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Category: Lithuania 🇱🇹

Adult skills in literacy and numeracy declining or stagnating in most OECD countries

2024-12-10 /

A new OECD Survey of Adult Skills shows literacy and numeracy skills among adults have largely declined or remained stagnated over the past decade in most OECD countries.

The Survey measured the skills of around 160,000 16-65 year-olds across 31 countries. It looked at how literacy, numeracy and problem solving skills are used at work. It aims to provide insight of how developing and using skills improves employment prospects and quality of life as well as boosting economic growth.

One of the findings is that only Finland and Denmark have seen significant improvements in adult literacy skills over the past decade.

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Lisbon is this year’s best-value European city

2023-05-14 /

Every year, Post Office Travel Money compares the costs of short breaks in cities across Europe for UK holidaymakers – overall and for specific items like accommodation, meals and cultural attractions.

Our annual City Costs Barometer helps you see upfront which destinations are the best value or most expensive before planning your trip, including how prices have changed in the past year.

  • Best-value cities
    1. Lisbon £224.76
    2. Vilnius £225.01
    3. Krakow £250.91
    4. Athens £262.22
    5. Riga £284.99
    6. Porto £325.30
    7. Zagreb £329.72
    8. Budapest £330.53
    9. Warsaw £330.95
    10. Lille £332.11

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The 15 Northernmost Capital Cities of the World are all in Europe

2021-08-14 /
15 Most Northern Capitals in the World are all in Europe

15 Most Northern Capitals of Europe (via MapPorn)

At a latitude of 64.1466° N, Reykjavik is the world’s northernmost capital city. Only Nuuk, the capital city of Greenland, which sits at 64.1814° N, is further north than Reykjavík. However, Greenland is an autonomous territory within the Kingdom of Denmark. Geographically, Greenland is part of the continent of North America.

  1. Reykjavik, Iceland (Latitude » 64.1466° N)
  2. Helsinki, Finland (60.1699° N)
  3. Oslo, Norway (59.9139° N)
  4. Tallinn, Estonia (59.4370° N)
  5. Stockholm, Sweden (59.3293° N)
  6. Riga, Latvia (56.9496° N)
  7. Moscow, Russia* (55.7558° N)
  8. Copenhagen, Denmark (55.6761° N)
  9. Vilnius, Lithuania (54.6872° N)
  10. Minsk, Belarus (53.9006° N)
  11. Dublin, Ireland (53.3498° N)
  12. Berlin, Germany (52.5200° N)
  13. Amsterdam, Netherlands (52.3676° N)
  14. Warsaw, Poland (52.2297° N)
  15. London, England, UK (51.5074° N)

In comparison, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada sits at a latitude of 45.4215° N.

Facts » Reykjavík is the only Western European capital without a McDonald’s or a Starbucks. The only other European capital without a McDonald’s is Tirana, Albania. Rome, Italy is Starbucks-free.

*Russia, is so vast, being the largest country in the world, and most of it within the continent of Asia. However, some consider Moscow, geographically at least, within continental Europe.

Changing conditions for visa-free travel to EU for non-EU nationals from December 2022

2021-06-04 /

From December 2022, non-European Union nationals who do not require a visa to enter the Schengen area, will need to request prior authorisation to visit Schengen countries.

You will be able to apply online for authorisation via the European Travel Information and Authorisation System (ETIAS).

The ETIAS authorisation is not a visa. Nationals of visa liberalisation countries will continue to travel the EU without a visa but will simply be required to obtain a travel authorisation via ETIAS prior to their travel. ETIAS will be a simple, fast and visitor-friendly system, which will, in more than 95% of cases, result in a positive answer within a few minutes.

An ETIAS travel authorisation does not reintroduce visa-like obligations. There is no need to go to a consulate to make an application, no biometric data is collected and significantly less information is gathered than during a visa application procedure. Whereas, as a general rule, a Schengen visa procedure can take up to 15 days, and can in some cases be extended up to 30 or 60 days, the online ETIAS application only takes a few minutes to fill in. The validity will be for a period of three years, significantly longer than the validity of a Schengen visa. An ETIAS authorisation will be valid for an unlimited number of entries.

The ETIAS travel authorisation will be a necessary and small procedural step for all visa-exempt travellers which will allow them to avoid bureaucracy and delays when presenting themselves at the borders. ETIAS will fully respect this visa-free status; facilitate the crossing of the Schengen external border; and allow visa free visitors to fully enjoy their status.

The exact date on which these changes will come into force is not yet clear.

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Japan and Singapore top 2019 list of world’s most powerful passports

2019-10-01 /

Euan McKirdy and Maureen O’Hare at CNN write »

Japan and Singapore have held onto their position as the world’s most travel-friendly passports.

That’s the view of the Henley Passport Index, which periodically measures the access each country’s travel document affords.

Singapore and Japan’s passports have topped the rankings thanks to both documents offering access to 190 countries each.

South Korea rubs shoulders with Finland and Germany in second place, with citizens of all three countries able to access 188 jurisdictions around the world without a prior visa.

Finland has benefited from recent changes to Pakistan‘s formerly highly restrictive visa policy. Pakistan now offers an ETA (Electronic Travel Authority) to citizens of 50 countries, including Finland, Japan, Spain, Malta, Switzerland and the United Arab Emirates — but not, notably, the United States or the UK.

Read more of this article at CNN »

The best passports in 2019 are:

1. Japan, Singapore (190 destinations)
2. Finland, Germany, South Korea (188)
3. Denmark, Italy, Luxembourg (187)
4. France, Spain, Sweden (186)
5. Austria, Netherlands, Portugal (185)
6. Belgium, Canada, Greece, Ireland, Norway, United Kingdom, United States, Switzerland (184)
7. Malta, Czech Republic (183)
8. New Zealand (182)
9. Australia, Lithuania, Slovakia (181)
10. Hungary, Iceland, Latvia, Slovenia (180)
More at the Henley Passport Index

Notes

» Canada has been ranked 6th four years in a row. They were ranked 2nd in 2014, then dropped to 4th in 2015, and have been holding steady in 6th since 2016.

» The USA been on a steady decline since 2014 when they were ranked 1st. They dropped to 2nd in 2015, 4th in 2016, 5th in 2017 and 2018, and to 6th this year.

» The UK has been on a steady decline in the rankings, dropping from 1st in 2015, to 3rd in 2016, to 4th in 2017, to 5th in 2018, to 6th this year.

World’s Most Powerful Passports as of Q3 2019

2019-07-05 /

The Henley Passport Index has released its third quarter ranking of the world’s most powerful passports in 2019.

The index is compiled from data provided by the International Air Transport Association (IATA) and measures global mobility based on visa-free access to destinations. It also uses data from the index’s 14-year history, “to show how travel mobility has changed over the past decade, looking at which passports have gained in strength and which have fallen behind.”

Japan and Singapore hold the world’s strongest passports, with Visa-free access to 189 destinations. South Korea dropped to second place, joining Germany and Finland with Visa-free access to 187 destinations.

The United Arab Emirates entered the top 20 index for the first time in the list’s 14-year-history, moving up an astonishing 41 spots. Other countries that climbed standings include Taiwan, which climbed 24 places over the past ten years and ranks 30th.

The USA and the UK each dropped to the lowest position they’ve held since 2010, sharing the sixth spot with Canada, Greece, Norway, Belgium and Ireland.

Pakistan now offers an ETA (Electronic Travel Authority) to citizens of 50 countries, including Finland, Japan, Malta, Spain, Switzerland and the United Arab Emirates — but not, notably, the USA or the UK.

Afghanistan is once again at the other end of the rankings, with its citizens needing a prior visa for all but 25 destinations worldwide.

Most Powerful Passports of Q3 2019:
1. Japan, Singapore (189 Destinations)
2. South Korea, Germany, Finland (187)
3. Denmark, Italy, Luxembourg (186)
4. France, Sweden, Spain (185)
5. Austria, Netherlands, Portugal, Switzerland (184)
6. Canada, Norway, Belgium, Greece, Ireland, UK, US (183)
7. Malta (182)
8. Czechia (181)
9. Australia, Iceland, New Zealand, Lithuania (180)
10. Latvia, Slovakia, Slovenia (179)

The Least Powerful Passports of Q3 2019:

101. Bangladesh, Eritrea, Iran, Lebanon, North Korea (39 Destinations)
102. Nepal (38)
103. Libya, Palestinian, Sudan (37)
104. Yemen (33)
105. Somalia (31)
106. Pakistan (30)
107. Syria (29)
108. Iraq (27)
109. Afghanistan (25)

Source: Henley Passport Index

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