Lithuania is considering declaring a state of emergency in the entire country on Monday due to an outbreak of African swine fever at the "Idavang" pig breeding complex, Minister of Agriculture Virginija Baltraitiene announced. Currently, the state of emergency has been declared in Ignalina Region.

The EU imports more than half of the energy it consumes and that can make it vulnerable to external energy suppliers such as Russia. To improve the situation, the European Commission presented a plan to reduce this dependence, which was discussed by Parliament's industry committee this week. Read on to find out the key facts and figures about the EU's energy imports and how it varies from country to country.

After the hot weekend, weather will get even hotter in Lithuania next week, reaching more than 30 degrees Celsius reffering to meteo.lt website.

Following the final decision of the European Union General Affairs Council of Ministers on Lithuania's participation in the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) from 1 January 2015, Chair of the Board of the Bank of Lithuania Vitas Vasiliauskas calls on Lithuanians to do not rush to exchange litas to euros.

Ministers at today's European Union's General Affairs Council gave final approval for Lithuania to join the eurozone on January 1, Latvian Foreign Minister Edgars Rinkevics announced on Wednesday.

Ryanair, Europe's favourite low fares airline, today, 18 July, celebrated its 15th millionth passenger to/from the three Baltic countries – Estonia, Latvia & Lithuania. The lucky passenger was Ms Sima Vaskelyte who was on her way to Bremen. A celebration was held at Vilnius airport where Ms Vaskelyte was presented with a Ryanair flight voucher from Vilnius to a destination of her choice and cupcakes were served to all passengers departing on a Ryanair flight this morning.

The Ministry of National Defence is beginning a mechanisation programme to implement the National Defence System Development Programme 2014-2023 approved by the Seimas of the Republic of Lithuania and to the end of strengthening and modernising the Lithuanian Land Force. In first phase of the programme two battalions of the Mechanised Infantry Brigade (MIB) Iron Wolf will be equipped with modern wheeled infantry fighting vehicles till 2020.

Recent elections for the European Parliament have shown that people in the EU were increasingly worried about policy-making while demanding more effective approaches. Regional Policy is one of the areas where the EU is reaching out to citizens. European regions hold the key to the EU's future prosperity: the new Regional Policy is now better equipped to help European regions become more competitive.

The low-cost airline Ryanair carried its 15-millionth passenger on flights to/from the Baltic States today.

20 years passed since Lithuanian film was last shown in one of the most prominent film events, Locarno International Film Festival (Festival del film Locarno).