Lithuanian Prime Minister Algirdas Butkevičius has met with vice-president of the company Hitachi, Koji Tanaka, to discuss cooperation issues.

In the beginning of October, Lithuanian Supreme Administrative Court ordered the removal of bilingual street signs in Polish and Lithuanian languages in Šalčininkai region. This act was justified on the grounds of Lithuanian legislation's requirements. However, such legislation is seen to be in conflict with the prior signed International Convention and is showing arrogance in not fulfilling European Parliament's requests.

The growing globalisation of data flows, via social networks, cloud computing, search engines, location-based services, etc, increases the risk that people can lose control of their own data. On 21 October 2013, Civil Liberties MEPs voted on a major overhaul of current EU data protection rules which aims to put people in control of their personal data, build trust in social media and online shopping and upgrade the protection of data processed by police and judicial authorities.

3.7 million passengers were transported via Lithuanian railways in nine months of 2013, by 2% more year-on-year.

Many young people still believe strongly in Europe. Every year the EP awards the Charlemagne Youth Prize to honour projects run by young people to foster understanding and promote the European identity. This year's winners visited the Parliament on 16 and 17 October to present their projects to the culture committee and meet president Martin Schulz.

Criminals have long sought to abuse the opportunities offered by an increasingly globalising world as shown by the 3,600 international criminal organisations now operating in the EU. The EP launched a special committee to investigate the problem and come up with the best possible ways to combat them.

The Central Electoral Commission of the Republic of Lithuania has registered the representatives of the EU citizens' initiative 'Suspension of the EU climate and energy package' in Lithuania. Earlier, the initiative was registered by the European Commission. Mr Miroslav Romanovski became the plenipotentiary of the initiative's organising committee in Lithuania.

Kempinski Hotel Cathedral Square was named one of the top 10 'Hot New Hotels' in the world by TripAdvisor®, the world's largest travel site. Kempinski Hotel Cathedral Square was one of only two European hotels that made it on the list and ranked fifth in the world, and first in Europe.

President Dalia Grybauskaitė paid a visit to the Pixelmator Team, one of the most successful IT companies whose created image editor application is famous worldwide. Last year the company was conferred the App of the Year on the Mac App Store - an 'Oscar' in information technologies. The Lithuanian innovation has also been honored with a prestigious Apple Design Award.

On 17-18 October, the 12th European Tourism Forum 'Tourism – a Force for Economic Growth, Social Change and Welfare' is to be held in Vilnius. Forum participants will discuss the benefits of tourism for the European Union (EU) economy and competitiveness, the diversity of tourism products, closer cooperation, the future of tourism and tax issues in the tourism business. The Forum is organized by the Ministry of Economy of the Republic of Lithuania, in cooperation with the European Commission.