The European Union announced today financial support of €12 million to help destroy Syrian chemical stockpiles, by contributing to a Trust Fund established by the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), recipient of the 2013 Nobel Peace Prize. The contribution was pledged by EU High Representative Catherine Ashton in December last year and become today a reality with the signing of the contract by EU Commissioner for Development Andris Piebalgs.

France and the United States congratulated the people of Lithuania on the occasion of the Independence Day of February 16. President Dalia Grybauskaitė received a message of congratulations from French President François Hollande. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry passed on congratulations from President Barack Obama.

European citizens are entitled to medicines that are safe, of high quality and effective. Falsified medicines may contain ingredients of low quality or in the wrong dosage – either too high or too low – and therefore pose a major health threat to EU citizens.

The EU has always tended to be more cautious about approving new products than the US, which is why the two regions have clashed over issues such as GMOs and hormones in beef. Now that they are negotiating an ambitious free-trade agreement, the question is whether the EU should become less prudent. However, MEPs warned against this at a meeting on the treaty on 11 February organised by the legal affairs committee, saying it would be opposed by Europeans concerned about their health.

On 10 February, United Nations (UN) Security Council held a debate on UN Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK).

Meeting in the Foreign Affairs Council, EU ministers formally established the EU military operation in the Central African Republic, opening the way for its rapid deployment in the forthcoming weeks.

The Minister of Foreign Affairs of Lithuania Linas Linkevičius will attend the meeting of the Foreign Affairs Council that will take place on February 10 in Brussels. Foreign Ministers will start the meeting with a debate on the Eastern Partnership and in particular the situation in Ukraine.

Technology powers like Apple and Google have coalesced to register a lobbyist in Washington to focus on government surveillance reform in an effort to maintain credibility following NSA spying disclosures that often implicated them as accomplices.

The conflict in Syria has not only posed a threat to the region's stability for the past two years, but it has also had a terrible human cost. By January 2014, 9.3 million Syrians were in need of humanitarian assistance, according to the European Commission. The EU has been deeply concerned about the situation since the start. Read on to find out what it is doing to help.

Parliament passed three separate resolutions on Thursday, calling on all parties in Thailand to respect the rule of law and democratic principles; demanding full respect for the right to education and an end to all forms of pressure against Romanian teaching institutions in the Transnistrian region; and condemning all human rights violations in Bahrain, while expressing grave concern at the treatment of Nabeel Rajab and other human rights activists.