montreal, Nairobi and Vilnius. The Sutzkever Prize is associated with the SLS Lithuania program for summer 2013.
The new prize is being added to a lineup of already existing ones that are given through the SLS Unified Literary Contest, awarding winners with tuition, stipends and publication assurances. The winner of the Sutzkever Prize will receive tuition to SLS Lithuania plus $500 toward travel expenses. In addition, the winning entry will be translated into Lithuanian, and read at a celebration in Vilnius on the centennial, on July 15, 2013. The deadline for submissions is February 28, 2013.
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OPINIONS
Have your say. Send to:
editor@VilNews.com
Ph. D., Chicago
A wave of unity sweeps the international Lithuanian community on March 11th every year as Lithuanians celebrated the anniversary of the Lithuanian Parliament's declaration of independence from the Soviet Union in 1990. However, the sense of national unity engendered by the celebration could be short-lived.
Human beings have a strong tendency to overgeneralize and succumb to stereotypical us-them distinctions that can shatter even the strongest bonds. We need only search the internet to find examples of divisive thinking at work:
- "Those who fled Lithuania during World II were cowards -- and now they come back, flaunt their wealth, and tell us 'true Lithuanians' how to live."
- "Lithuanians who work abroad have abandoned their homeland and should be deprived of their Lithuanian citizenship."
In Lithuania Christmas Eve is a family event and the New Year's Eve a great party with friends!
Lithuanian say "Kaip sutiksi naujus metus, taip juos ir praleisi" (the way you'll meet the new year is the way you will spend it). So everyone is trying to spend New Year's Eve with friend and have as much fun as possible.
Lithuanian New Year's traditions are very similar to those in other countries, and actually were similar since many years ago. Also, the traditional Lithuanian New Years Eve party was very similar to other big celebrations throughout the year.
The New Year's Eve table is quite similar to the Christmas Eve table, but without straws under the tablecloth, and now including meat dishes. A tradition that definitely hasn't changes is that everybody is trying not to fell asleep before midnight. It was said that if you oversleep the midnight point you will be lazy all the upcoming year. People were also trying to get up early on the first day of the new year, because waking up late also meant a very lazy and unfortunate year.
During the New Year celebration people were dancing, singing, playing games and doing magic to guess the future. People didn't drink much of alcohol, especially was that the case for women.
Here are some advices from elders:
- During the New Year, be very nice and listen to relatives - what you are during New Year Eve, you will be throughout the year.
- During to the New Year Eve, try not to fall, because if this happens, next year you will be unhappy.
- If in the start of the New Year, the first news are good - then the year will be successful. If not - the year will be problematic.
* If New Year's night is cold and starry - look forward to a good summer!
* If the during New Year Eve trees are covered with frost - then it will be a good year. If it is wet weather on New Year's Eve, one can expect a year where many will die and dangerous epidemics occur.
* If the first day of the new year is snowy - the upcoming year will see many young people die. If the night is snowy - mostly old people will die.
* If the New Year time is cold - then Easter will be warm.
* If during New Year there are a lot of birds in your homestead - then all year around there will be many guests and the year will be fun.
Christmas greetings
from Vilnius
and epic battle for the
future
Philosopher, political theorist, historian of
ideas, social analyst, and political
commentator
Ukraine was and continues to be perceived by the EU political class as a sort of grey zone with its immense potential and possibilities for the future, yet deeply embedded and trapped in No Man's Land with all of its troubled past, post-Soviet traumas, ambiguities, insecurities, corruption, social divisions, and despair. Why worry for what has yet to emerge as a new actor of world history in terms of nation-building, European identity, and deeper commitments to transparency and free market economy?
Right? Wrong. No matter how troubled Ukraine's economic and political reality could be, the country has already passed the point of no return. Even if Vladimir Putin retains his leverage of power to blackmail Ukraine and the West in terms of Ukraine's zero chances to accede to NATO due to the problems of territorial integrity, occupation and annexation of Crimea, and mayhem or a frozen conflict in the Donbas region, Ukraine will never return to Russia's zone of influence. It could be deprived of the chances to join NATO or the EU in the coming years or decades, yet there are no forces on earth to make present Ukraine part of the Eurasia project fostered by Putin.
want to learn about the
new, scary propaganda
war between Russia,
The West and the
Baltic States!
believe their government
is corrupt
students say no to
bribes for doctors
During Soviet times, government was administered for the people in control, not for the local population, court decisions were decreed, they were not the administration of justice, and academia was the domain of ideologues. 25 years of freedom and openness should have put those bad experiences behind Lithuania, but that is not so.
Today, it is a matter of expectation that court pronouncements will be governed by ideological dictates. Few, if any Lithuanians expect real justice to be effected. For foreign companies, doing business in Lithuania is almost impossible in a situation where business people do not expect rule of law, so, surely Government would be a refuge of competence?
Lithuanian Government has not emerged from Soviet styles. In an attempt to devolve power, Lithuania has created a myriad of fiefdoms of power, each speaking in the name of the Government, each its own centralized power base of ideology.
Chepstow, Wales
Doesn't that sound suspiciously like Lithuania? Ah, but I didn't mention the mountains of Snowdonia, which would give the game away.
I'm talking about Wales, that part of the UK which Lithuanians used to call "Valija", but later named "Velsas" (why?). Wales, the nation which has welcomed two Lithuanian heads of state to its shores - firstly Professor Vytautas Landsbergis, who has paid several visits and, more recently, President Dalia Grybauskaitė who attended the 2014 NATO summit which was held in Newport, South Wales.
ENGLISH VERSION OF THE
AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF VYTAUTAS LANDSBERGIS.
Although Lithuanian activities have thinned over the decades as that postwar generation died out, the Lithuanian Martyrs' parish hall is crowded with many, many hundreds of visitors who come to the Lithuanian cemetery for All Souls' Day. Similarly, the Franciscan parish has standing room only for Christmas Eve mass.
Although I am firmly embedded in the literary culture of Canada, my themes are usually Lithuanian, and I'll be in Kaunas and Vilnius in mid-November 2015 to give talks about the Lithuanian translations of my novels and short stories, which I write in English.
If you have the Lithuanian language, come by to one of the talks listed in the links below. And if you don't, you can read more about my work at
www.anatanassileika.com
http://www.vdu.lt/lt/rasytojas-antanas-sileika-pristatys-savo-kuryba/ https://leu.lt/lt/lf/lf_naujienos/kvieciame-i-rasytojo-59hc.html
"My love and best wishes to all. As long as VilNews exists, there is hope for the future,"" she writes.
Irena Veisaite means very much for our publication, and we do hereby thank her for the support and wise commitment she always shows.
You can read our interview with her
Facing a new reality
Dear readers of VilNews,
For a number of years, the EU and Russia had assumed the existence of a strategic partnership, based on the convergence of values, economic integration and increasingly open markets and a modernisation agenda for society.
Our agenda was positive and ambitious. We looked at Russia as a country ready to converge with "European values", a country likely to embrace both the basic principles of democratic government and a liberal concept of the world order. It was believed this would bring our relations to a new level, covering the whole spectrum of the EU's strategic relationship with Russia.
The likelihood of Putin
invading Lithuania
.jpg "lithuania today")
Founding Director at Summer Literary Seminars
Are all Lithuanian energy
problems now resolved?
Lithuania as a country does not have significant energy resources. Energy consuming infrastructure after WWII was small and totally supported by energy imports from Russia.
First nuclear reactor begins power generation at Ignalina in 1983, the second reactor in 1987. Iganlina generates enough electricity to cover Lithuania's needs and about 50%.for export. As, prerequisite for membership in EU, Ignalina ceases all nuclear power generation in 2009
The Klaipėda Sea terminal begins Russia's oil export operations in 1959 and imports in 1994.
Mazeikiu Nafta (current ORLEAN Lietuva) begins operation of oil refinery in 1980.
Have Lithuanian ties across
the Baltic Sea become
stronger in recent years?
The two decades that have passed since regaining Lithuania's independence can be described as a "building boom". From the wreckage of a captive Soviet republic, a generation of Lithuanians have built a modern European state, and are now helping construct a Nordic-Baltic community replete with institutions intended to promote political coordination and foster a trans-Baltic regional identity. Indeed, a "Nordic-Baltic community" - I will explain later in my text the meaning of this catch-phrase.
Since the restoration of Lithuania's independence 25 years ago, we have continuously felt a strong support from Nordic countries. Nordics in particular were among the countries supporting Lithuania's and Baltic States' striving towards independence. Take example of Iceland, country which recognized Lithuania in February of 1991, well in advance of other countries. Yet another example - Swedish Ambassador was the first ambassador accredited to Lithuania in 1991. The other countries followed suit. When we restored our statehood, Nordic Countries became champions in promoting Baltic integration into Euro-Atlantic institutions. To large degree thanks Nordic Countries, massive transformations occurred in Lithuania since then, Lithuania became fully-fledged member of the EU and NATO, and we joined the Eurozone on 1 January 2015.
Have you heard about the
South African "Pencil Test"?
But that is exactly what happened to me when I came back from South Africa. I will tell you how.
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