Latvia Transport Minister Anrijs Matiss said: “I want to emphasise that the greatest beneficiaries of this project will be the Latvian, Lithuanian and Estonian citizens, who will be able to easily travel to any Baltic country and other destinations in Europe in the near future.”

Two representatives from each country of Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania have been appointed to the board of RB Rail – Anti Moppel for Estonia is chairman of the board, Ugis Magonis representing Latvia and Dainius Budyrs Lithuania. They will oversee the design, construction and marketing of the new 728km long railway line which will enable trains to travel at speeds not exceeding 240km/h achieving travel times of Tallinn to the Lithuanian-Polish border of about 4 hours.

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“It’s coming home to its roots,” said Ian Taylor, one of the three Events Management students at the University’s Buxton campus who have been put in charge of the management of the conference from October 1 to 3.

Ian has organised the logistics, liaising with the organisers in Hamburg and the Arkwright Society, while Paulius Jakuitis from Kaunas in Lithuania is in charge of marketing. Chantel Scully, from Wakefield, is in charge of hospitality. Events include a gala dinner for delegates, tours of the Valley including some of its other historic mills, and the industrial heritage of Derby from railways to Rolls-Royce engineering. They are also in charge of an academic conference at Cromford following the ERIH event, and overseeing DerbyCollege students who are providing the catering. All Events Management students get involved in organising functions as part of the University’s real-world, hands-on style of learning, but working with so many different organisations has been a real challenge, said Paulius.

“This is how Derby gives that extra value compared to other universities offering similar degrees,” he said.

“I am delighted that at Cromford Mills we are able to work with the University in providing the opportunities for students to learn in a ‘real life’ experience,” said Sarah Mcleod, Chief Executive of the Arkwright Society.

“They have certainly given it their all and I am confident that they will be able to take new skills away from this project and use them in the workplace.”

ERIH was set up to develop tourism routes through Europe for enthusiasts of industrial heritage to follow.

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- Vice President Corporate Communications of airBaltic, Janis Vanags,

- Tez Tour Operations manager, Jurijs Batkilins,

- Member of the board of Riga International Airpot, Andis Damlics,

- Director of Aviation Services Department of RigaInternationalAirport, Arturs Kokars.

Latvian airline airBaltic has launched its summer flights from Riga to Varna, Bulgaria in cooperation with the international tour operator Tez Tour. The new route offers convenient connections between the two cities and beyond to destinations in the Baltic region, Scandinavia, Russia and the CIS countries.

As part of restructuring initiatives, airBaltic has discontinued a number of routes recording somewhat weaker demand in the summer season; this move makes aircraft capacity available for the Riga – Varna service for airBaltic customers travelling between the two cities and onwards to destinations such as Copenhagen, St. Petersburg, Helsinki, Stockholm, Oslo, Vilnius, Tallinn. airBaltic operates flights from Riga to Varna two times a week on Tuesdays and Fridays. Passengers board a Boeing 737-300 aircraft for a flight that lasts for 2 hours 40 minutes. Return ticket price starts at EUR 199, including airport fees and transaction costs.

airBaltic serves over 60 destinations from its home base in Riga, Latvia. From every one of these locations, airBaltic offers convenient connections via North Hub Riga to its network spanning Europe, Scandinavia, Russia, CIS and the Middle East.

Tez Tour offers charter flight to travellers all year round. Tez Tour customers are welcome to visit Turkey, Greece, Spain, Egypt, UAE, Thailand, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Maldives, as well as skiing resorts in Austria, Italy and Andorra.

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The organisers of the Professional Spa and Wellness Convention held in London’s ExCel conference centre invited Ieva and five colleagues to carry out research into best practices following acknowledgement by the industry that Buxton was leading the world in spa degrees. Ieva’s research revealed that 50% of managers surveyed didn’t respond to questions regarding the principals of sustainability and 3% admitted that they weren’t even sure what it meant. Ieva stated that sustainability meant much more than just being eco-friendly, it included running a business in a manner which saves the planet, while retaining the right employees and increasing profit.

The research was so well received that the university has been invited to carry out another research project next year. Ieva has been invited by world leaders in spa, from the President of the Spa Federation of Africa to suppliers of spa products in Australia, to take part in further projects.

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To promote the development of the Baltic textile industry and to expand it to the international markets, the International Exhibition Company BT 1, the organisers of the Lithuanian textile fair “Baltic Textile & Leather” and the textile industry associations of Latvia and Lithuania have reached an agreement that, as of 2014, there will be one competitive fashion and textile industry fair “Baltic Fashion & Textile” rotating between venues in Riga (spring) and Vilnius (autumn).

The 19th International Textile Industry Fair “Baltic Fashion & Textile RIGA 2014” will take place from 4‒6 April at the Kipsala International Exhibition Centre, Riga, offering a vast exhibition, fashion shows, conferences and business-to-business matchmaking and the International Competition for Young Fashion Designers “Habitus Baltija 2014”. The fair will bring together the most competitive manufacturers, distributors and designers offering an international communication and business platform for the fashion and textile professionals in the Baltic States, Scandinavia, Russia and the CIS.

One common fair for the Baltic countries opens up new opportunities to promote more ambitiously the Baltic fashion and textile products, creative potential, enhance product competitiveness and expand sales into new markets across the Baltic States, the EU, Scandinavia, Russia and the CIS.

“Baltic Fashion & Textile Riga 2014” will introduce the new season collections, supplies and equipment, home textiles, innovative textiles, technical textiles, fashion accessories, designer recycled clothing collections, as well as it will offer a daily programme of fashion shows of the latest spring / summer ready-to-wear collections.

An opportunity to share experiences, acquire new knowledge and contacts, the fair will offer international conference series covering the most current fashion and textile industry topics on 4 and 5 April.  This will be an important event for designers, stylists, textile professionals and top managers, academic staff and students, and everyone engaged in the fashion and textile industry.

The conference speakers will share their experience and the participants will have the opportunity to discuss the current industry news, e.g. the use of innovative and eco-friendly materials in clothing, starting a fashion business and the development opportunities in Europe, the quality and accessibility of fashion design programmes in Latvia and elsewhere in Europe.

The organisers offer to businesspeople, manufacturers, distributors and designers an exclusive platform to build up business contacts and new partnerships ‒ B2B Matchmaking Event that allows contact potential partners and schedule individual meeting programmes already before the fair and to meet in person, present products and services, discuss opportunities for further collaboration and get business contacts during the fair.

The 14^th International Competition for Young Fashion Designers “Habitus Baltija 2014”, 5 April, will present unique fashion collections created by young designers from Latvia and more than a dozen other countries that will compete for the Grand Prix and a significant prize fund. “Habitus Baltija” is a fashion event included in the events programme of Riga ‒ European Capital of Culture 2014.

More information about the fair: www.balticfashiontextile.com

Registration for the fair is open! Please contact the “Baltic Fashion & Textile 2014” sales manager Ms Ilze Avota on the telephone: +371 67065037 or via e-mail: ilze.avota@bt1.lv

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The changes may be a little confusing to the eye for the everyday citizen but the changes will smooth the progress for foreign tourists unfamiliar with the lat and what prices to expect for local goods.

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Mr. Juris Gulbis, Chairman of Lattelecom Management Board stated, ‘Starting from 2008, which is when we commenced fibre optic infrastructure development works in Latvia, we have invested as much as 30 million lats in the network, converting fibre optic Internet into an industry benchmark. Since then the needs of our customers have increased and technologies have undergone further development, making it a generally accepted routine that each individual household would use multiple TV sets, or that each family member would use his or her own computer or smartphone. Total Internet usage has kept growing real fast on our network – each year it has increased by even twice as much on average, which is why we have made a step towards meeting the needs of „a future customer” through upgrading Lattelecom data network capacity up to 1 Gbit/s, which is an unbelievably high speed.’

Mr. Anrijs Matīss, Minister of Transport, considered that, from the point of view of industry growth, it is a highly notable achievement towards enabling availability of high quality and easy to use electronic communications services and quality fulfilment of the objectives laid down in the Digital Agenda for Europe.

Following the increase, the current Internet speed is more than 50 000 times faster than in 1997, when Lattelecom launched the first 19 Kbit/s Internet dial up connection aimed at residential customers.  Sixteen years ago a user would have taken 25 days to download a 5 GB size document, while today this action takes aprox. 40 seconds. Faster bandwidth provides maximum benefit to such households in which multiple computers and TV sets furnished with Interactive TV functionality are used actively and simultaneously by multiple family members, as well as to such individual users by whom large amounts of data (e.g. high resolution videos and photos) are processed on a daily basis.

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During the conference, Lara will speak about the revolution and evolution in the fashion industry over the last three decades; main actors in the fashion market, the opportunities Rome offers to young designers and support it grants to foster new talents. On 20^th April Lara will chair the panel of judges of the Competition for Young Fashion Designers “Habitus Baltija 2013”. The competition will present fashion collections created by emerging designers of Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Poland, Great Britain and other European countries.

Lara started her career as an actress and worked with such film directors as Mauro Bolognini, Giuliana Berlinguer, d’Amico and Luca Verdone and has also been an assistant to the costume designer Andrea Viotti and working for “Amleth” and “The Bandits”. The first experience in the world of fashion Lara made with the Italian designer Pino Lancetti, a creator of the Lancetti label. Lara considers that 1982 was the turning point of her career, when the well-known Italian designer Giorgio Armani and his business partner Sergio Galeotti employed her as assistant to Silvana Armani to develop the women’s clothing line Emporio. Lara worked twelve years with Silvana Armani and during that time amassed extensive knowledge in design – from denim to preta-a-porter collections, from children’s fashion to accessory design. In 1995 Lara was appointed the manager of the MiuMiu label by Prada. Through this work Lara learned to perceive fashion as a language, giving a great weight to the concept of a product and creative thinking in its design. Since 2006, Lara has been the director of Fashion Department IED Moda Lab Roma.

“Fashion and Design: Trends and Perspectives” will gather fashion professionals from Latvia, Lithuania, Great Britain, Norway and Italy to discuss the acute issues of fashion business and the opportunities to support emerging designers. The conference is organised by the International Exhibition Company BT 1 in conjoint with the Latvian British Chamber of Commerce, the Fashion Chamber of Latvia, the Association of Clothing and Textile Industry and the Investment and Development Agency of Latvia. Read more about the conference programme, themes and speakers at www.bt1.lv/fashion.

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The first forum was hosted by David Cameron in London in 2011 which focussed on enterprise, economic growth, boosting employment and people’s well being. In 2012 the forum was hosted in Stockholm, Sweden where discussions were centred on social challenges including older people in employment and women in business and management.

At the end of the forum Prime Minister Dombrovskis thanked each of the PMs for coming to Riga and spoke of the work in place focussing on sustainable cleaner power sources and future intentions in order for Latvia to cut its dependency on outmoded energy solutions.

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The event is reminiscing of the first Baltic Way, also known as the Baltic Chain, an extraordinary show of solidarity when some two million ordinary people of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania linked hands to form a human chain from Tallinn to Vilnius in 1989 covering over 600 kilometres. This peaceful protest was to mark the 50^th anniversary of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact which was created between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany and led to occupation of the Baltic States in 1940. This visually stunning event was designed to draw the world’s eyes to the desire for independence from the Soviet Union for each of the Baltic countries and the intense solidarity held among the these three nations.

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