country:lithuania

Practical measures to reduce irregular migration

This synthesis report summarises the main findings of the national reports for the EMN Study on Practical Measures to Reduce Irregular Migration undertaken by EMN national contact points from 22 Member States (Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Poland, Slovak Republic, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, United Kingdom) plus Norway. The overall purpose of this study was to provide an overview of existing approaches, mechanisms and measures to reduce irregular migration in the EU and Norway. In particular, its aim is to inform policymakers and practitioners about the practical measures that have proved effective and proportionate in addressing the issue of irregular migration and to contextualise national policies and practices within the overall EU policy framework. A further aim was to present the available statistics and the methods of data collection used by Member States to estimate the irregular migrant population

http://bookshop.europa.eu/en/practical-measures-to-reduce-irregular-migration-pbDR3012126

#migration #réduire_migration_clandestine #Europe #Norvège #statistiques

Pays baltes : quelques projets de coopération dans le domaine de l’énergie et du transport

The Cabinet of Ministers fo the Republic of Latvia : Conclusions of the Baltic Prime Ministers’ informal meeting

http://www.mk.gov.lv/en/aktuali/zinas/2013/may/300513-mp-01

Conclusions of the Baltic Prime Ministers’ informal meeting
State Chancellery

30.05.2013

The Prime Minister of Estonia Mr. Andrus Ansip, the Prime Minister of Latvia Mr. Valdis Dombrovskis and the Prime Minister of Lithuania Mr. Algirdas Butkevičius have met on May 30 in Jūrmala, Latvia. The Prime Ministers discussed the key issues of regional energy and transport projects, Baltic Council of Ministers’ reform and questions concerning joint external economic cooperation of the three Baltic countries, as well as celebration of the 25th anniversary of the Baltic Way.

#pays_baltes #lettonie #estonie #lituanie

Save the Children’s annual State of the World’s Mothers report 2013- http://blogs.savethechildren.org.uk/2013/05/democratic-republic-of-congo-worst-place-to-be-a-mum

Le Royaume-Uni se place derrière des pays beaucoup moins riches,

The UK comes 23rd on the list, with fewer women in Parliament and higher maternal and infant mortality rates than much of Europe.

According to the statistics, the UK now has a higher rate of under-five child death than 21 other European countries, including countries with lower GDPs such as Cyprus, Portugal and Czech Republic.

Women in Britain are at a higher risk of dying during pregnancy or childbirth than women in less wealthier countries like Slovakia, Montenegro and Lithuania.

Some of the reasons behind Britain’s relative low position on maternal and infant mortality include:

– the age of women having babies – due to teenage and IVF pregnancy rates, the UK has a higher proportion of young and older mothers than much of Europe

– the poor health status of some pregnant women, including suffering from obesity or cardiac disease

– poverty and inequality – women with partners who are unemployed are six times more likely to die from maternal causes than those with partners in work.

Les États-Unis font pire et se placent 30ième,
http://www.savethechildren.org.uk/sites/default/files/images/State_of_World_Mothers_2013.pdf (page 67)

Why doesn’t the United States do better in the rankings?

The United States ranks 30th on this year’s Index. Although the U.S. performs quite well on educational and economic status (both 10th best in the world) it lags behind all other top-ranked countries on maternal health (46th in the world) and children’s well-being (41st in the world) and performs quite poorly on political status (89th in the world). To elaborate:
• In the United States, women face a 1 in 2,400 risk of maternal death. Only five developed countries in the world – Albania, Latvia, Moldova, the Russian Federation and Ukraine – perform worse than the United States on this indicator. A woman in the U.S. is more than 10 times as likely as a woman in Estonia, Greece or Singapore to eventually die from a pregnancy- related cause.
• In the United States, the under-5 mortality rate is 7.5 per 1,000 live births. This is roughly on par with rates in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Qatar and Slovakia. At this rate, children in the U.S. are three times as likely as children in Iceland to die before their 5th birthday.
• Women hold only 18 percent of seats in the United States Congress. Half of all countries in the world perform better on this indicator than the U.S. Sixteen countries have more than double this percentage of seats occupied by women. In Finland and Sweden, for example, women hold 43 and 45 percent of parliamen- tary seats, respectively.

POMED publie une revue hebdomadaire de la presse iranienne. Il faut s’inscrire pour la recevoir
Project on Middle East Democracy (POMED)
http://pomed.org

Framework (#Resonance_FM), Earscape “Insects” (#paysage_sonore d’#insectes)
http://www.frameworkradio.net/2013/04/417-2013-04-21

this edition of framework:afield has been produced in germany by regular contributor d.l. lutz. notes from the producer:

“Some hear bug music, some hear people music. All depends on your ears,” wrote Wafu in 1866 in Kyoto, according to David Rothenberg. This earscape is meant to zoom you right into the microscopic world of insects.

For a lot of sound artists, this acoustic realm seems to be fascinating – maybe primarily because the different scale of these beings also results in completely different dynamics of movement and articulation. “Insects” concentrates on this aspect; harvestmen fluttering around lamplights, myriads of maggots crawling on a compost pile, orientation flights of bees and cricket talks are examples of the rich morphology of insect sound.

http://media.blubrry.com/framework/p/archive.org/download/2013.04.21FrameworkRadio/framework-2013.04.21.mp3

#entomologie #électro-acoustique #audio #radio

« Les Etats-Unis occupent la 26e place sur vingt-neuf – juste derrière la Grèce – pour la mesure du “bien-être global des enfants” – » selon le classement de l’UNICEF. ►http://www.lemonde.fr/vous/article/2013/04/10/indicateur-de-bien-etre-des-enfants-une-invitation-pour-chaque-gouvernement-,

Avec des précisions supplémentaires sur le site “International Business Times”, http://www.ibtimes.com/unicef-report-child-well-being-shows-us-near-bottom-list-1186975

Les États-Unis se classent aussi deuxième à partir du bas pour la pauvreté des enfants. Le seul pays parmi les 29 qui a plus d’enfants vivant dans la pauvreté que l’Amérique est la Roumanie. Les États-Unis sont aussi près du fond pour les taux de vaccination contre la rougeole et la polio*, ainsi que pour la « satisfaction de vie des enfants. »

Par contre, rappelle l’auteur de l’article,

Les Etats-Unis sont No. 1 sur plusieurs autres listes : leurs dépenses militaires sont supérieures aux 12 nations suivantes sur la liste combinées ; ils sont les meilleurs au monde dans l’emprisonnement des gens ; et ils ont les personnes les plus obèses, le taux de divorce le plus élevé, et le taux le plus élevé de consommation de drogues illicites et de prescription à la fois.

Ce qui n’empêchera nullement certains de réclamer des Etats-Unis qu’ils assument une position de “leadership” dans la défense des droits humains.

(* Tout en insistant à vacciner les enfants des pays pauvres.)

Dans l’affaire Magnitsky, les justices autrichiennes, finlandaises et chypriotes suivent la position russe de classer l’affaire, dans l’indifférence européenne la plus totale http://euobserver.com/magnitsky/119042

“He noted that Lithuania and Switzerland have frozen bank accounts and that Cyprus, Estonia, Latvia and Moldova have opened criminal proceedings on the back of the same information he gave to Austria.

‘How could Austria come to a different conclusion than six other law enforcement agencies based on the same evidence?’ he told this website.”

Twitter / GazaYBO : Voted against: Israel, Nauru, ...
https://twitter.com/GazaYBO/status/274274944295268352

Voted against: Israel, Nauru, Palau, Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Panama, Canada, Czech Republic and the U.S.

Six Journalists Win Prestigious Media Awards Geared Towards Improving Reporting on Water, Sanitation and Hygiene | WSSCC
http://www.wsscc.org/resources/resource-news-archive/six-journalists-win-prestigious-media-awards-geared-towards

•    Alain Tossounon (Benin): “Access to safe water in the town of Ava-Sô, A perilous conquest for survival.” (Accès à l’eau potable dans la commune de Sô-Ava, Une conquête périlleuse pour la survie.)
http://washjournalists.wordpress.com/2012/03/24/acces-a-leau-potable-dans-la-commune-de-so-ava-une-conque
•    Ngala Killian Chimtom (Cameroon): “The Taps Have Run Dry”
•    Berta Tilmantaite (Lithuania): “The River Runs Back”
•    Francis Odupute (Nigeria): “The Strategists”
•    Francesca de Châtel (Belgium): “Water Around the Mediterranean”
•    Ketan Trivedi (India): “Alchemy of Earning Money through Wastes and Making a Village Clean, Hygienic and Lovely”

#eau

Historical Dynamics & contingent conditions of #religion | Gene Expression | Discover Magazine
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/gnxp/2012/08/historical-dynamics-and-contingent-conditions-of-religion

Many cognitive psychologists have observed that universal religions often result in fictive kinship. Note here that the important point is not the propensity toward supernatural belief; that’s modal human cognition. Rather, it is the specific theological and institutional character of a religious organization which allows them to successfully compete with other “firms,” and if theautocatalytic dynamics are dominant these will result in the extinction of “weaker” religious organizations in the face of “stronger” ones over time via the choice of individual actors along the filaments of a social network.

The Ultimate Counterfeiter Isn’t a Crook—He’s an Artist | Wired
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/05/ff_counterfeiter/all

“It is also very likely that I did it because I was constantly being told that I was the only person far and wide who was able to make really good counterfeit dollar bills,” he later wrote in a statement to the court. “In retrospect, I must admit that at least from an artistic perspective this both flattered and challenged me.” If he couldn’t move his product with the help of someone like Falkenthal, Kuhl knew, his banknotes would rot in a storage locker, nullifying his artistic achievement.

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/wp-content/gallery/20-06/ff_counterfeiter2_f.jpg

#contrefaçon #monnaie #art #allemagne

The Rendition Project
http://www.therenditionproject.org.uk/global-rendition/countries.html

As explained in ‘The Issues’ section of the website, dozens of countries have been involved in the global rendition system in different ways.

In this section of the website, we will be providing detailed case studies on different countries that have been complicit in the global rendition system. We are launching the website with a detailed analysis of the role played by Lithuania. We will be expanding our analysis, to cover numerous other countries, throughout 2012.

La grande imposture des « guerres humanitaires »

http://www.globalpolicy.org/international-justice/general-articles-on-international-justice/51568-the-fraud-of-qhumanitarian-warsq.html?itemid=id#261

The Fraud of “Humanitarian Wars”

In this talk, Glenn Greenwald argues that “humanitarian intervention” has been used historically to justify war, and that proponents are naïve to think military intervention could control and resolve complex conflicts. Humanitarianism has justified the US invasion of Iraq to “free” oppressed Iraqis, Gaddafi’s support of violent militias, and Hitler’s campaigns to “liberate” Germans from oppressive rule in Lithuania and Ukraine. While people under oppressive regimes may benefit from outside intervention, the ripple effects of a “humanitarian” war, such as in Libya and Iraq, show that no foreign military intervention is authentically humanitarian.

By Glenn Greenwald

May 2, 2012

Is the EU Taking its Over-Fishing Habits to West African Waters?
http://www.globalpolicy.org/social-and-economic-policy/world-hunger/general-analysis-on-hunger/51461-is-the-eu-taking-its-over-fishing-habits-to-west-african-waters.

According to the UN’s FAO, 25 percent of all fish caught by EU-registered boats comes from developing countries, at the expense of over 1.5 million local fishermen. Though fish supplies in developing nation’s waters are rapidly declining, rich countries and country groups, like the EU, are continuing to over-fish. Host country governments are becoming increasingly dependent on the income received by selling fishing rights to foreign corporations and countries. In West Africa, many people fear that communities where fishing is the main source of income will become less stable, making the region “more and more like Somalia.”

According to the PFA, about 50 international freezer-trawlers are active in Mauritanian waters at any one time, of which 30 originate from countries such as Russia, China, Korea or Belize. “By targeting fish species that cannot be fished by local fishermen, we avoid disrupting local competition and growth and always fish outside the 12-13 mile fishing limit for our type of vessel,” says a spokesman.

“Not all international operators active in Mauritanian waters meet the EU’s safety and environmental standards. This threatens our efforts to foster sustainable practices in the region.”

Greenpeace says the over-exploitation of African fisheries by rich countries is ecologically unsustainable and also prevents Africans from developing their own fisheries. It takes 56 traditional Mauritanian boats one year to catch the volume of fish that a PFA vessel can capture and process in a single day. Since the 1990s, the once-abundant west African waters have seen a rapid decline of fish stocks. Local fishermen say their catches are shrinking and they are forced to travel further and compete with the industrial trawlers in dangerous waters unsuitable for their boats.

#surpêche #Afrique #Europe #pauveté #inégalité #développement #pillage

#Wikileaks report reveals #corruption in Lithuanian newspapers - European Journalism Centre
http://www.ejc.net/magazine/article/wikileaks_report_reveals_corruption_in_lithuanian_newspapers

The embassy document dating back from 2007 further revealed that Raimundas Voishka, director of the Pfizer branch office in Vilnius, was contacted by the owner of Respublika, who offered to “kill” the pharmaceutical giant’s competitors in Lithuania. The price for the favour was set at one LTL 1 million (slightly over EUR 300,000), and the director was given two weeks’ time to respond. When Respublika approached him again, he rejected the offer.

The newspaper then started running articles accusing Pfizer of overcharging for its products and taking advantage of needy hospital patients and sick people.

Later, Respublika published an article claiming that Voishka had beaten up a child - he had, in fact, had an altercation with a neighbour boy - and sent the article to Pfizers headquarters in New York.

The Prosecutor’s office and internal investigations by Pfizer however cleared the director of any misconduct in the incident.

#cablegate #presse