Tuesday
2013.06.18
Lithuania's President Dalia Grybauskaitė approved Lithuania's 16th government which is two ministers short.
The president rejected two candidates proposed by the Labor Party to head the Ministry of Social Security and Labor and the Ministry of Education and Science. The rejected candidates are Loreta Graužinienė and Virginija Baltraitienė.
"I have signed a decree on appointment of the incomplete 16th government, in response to the prime minister's proposition," Grybauskaitė told reporters on Friday.
The president had previously hinted she also disapproved of Kęstutis Daukšys as Labor candidate for the minister of culture. He was replaced with Šarūnas Birutis.
The president spoke with the candidate on the phone before noon on Friday, presidential adviser Virginija Budienė had also met with him personally, the president's spokeswoman said.
Grybauskaitė said on Friday that the competences of all ministers were very different, and "some of them meet only the minimum requirements for performing their direct duties and properly representing Lithuania abroad."
"The requirements for all candidates, irrespective of their party affiliation, were equal and identical," she said but refused to take questions from journalists.
Headed by the Social Democratic Party's leader Algirdas Butkevičius, the new government will get a mandate to work after parliamentary approval of its program.
The composition of the 16th government of Lithuania is as follows:
Algirdas Butkevičius (Social Democratic Party) – Prime Minister
Birutė Vėsaitė (Social Democratic Party) – Ministry of Economy
Linas Linkevičius (Social Democratic Party) – Ministry of Foreign Affairs
Rimantas Sinkevičius (Social Democratic Party) – Ministry of Transport and Communication
Juozas Bernatonis (Social Democratic Party) – Ministry of Justice
Juozas Olekas (Social Democratic Party) – Ministry of Defense
Rimantas Šadžius (Social Democratic Party) – Ministry of Finance
Vytenis Povilas Andriukaitis (Social Democratic Party) – Ministry of Healthcare
Viginijus Jukna (Labor Party) – Ministry of Agriculture
Šarūnas Birutis (Labor Party) – Ministry of Culture
Dailis Alfonsas Barakauskas (Order and Justice Party) – Ministry of the Interior
Valentinas Mazuronis (Order and Justice Party) – Ministry of Environment
Jaroslav Neverovič (Electoral Action of Poles) – Ministry of Energy
Naujienų agentūros BNS informaciją atgaminti visuomenės informavimo priemonėse bei interneto tinklalapiuose be raštiško UAB „BNS“ sutikimo draudžiama.
It has been a year and a half since Snoras was nationalised, but passions surrounding the defunct Lithuanian bank are still high. Recently, a new wave of criticism has been unleashed against the Bank of Lithuania and the bankruptcy administrators it appointed to manage the shut-down.
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Lithuanian Prime Minister Algirdas Butkevičius has instructed the Finance Ministry to look into why tax-revenue collection is falling short of the government's targets.
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A group of Lithuanian lawmakers have turned to EU institutions, asking for their position as to whether bills put before the Seimas do not violate human and sexual minority rights.
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Ūkio Bankas' bankruptcy administrator says that the realization of Lithuanian-based assets of the bank, formerly controlled by Vladimir Romanov, can take up to two years to complete, provided that the procedures do not get bogged down in courts, the business daily Verslo Žinios reports.
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Lithuanian President Dalia Grybauskaitė honored the memory of victims of massive deportations by the Soviet Union and stressed the need to preserve the truth and not to allow to trivialize or distort it.
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Sikyong Dr Lobsang Sangay, the head of the exiled Tibetan government and Thubten Samdup, His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama’s representative for Northern Europe and The Baltic States, took part in discussions with students of the European Humanities University (EHU) about democracy, freedom and individual responsibility.
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Lithuania is below the EU average in terms of gender equality, according to an index by the Vilnius-based European Institute for Gender Equality.
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Lithuania’s oil company LL Investicijos, which is 50-percent owned by US energy giant Chevron, launches oil exploration in the district of Šilutė, Western Lithuania.
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The European donors should decide at a conference in London whether to unfreeze funding for a spent nuclear fuel storage facility project (B1), one of the key projects in the decommissioning of Lithuania’s shut-down Ignalina Nuclear Power Plant (INPP), which was suspended temporarily last December.
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Lithuanian President Dalia Grybauskaitė, currently on a working visit to Slovakia, met with Slovak President Ivan Gašparovič. The meeting focused on priorities of the upcoming Lithuanian EU presidency, prospects for bilateral cooperation, and energy security issues.
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Kęstutis Butkus says that drug addiction is on the rise in Lithuania. And he should know – Butkus has been a drug addict for two decades and is now in the methadone programme, so he is familiar with ins and outs of the criminal drug retail business. The market is supplied with increasingly heavy drugs, while the state's rigid and moralizing anti-drug policies erase all distinction between light and heavy substances. Unable to tell the difference between marijuana and heroin, young people sink into drug addiction without a clue what awaits them.
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Two legal assistance requests have been drafted in MP Neringa Venckienė's case, according to the country's Prosecutor General Darius Valys.
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Lithuania's Prosecutor General Darius Valys is asking the country's parliament to lift the legal immunity of MP Egidijus Vareikis, suspected of domestic violence, but does not discount the possibility that the pre-trial investigation against the politician might be dropped.
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The Jewish Community of Lithuania will hold a ceremony of reading the names of people who were deported from Lithuania to Siberia under the Soviets. Thus the Jewish Community will commemorate the 72nd anniversary of the start of deportations.
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The opposition Liberal Movements has already collected 29 signatures for an interpellation against Social Democratic Minister of Healthcare Vytenis Andriukaitis, Gintaras Steponavičius, leader of the party's political group in the Seimas, confirms.
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The European Parliament has confirmed its position on a fund for the European Union's poorest people, rejecting a proposal to slash cash for the most deprived people from EUR 3.5 billion to EUR 2.5 billion as had been proposed during the negotiations on the 2014-2020 budget with the European Commission and EU Council.
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Lithuanian President Dalia Grybauskaitė believes that the case of ex-Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko is a sing of wider processes taking place in the country.
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A Finasta analyst says that Amber Grid, a new company into which Lietuvos Dujos is spinning off its gas transmission activity, can be one of the most attractive stocks on the Vilnius stock exchange, the business daily Verslo Žinios reports.
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Environment Minister Valentinas Mazuronis rejects Belarusian politicians' allegations that Vilnius is ignoring Minsk's proposal to hold a public discussion on a nuclear power plant that is being built in Astravyets, close to the border with Lithuania, saying that his country is keeping to the rules.
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And again, this is something I’m prepared to figuratively bite peoples’ heads off for, so beware if you don’t agree and get into discussing this with me.
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