Androulla Vassiliou, the European Commissioner for Education, Culture, Multilingualism and Youth, is visiting Rīga in Latvia from 18-20 January to take part in the 2014 European Capital of Culture's opening events, as well as to launch in the country the EU's new Erasmus+ program funding for education, training, youth and sport, in the country.

Applications for the Charlemagne Youth Prize 2014 have been extended to midnight on 10 February 2014. The prize is awarded every year to young people participating in projects designed to promote Europe among the young. Winning projects will not only benefit from recognition and media coverage, but also from prize money to further develop the initiative.

From January 1, 2014, Lithuania has begun to implement the Youth Guarantee initiative. It means that all young people aged 15-29 who are neither studying, nor working, have become unemployed of left formal education will be provided with a good-quality, concrete offer, including job, apprenticeship or traineeship within 4 months after the first day of registration in the Labour Exchange.

If photography is a passion of yours, we'd like to invite you to take part in our photography competition. During the coming months we will announce different topic once a month until the European elections in May. Send us your photo and you might be the winner of the month and have your photo published on our site. One of these monthly winners will be invited to Strasbourg in July to do a full photo reportage on the newly elected parliament.

The Antares rocket carrying Lithuanian satellites Lituanica SAT-1 and LitSat-1 launched from NASA's Wallops Flight Facility in Wallops Island, at 20:07 Thursday.

The biggest Vilnius-based Baltic startup accelerator StartupHighway started the partnership with the one of the most famous universities in the world UC Berkeley settled in the Sicilian valley.

Blizzard causing havoc on the East Coast of the United States has forced company Orbital to alter its plans. The launch of Cygnus spacecraft carrying the first Lithuanian satellites LitSat-1 and LituanicaSat-1 to the International Space Station (ISS) was postponed at first to 7-8 January and later, as weather conditions did not improve, to 9 January 2014.

Tonio Borg, EU Commissioner for Health, thanks Lithuania for its contribution to the regulation of clinical trials.

Historically, economists used a classification of country's wealth based on income and percentage of growth. It was a static concept that could not reveal national competitiveness. Now the Baltic States have to think again and the key to success is innovativeness.