General Information
Lithuania, officially the Republic of Lithuania, is a country in the Baltic region of Europe. It is one of three Baltic states and lies on the eastern shore of the Baltic Sea, bordered by Latvia to the north, Belarus to the east and south, Poland to the south, and the Russian semi-exclave of Kaliningrad Oblast to the southwest, with a maritime border with Sweden to the west. Lithuania covers an area of 65,300 km2 (25,200 sq mi), and has a population of 2.9 million. Its capital and largest city is Vilnius; other major cities include Kaunas, Klaipėda, Šiauliai and Panevėžys. Lithuanians are the titular nation, belong to the ethnolinguistic group of Balts, and speak Lithuanian.
- Population: 2,800,000+
- Area: 65,300 km²
- Coordinates: Latitude: 54.683334350586, Longitude: 25.316667556763
- Timezone: Timezone info not available
- Current Local Time: ailab
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„Kai atvyksime, juokauti laiko nebeliks“: naujokių kelionė į Ukrainos frontą – iš arti
Ketvirta valanda ryto. Tačiau po kareivių žaliais šalmais nematyti nė ženklo mieguistumo. Tai – ką tik apmokyti Ukrainos pėstininkai, kuriems šis rytas įsimins ilgam. Būtent šį rytą jie pirmą kartą vyksta į frontą. Leidinio „Postimees“ žurnalistas parengė išskirtinį reportažą – jis stebėjo, kaip prie Ukrainos kariuomenės fronte prisijungia nauji, ką tik apmokymus baigę kariai. Kokios mintys sukasi jų galvose?
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Vasara pažėrė ir karščio, ir vėtrų rekordų. Kokių orų galime tikėtis rudenį?
Po itin kontrastingos vasaros, kurią lydėjo tiek alinantys karščiai, tiek istorinį mastą pasiekusios vėtros, Lietuvos gyventojai su nerimu žvelgia į kalendorių. Ar rugsėjis dar padovanos ketvirtąjį vasaros mėnesį, prie kurio pastaraisiais metais jau spėjome priprasti? O gal visgi šiemet gamta nusprendė sugrąžinti mus į vėsesnę realybę? Ar Lietuvą nusiaubusi audra jau paskutinė, ar ruduo gali pažerti ir daugiau vėjuotų dienų? Apie tai, kokia buvo vasara ir koks mūsų laukia ruduo, rinkosaikste.lt kalbėjo su Lietuvos hidrometeorologijos tarnybos atstovu.
BBC News
Civilians told to flee Ukraine's fortress cities as Russia bids to control Donbas
Kramatorsk and Slovyansk are now the main focus of Russian ground assaults, and residents are being told to leave.
BBC News
Man jailed after threatening to kill son's teacher in French village
The father had threatened to behead a female primary school teacher near Toulouse.
BBC News
AI boom helps drive surprise UK growth in July
The economy expanded by 0.4%, official figures show, whereas analysts had predicted no growth.
BBC News
I asked my husband to pay into my pension when we had a child - here's why
Molly and Taylor Haylett explain the changes to how they managed their finances when they started a family.
POLITICO
Emma Bonino, Italy’s activist commissioner, dies at 78
Indefatigable Italian rights activist and European heavyweight Emma Bonino died aged 78, her party Più Europa announced on Friday. A former European commissioner and member of the European Parliament, Bonino held a series of senior positions at home, serving as lawmaker, senator and three-time minister, in a career that straddled Brussels and Rome. For the EU, she was chief among the voices who helped establish the bloc as a defender of international human rights and became a passionate advocate for European federalism. For Italy, she was a radical liberal who refused to neatly fit into her country’s entrenched left-right divide, garnering respect across ideological lines without abandoning her activist roots. “To me, power can be good or bad according to what you do with it,” Bonino said. “Power is having the responsibility to change things to the best of your abilities.” Lifelong campaigner Born in rural Piedmont, Bonino decided to dedicate her life to political activism after having an illegal abortion in 1974 — an experience that inspired her to join the feminist movement and launch civil-disobedience demonstrations. Two years later, the then-28-year-old was elected to parliament as part of the libertarian-left Radical Party. Young, female and radical, she refused to adapt to her surroundings, using the hemicycle as a platform for campaigns to legalize abortion and divorce, ban nuclear power and secularize Italy. After securing a seat in the first direct elections to the European Parliament in 1979, the new MEP quickly realized the institution, then based in Luxembourg, was stuck in a political backwater. Instead, Bonino said, she opted to ditch the Grand Duchy and move to Brussels, Europe’s true “decision-making center.” Bonino quickly learned to leverage the bloc’s power dynamics, using her MEP status to take her human rights work global, and was repeatedly arrested while campaigning beyond the bloc’s borders. Poland’s Communist regime briefly imprisoned her for participating in a pro-democracy demonstration in Warsaw in 1987, and she was detained in New York two years later for distributing sterile syringes to drug users in protest of America’s AIDS-prevention policies. The combative commissioner The complexity of politics in Rome propelled Bonino to global prominence. Following Italy’s 1994 elections, the late center-right politician Silvio Berlusconi needed the Radical Party’s support to become prime minister. In exchange for the group’s backing, he agreed to nominate her as Italy’s European commissioner. Bonino said she was initially “unhappy” with the appointment to what she considered “too much of a bureaucratic role.” She also regarded her portfolio — humanitarian aid, consumer policy and fisheries — as “crumbs.” But she soon warmed to the job, finding “the ideas that I supported on the street and as a militant can be better pursued on a transnational level.” Bonino threw herself into aid work, traveling to conflict zones including the Balkans, Rwanda and Zaire to show the EU was actively confronting crises beyond its borders. Italian journalist Marco Zatterin, who served as her spokesperson in 1995, told POLITICO her hands-on approach and willingness to speak with “literally anyone” raised eyebrows in Brussels. “She was nothing like the commissioners that had come before her,” he said. “The EU is disliked by most people because it often projects its status through bureaucratic norms that are removed from the world everyone else lives in, and she was the opposite of that.” “Politicians tend to think of themselves as gods,” Zatterin noted, “but she was a listener.” When Bonino spoke, however, she was direct and often unabashedly critical, taking aim at governments she believed were failing to respond to crises and capitals that continued doing business with dictatorships. But her “straight talk” made her enemies across the bloc too, Zatterin said. It also became an issue when the EU found itself embroiled in the 1995 “Turbot War” with Canada, which saw Bonino accusing Ottawa of “piracy” after it seized a Spanish fishing trawler in international waters. It later came to light the European fleets Bonino was defending were overfishing and misreporting catches. The commissioner’s critics also cheered when a 1998 fraud probe was launched into €2.4 million of fictitious humanitarian aid contracts awarded by the EU. Although investigators found no evidence of her involvement, Bonino’s time as commissioner still ended abruptly the following March, when Jacques Santer’s entire College resigned amid broader allegations of fraud and mismanagement surrounding France’s Édith Cresson. But Bonino was swiftly able to resume her work, reelected to the Parliament just three months later. The stateswoman In her later years, Bonino expressed frustration with an EU that, she said,“such as it is, doesn’t work.” She also called for progress toward a “political union” that would allow Europe to “become a big dog like China and the USA” — though she firmly rejected the idea of a “European super-state,” pressing for an EU with strength in limited competences. Bonino eventually returned to Italian politics in 2006, serving as minister European affairs in Romano Prodi’s center-left government, before becoming senate vice president. Her willingness to work across the aisle made her an outlier in Rome, and paved the way for her appointment as foreign minister under then-Prime Minsiter Enrico Letta in 2013. It is also what had her under repeat consideration for the presidency. The respect Bonino garnered throughout her career also forged unusual personal relationships, like her friendship with Pope Francis. Despite being ideologically opposed on issues like abortion, the two bonded over their shared support for migrants, with the pontiff hailing the fiercely anticlerical politician as an “example of freedom and resistance.” Zatterin noted Bonino was always willing to work with governments of all ideological backgrounds, as she believed being in power gave her a better chance of advancing the causes she believed in. “She was never an opportunist,” he said. “Her priorities were her causes.”
POLITICO
Drei Szenarien für einen Kanzlertausch
Listen on Spotify Apple Music Amazon Music Neun Tage vor den Wahlen in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern und Berlin schrillen im Konrad-Adenauer-Haus die Alarmglocken. Angesichts historisch schlechter Umfragewerte analysieren Rixa Fürsen und Hans von der Burchard die politische Zukunft von Friedrich Merz. Im Raum stehen drei konkrete Szenarien für eine mögliche Machtablösung. Vom freiwilligen Rücktritt bis zum konstruktiven Misstrauensvotum. Im 200-Sekunden-Interview stellt sich der CDU-Spitzenkandidat in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Daniel Peters, der drängenden Vertrauensfrage. Er erklärt, warum die Partei trotz drohender Einstelligkeit an ihrem Kurs festhalten will und welche Rolle die Polarisierung durch SPD-Ministerpräsidentin Manuela Schwesig im aktuellen Wahlkampf spielt. Zudem richtet sich der Blick auf den 25. Jahrestag der Terroranschläge vom 11. September. Aus Washington ordnet Jonathan Martin ein, wie das historische Trauma die amerikanische Gesellschaft bis heute prägt und welche tiefgreifenden Auswirkungen dieses Erbe auf die aktuelle Politik von Donald Trump hat. Das Berlin Playbook als Podcast gibt es jeden Morgen ab 5 Uhr. Rixa Fürsen, Maximilian Stascheit und das POLITICO-Team liefern Politik zum Hören – kompakt, international, hintergründig. Für alle Hauptstadt-Profis: Der Berlin Playbook-Newsletter bietet jeden Morgen die wichtigsten Themen und Einordnungen. Jetzt kostenlos abonnieren. POLITICO Deutschland – ein Angebot der Axel Springer Deutschland GmbHAxel-Springer-Straße 65, 10888 BerlinTel: +49 (30) 2591 0information@axelspringer.deSitz: Amtsgericht Berlin-Charlottenburg, HRB 196159 BUSt-IdNr: DE 214 852 390Geschäftsführer: Christoph Eck-Schmidt, Carolin Hulshoff Pol, Mathias Sanchez Luna
Al Jazeera – Breaking News, World News and Video from Al Jazeera
Pro-Palestine student suspended by King’s College London returns to campus
College lifts suspension amid criticism from student groups over crackdown on pro-Palestine sentiments.
Al Jazeera – Breaking News, World News and Video from Al Jazeera
What did 25 years of the “war on terror” leave behind?
US forces have bombed somewhere every year since 2001. AJLabs maps the so-called “war on terror”.
Europe
The best exhibitions to see in London this weekend
The FT’s critics recommend the most compelling 2026 shows, from Anish Kapoor and Barbara Hepworth to Frida Kahlo to Zurbarán
Europe
Macron shoots for the moon with pitch to Europe’s struggling space sector
Also in this newsletter: Europe keeps buying more Russian gas
France 24 - International breaking news, top stories and headlines
China, Iran among countries using AI to spy on dissidents and minorities, Anthropic says
Anthropic said Thursday it had disrupted several state-sponsored surveillance operations using its artificial intelligence models, warning of the growing AI use to target dissidents and minorities. The campaigns, detected between January and July, originated in China, Iran and West Africa and targeted diaspora communities, including Hong Kong pro-democracy activists.
France 24 - International breaking news, top stories and headlines
Vance tries to label Democrats as 'party of hatred' as he seizes MAGA spotlight
US Vice President JD Vance launched a virulent attack on the Democratic Party Thursday, accusing them of being the "party of hatred" at day two of the Republican convention ahead of the November midterm elections. With public support for President Donald Trump at record lows, Republican figures are increasingly trying to frame their opponents as dangerous political extremists.
Africanews RSS
Analyst says Algeria-UAE rift reflects wider Sahel dispute
Smail Debeche, a professor of international relations at the University of Algiers III, said the decision was a reaction to what he described as UAE actions against Algeria on the regional level, including in Africa's Sahel region and Libya.
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Anthony Joshua crash driver trial adjourned to November 17
The trial of Adeniyi Mobolaji Kayode, the driver involved in the December 2025 crash that injured boxer Anthony Joshua and killed two members of his team, was adjourned Thursday to November 17.