Subscribe Now A father and daughter take on hills and navigate history in the Allegheny Mountains By Dean King June/July 2015 It is said in the army that West Virginians make the best drivers because anyone who can master the state’s roller-coaster roads can drive anywhere in the world What better place to baptize my eighteen-year-old daughter into the ways of the mountain road than on a winding two-lane highway that also takes us back to our family roots Two-fifty was built on an old Indian trail marked by three notches carved into trees along the route The first time I drove myself to see Aunt Varena and Uncle Tub who used to send me a shiny Kennedy half-dollar on every birthday “Take a left off the lane and don’t stop until you get to the last house in Hundred.” For me the 320-odd miles in between the two houses—rolling roads through woods At Varena and Tub’s modest house beside 250 an albino deer regularly descended from the woods to drink from Varena’s goldfish pond She swore that her goldfish froze solid every winter and thawed again in the spring Tub kept hogs in a pen outfitted with a front porch and a hand-rigged phone line to the house so he could talk to Varena Though the old homestead is no more and Varena and Tub have passed on I was excited to revisit the well-worn path with Grace last summer we navigated the unsightly urban sprawl that has sprung up in the decades since I first traveled to Varena and Tub’s But we soon left it behind as we sped through the rolling pastures west of town We made our first stop at Spudnut in Charlottesville one of the few remaining Southern outposts of a 1940s potato-flour doughnut empire where we gobbled down orange and blueberry cake doughnuts—denser and tastier than their wheat-flour cousins We cruised through the charming town of Crozet the engineer who orchestrated the construction of 250 and whom Thomas Jefferson called “the best mathematician in the United States.” Once a sleepy railroad town amid orchards Crozet is now a sophisticated Charlottesville bedroom community with its own craft suds (Starr Hill Brewery) and cuvées (King Family Vineyards) on the section of 250 known as the Staunton-Parkersburg Turnpike—a twisting turning ribbon of history through the Appalachians Built before the Civil War to link the Shenandoah Valley to the Ohio River (and much fought over by Confederate and Union troops) the historic highway was the first over-mountain route through the Allegheny stretch of the Appalachians and in its day a marvel of engineering After crossing the deep woods of the George Washington National Forest we pulled over in Hightown and climbed on top of a fence post at a stony pasture that has always transported me back in time This is where twenty-plus years ago I had spirited off Grace’s mother—my wife maneuvering as if playing Twister to get both of our faces on the screen along with the swooping split-rail fence behind us we crossed into the West Virginia Allegheny Mountains The passes here are so narrow and steep that driving them is a whole mind and body experience you hug the centerlines to keep from feeling like you’re in the whirling teacups at the county fair What matters is the rock wall on one side and the plunge on the other scanning for fallen rocks and dashing deer She was almost always braking and accelerating at the wrong times I realized that it’s all about anticipation and not reaction; by the time you react “You want to tap on the brakes before you hit the curve and accelerate out of it,” I reminded her Grace had to pull aside several times for speedier hill surfers to pass by a two-story motor court at a crossroads called Bartow on a fork of the Greenbrier River where my family used to meet my grandparents to drop off the latest baby while the rest of the brood went to the beach so I couldn’t introduce Grace to the Hermitage’s chocolate cream pie which my sisters and I deemed the best in two states But you can still cool your feet in the icy trout stream that runs beside and curves behind the once proud roadside haven The unself-consciously quaint village was settled by Swiss farmers just after the Civil War and is where Jessica and I had spent the weekend after I proposed Forty minutes off 250 in a dense forest of rhododendron and hardwoods it’s the remotest populated place I have been to in the eastern part of the country Despite the fact that the Swiss were swindled into buying lush-looking but worthless farmland preserving their culture without caricature for generations There’s Swiss dining at the Hütte Restaurant; an Alpine-style inn beside a babbling stream; local honey and pastries for sale at the Honey Haus; and a handful of events involving alpenhorns and Fahnenshwingen (flag swinging)—things at which the proud locals are still expert Grace and I rested our feet on the porch at the inn and sipped homemade lemonade That’s what it takes to live—or even just to drive—in these hills Dolly Parton’s Smoky Mountain wonderland still sparkles These top-notch bakeshops let flour-free customers have their cake—and pies The future of conservation in the South just got a little bit brighter—and not just for salamanders but they’re the craftsmanship of local crustaceans called lawn lobsters The drawls are receiving a lot of flak across the internet but a North Carolina linguist argues they’re actually pretty accurate Please enable JS and disable any ad blocker This website is using a security service to protect itself from online attacks The action you just performed triggered the security solution There are several actions that could trigger this block including submitting a certain word or phrase You can email the site owner to let them know you were blocked Please include what you were doing when this page came up and the Cloudflare Ray ID found at the bottom of this page We have the address for the funeral home & the family on file If you're not happy with your card we'll send a replacement or refund your money The family of Bobby Franklin Julian created this Life Tributes page to make it easy to share your memories © 2025 Davis-Struempf Funeral Home & Crematory Made with love by funeralOne Lithuania (AP) — Hundreds of Lithuanians ran around with baskets and buckets Saturday in a southeastern pine forest It’s the national championship of wild mushroom picking — a competition always held on the last Saturday in September That’s when conditions are “not too dry the humidity is perfect,” explained mushroom hunter Janina Juodine relatively warm summer created ideal conditions for the foraging festival in Lithuania where forests cover more than 33 percent of the Baltic country and mushroom-hunting is considered the second-most popular sport after basketball “Walking between trees and looking for big brown mushrooms is a great way of spending a Saturday,” said Julius Sostakas “It is a part of our cultural heritage.” salted or marinated — are considered an essential element in Lithuanian cuisine used in many dishes to add special flavor to meat More than four hundred edible varieties can be found in Lithuania’s forests The festival Saturday took place 60 kilometers (37 miles) south of the capital It drew thousands of onlookers as well as local mushroom sellers dressed in Lithuanian folk costumes — colorful knee-long skirts with embroidered aprons and woven sashes “This is a great event,” contest judge Rimute Avizininene told The Associated Press adding that the largest picked edible boletus — known in the country as the king of Lithuania’s forests — weighed 621 grams (22 ounces) A local team called Mushroom Nightmares won Saturday’s contest by delivering 58 kilograms (128 pounds) of mushrooms Stay secure and make sure you have the best reading experience possible by upgrading your browser Sign up for our daily Newsletter and stay up to date with all the latest news You are receiving this pop-up because this is the first time you are visiting our site You are using software which is blocking our advertisements (adblocker) we are relying on revenues from our banners So please disable your adblocker and reload the page to continue using this site.Thanks There are more mushrooms than people to be found in the small Lithuanian town of Varėna Lithuanian chanterelles are gaining popularity in Europe and especially Germany exporters of mushrooms from the Baltic country says: "We are happy that our Lithuanian mushrooms are very well regarded in Europe and are the best sellers we sometimes joke that Varėna is the capital of mushrooms in Europe there are no other mushrooms in Lithuania." He says judging on the amount of contracts being signed with European importers their Lithuanian mushrooms is seeing growing demand we have signed 10 counter-contracts with Germany for 500 tons of Lithuanian chanterelles we transported mushrooms from Germany until June We mostly sell mushrooms to them in Lithuania other mushrooms go to the markets of big cities." Juškevičius says they started buying the chanterelles mushrooms since June in 2003 "In Varėna town there are eight mushroom companies There are only about 18,000 people in the Varėna district but we have a deep tradition of mushroom picking It is the ecologically cleanest region in Lithuania with the Dzūkija National /PAN Park which is one of 13 PAN parks in Europe." He says this makes the region stand out for mushroom growing We were the first to sell in the Lithuanian market because the quantities were very small we buy mushrooms from 500 kg to 1 ton per day We are currently sorting for the German market Our Lithuanian mushrooms will appear soon on the Großmarkt Berlin but at the moment there are not so many mushrooms we are currently selling them for 12-13 Euro depending on the sorting method Our most popular packaging is wooden baskets Juškevičius notes a change in European consumer demand for mushrooms "We have noticed that customers want smaller quantities they want fresher mushrooms and that we would deliver more often Our priority is our old partners with whom we have been working for over 10 years About 50% of our mushrooms are exported to Germany The main concern for Juškevičius is that the good weather holds so that they would be able to have enough mushrooms to send to their clients and there will be enough mushrooms to fulfil the needs of our customers The season will start in full as we buy from three tons per day there are not that many mushrooms at the moment we sort the mushrooms between 3 cm and +3 cm," concludes Juškevičius For more information:Marius Juškevičius JSC M&KO[email protected] FreshPublishers © 2005-2025 FreshPlaza.com in the Ežeraičio forest in the Varėna district Yaga Gathering will unleash its magic and invite everyone interested in experiments and an open and curious outlook on the world Yaga Gathering can be titled one of the most visually stunning music festivals in Lithuania It has been creating different themes for the festival for several years “Sanatorium Immortalitas,” invited attendees to relax and focus on their body and mind this year’s theme is also revealed – “Twenty trips around the Sun.” Although the festival’s names have changed Yaga Gathering by Lake Spengla will invite everyone on another journey around the sun “The themes created for the ‘Yaga Gathering’ festival take on unexpected forms each year The festival responds to the atmosphere and strives to notice what is happening around us and the world but this year’s theme is also about ourselves We will reveal it from unusual angles because a journey around the sun can be physical and experiential Those who expect a unique festival anniversary will receive it they will get acquainted with the deep history of the festival Even if you are late for the twenty-year Yaga Gathering,’ now is the time to come and start your journey around the sun,” says Šarūnas Kirdeikis the festival’s creative producer and director 4 spaces of „Yaga Gathering“ music and main name of the year festival attendees will be greeted by four music spaces: “Valley,” “Pinegrove,” “Duskwood,” and LRT OPUS it is clear that the “Valley” stage will be dominated by tribal/house/dark disco music rhythms whose sounds will resonate for three festival nights and Pakas b2b Roads will provide the music at the decks which offers one of the most significant and consistent programs every year catering to fans of idm/ambient/downtempo/dub and experimental electronic music will maintain its traditions and operate from Thursday until Monday morning On the last night of “Yaga Gathering,” when everything else quietens this stage invites everyone to the final dance of this year’s festival The musical sounds echoing in the trunks of pine trees will beckon festival-goers to visit the “Duskwood – trance” stage will be nestled in a bend of the river and operate for three nights immersing everyone in trance/goa-trance/psytrance rhythms This year’s “Yaga Gathering” ‘s headline musical performer He is a music producer based in Hamburg and has been a prominent figure in the trance music scene since the mid-90s Marcus is known for his involvement in projects such as “X-Dream” and “The Delta,” where he collaborated with Arne Schaffhausen and Wayan Raabe Maichelis is one of the pioneers of precise we will also witness performances by artists such as Tadan where the event’s radio station will broadcast interesting Lithuanian music selections it will invite attendees to experience sounds created by artists and groups such as Adas ir Viltė the festival will present the “Yaga Visionary” art program with “movement” as its main keyword This year’s characteristic and wandering arts program will unfold in the most unexpected festival spaces participants will need to decode some of the locations themselves The senses of the festival’s visitors will be provoked by the abundance of installations and performances including the professional contemporary dance troupe “Aura” and individual artist showcases The festival stages will be adorned with the works of professionals in their respective fields such as the teams “Temple Creations,” “Wickiss,” “SpaceSpaceSpace,” as well as the long-time festival collaborator Petrix from Ukraine In addition to the four music stages and the extensive art program that unveils the festival’s theme through unexpected experiences “Yaga Gathering” invites participants to engage in activities and lecture spaces to gain knowledge and discoveries there will be a presentation by Ugnė Marija Anrdijauskaitė on the event and cultural gentrification Historian Ugnė Marija will share her unique perspective on events and culture providing the audience with an exciting overview of the growth and transformation of events from medieval times to contemporary global events ranging from psychology to artificial intelligence from natural medicine to harm reduction lectures on drugs and sex The festival will create a new “Dark Room” space dedicated to adult games and love this year Those who enjoy festival traditions will be invited once again to challenge themselves in a social experiment of human conversation fostering a sense of connection and the joy of communication The diverse activity program will stimulate the body and engage the mind catering to adult and younger festival attendees All the magic of "Yaga Gathering" which invites you to move to another space will spread its spell and invite everyone who is interested to gather together for experiments visual arts and of course the sounds of electronic music You can find the festival program at yaga.lt/festival www.yaga.lt www.facebook.com/YagaGathering https://www.youtube.com/user/Yagafestival A subscription to The Baltic Times is a cost-effective way of staying in touch with the latest Baltic news and views enabling you full access from anywhere with an Internet connection. Subscribe Now! 2025 © The Baltic Times /Cookies Policy Privacy Policy By Jo Walton Your experience of reading Guy Gavriel Kay’s Sarantine Mosaic (Sailing to Sarantium and Lord of Emperors) is likely to be extremely different depending on how much you know about Justinian There’s a way I never read these books for the first time—I was so familiar with the material Kay was using that it was like a retelling If you’ve read more than one retelling of Homer you know what I mean—it’s a case of interpretation There was never a time when I didn’t know the story to begin with when I didn’t recognise who the characters were And the characters are very close here—the map looks like a fuzzy Europe and when I’m talking about the books and I haven’t just read them I’m inclined to forget Kay’s names and use their real names Kay isn’t trying to hide the fact that Sarantium is Byzantium If you don’t know who those people are your reading experience would be a discovery then it contains a lot of recognition of how clever Kay is being Yet Kay clearly expects a certain amount of real world context to intensify and contextualise the story he’s telling You can enjoy the story without ever having heard of Amalasuntha or iconoclasm but you’re expected to recognise Asher as Mohammed and appreciate the implications the advantage of re-writing history as fantasy is that you can change the end You don’t even have to change the end in order to get this advantage because you have changed the names and reshuffled the deck no matter how familiar with the period they are I realised this half way through The Lions of Al-Rassan with a shock of delight Kay talks about respecting the historical characters by not writing about them directly and the ability to make things clearer by purifying and condensing events and issues but a historical novel is inevitably a tragedy I’ve worked out why everyone is so interested in Justinian and Belisarius In addition to Procopius’s official history in which he is deferential to hagiographic about the characters he also wrote a secret history in which he vilifies them (Kay also couldn’t resist having Crispin punch Procopius/Pertennius in the nose and I have to say I couldn’t have resisted it either.) elegaic style that I want to call veiled omniscient The omniscient narrator knows what will happen but doesn’t like to approach too closely He plays tricks where he described but doesn’t say who is who—does anybody like this don’t leave me guessing who it is for two pages this will not enhance my reading experience but rather the opposite There’s a sense here that we’re always looking through the wrong end of the telescope Sometimes this makes for very beautiful writing There’s blood and sex and love and death but they’re interpreted through the consciousness of artifice It’s amazing that Kay makes this work at all but he never takes up a character just to throw them away The ironic linking of everything together in omniscient connects and underlines and is sometimes incredibly beautiful What Kay does supremely well here is evoking the world the tool for drawing out arrows from flesh The details are right for sixth century Byzantium and even where he’s made them up they feel right all compressed into a small moment of time You’ll have a chariot race and see it from the point of view of a driver an undercook for the Blue faction making soup The main character is Crispin the mosaicist After a prologue set in Sarantium at the time of the accession of Valerius I the arc of the book follows Crispin’s journey from Varena to Sarantium and back We spend more time with Crispin than anyone else and Crispin is more deeply embroiled in events than quite makes sense This is fairly normal in stories with a protagonist but odd in something so relentlessly omniscient Crispin is so passionate about his mosaics that you can almost see them And through the course of the books he makes an emotional journal come back from not caring about life There’s more magic than there was in The Lions of Al-Rassan There’s an alchemist who embodies human souls in birds and there’s a truly numinous encounter with a god Beyond that there are a few inexplicable flashes of flame in the streets and some true prophetic dreams but it runs glinting through everything else like the silver threads in shot silk Jo Walton is a science fiction and fantasy writer. She’s published eight novels, most recently Half a Crown and Lifelode She comes from Wales but lives in Montreal where the food and books are more varied Punching Procopius in the nose is so exactly right I do not even know how to describe the level of obscenity and innuendo the Secret History attains in the original language We do not have words that obscene in English I didn’t know the real-world stories at all – well I mostly hate that thing where the author doesn’t tell who the person is but says some details that are supposed to make you guess And the reason why I dislike it is that I’m really bad at figuring it out Like in Murder Must Advertise – when I first read it as a teenager I didn’t work out for ages that Mr It’s interesting to see someone else note that “odd but it’s hard to see how the magic matters in the plot Except as a reminder to readers in this world that it isn’t quite our world I felt like the odd style of these books made them feel like mosaics Kay builds up the a story out of pieces which don’t have a lot of detail or character but which I could never quite decide if this was on purpose or a justification for a style that annoyed me half the time Hobbitbabe: I think the magic does matter here Rush: These will not make you hate Procopius any less I first read these two roughly ten years ago when I was still in college At that point I had no knowledge of any depth about the actual history that inspired the books Fortunately I knew just enough that it was obvious which regions and religions Kay was drawing parallels to though not persons so much as their offices and archetypes This post reminds me that I need to get back through them stat It seems I lost my copy of Sailing in a move long ago so I’ll have to fix that soonest If I had any real ambitions to a career as a novelist Kay is one of the masters I’d work hard to learn from veiled omniscient style you describe so well is actually one of the reasons I love Kay’s writing – I accept it doesn’t work for other people but for me it’s evocative in a way I haven’t found from any other writer I’m not sure why; I think it’s something about the way it stands outside and inside the story at the same time that lets me appreciate the entire story There’s a long section in Lord of Emperors which is one of the most bracing bravura bits of writing I’ve had the pleasure of reading practically left me breathless by the conclusion I find that the trickery fits into his various rifts on the mosaicist’s art and how it applies to narrative and perception and trying to fit them together to a narrative and when some pieces are withheld we only have a partial understanding of what’s going on — so he toys with that while you know the omniscent narrator has it all in their mind’s eye Both these novels and The Last Light of the Sun strike me as very strongly being about art and storytelling Something I’ve always appreciated about them is how thoughtful he is and how willing he is to weave a narrative around aesthetics and philosophical considerations without turning it into polemic and the plot device of not explicitly telling the reader that two characters are the same person — I think it works well there as none of the other characters know Bredon and Wimsey are the same person until late in the story At other times it feels gimmicky and wrong in cases where the lack of identification only works because the reader is artificially kept ignorant by the text of something they’d notice in a moment if they were present for the events being narrated Detective stories tend usually to have either a first-person narrator who’s neither the detective nor the culprit — often the detective’s sidekick — or to have a somewhat distanced third-person POV focused more on the detective than on other characters but not so close as to tell the reader everything the detective is thinking If the author violates those POV conventions usually they also violate the convention of having the narrator be reliable but there can be good reasons for it in other kinds of stories too — for instance Latro’s amnesia prevents him from figuring out that two people he meets are the same person in different guises though the reader will probably figure it out in a few pages Procopius as a sixth century Malcolm Tucker As to why Kay doesn’t use actual names of actual historical http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/booksblog/2009/aug/20/novelists-real-life-characters Guardian Books blog “I’ve worked out why everyone is so interested in Justinian and Belisarius.” I always thought it was due to the influence of L Sprague deCamp and Jim Baen — or rather to Robert Graves’ Count Belisarius and Liddell Hart’s use of Belisarius to promote the strategic “indirect approach” Both Graves and Liddell Hart were veterans of the First World War and perhaps the myth of Belisarius as the good soldier blinded by the uncaring autocrat had some additional resonance — Graves and Liddell Hart both wrote biographies of T.E I could easily make a similar compilation about the current U.S Secretary of State and her husband browsing through the political blogs To borrow a phrase from Leigh’s Gathering Storm review Kay’s take on the story is wonderfully elegiac and so laden with the music of time that it’s hard to describe and it adds an overlay to the event to see not only how it feels to the characters experiencing it but how the ramifications extend forwards through all of history to come (The chariot race in Lord of Emperors is particularly beautiful this way.) I totally love these books (and didn’t know much about Byzantine history) Last Light of the Sun and The Lions of al-Rassan are similar in tone (I believe these are all loosely connected being in the same alternate version of our world.) The Reactor newsletter is the best way to catch up on the world of science fiction “There was a boy called Eustace Clarence Scrubb For compliance with applicable privacy laws: A heavy snowfall wreaked havoc during Tuesday and Wednesday this week downing power lines to nearly 55 thousand households in the southern and the eastern parts of Lithuania Firefighters have been called 331 times over Tuesday only to remove fallen trees and handle other disturbances of the nature Local bus services were unavailable or disrupted in some bucolic municipalities yet the bulldozers haven’t reached our village And I have no idea when they will (reach us),» Vilma Gudeikaitė a graphic designer who along with his husband Mantas live in a village in Širvintos municipality near Vilnius sharing some really «snowy» photos taken by the couple this week «I do not mind being trapped for another day or so I have an appointment with my doctors in Vilnius next Monday so I’d hate to think I’ll have to miss it due to the snow,» she added The country‘s Fire and Rescue Department (FRD) told BNN that the bulk of emergency calls over Tuesday have been received in Vilnius (102) and Kaunas (83) and firefighters mainly went to remove trees off roads Another 50 requests for help have been logged since 6 a.m on Wednesday and continued throughout the day The FRD noted that its workload over past Tuesday amounted to half of the total workload over the 25 first days of January municipal workers and volunteers joined their hands to restore order in one-third of the country not a single snowflake has fallen in western Lithuania and head of Fire and Rescue Service (FRS) in Varėna local fire-fighters and rescuers were summoned to 50 different locations to remove around 200 fallen trees their branches from local streets and roads «In nine out of ten cases we were called namely for that,» he accentuated «The remainder included moving away various vehicles stuck in snow Most of the time they were blocking traffic of other vehicles,» he added so full with snow that its contours were invisible «For a vivid comparison I‘d like to say this: we usually receive 80-100 rescue calls every year but we‘ve received half of them over past Tuesday and Wednesday,» Varėna FRS head accentuated to BNN told BNN that the bulk of all calls were for help remove fallen trees and branches «As much as extraordinary the situation looks this week I’ve seen even more snowy winters in Alytus where the precipitation level is higher than in most parts of the country,» he noted The FRD has said that some of the FRS fire-trucks a company in charge among of other things of cleaning of streets in capital city Vilnius told BNN that the company‘s entire fleet of vehicles were grappling with the snowy mayhem in Vilnius «The workforce was out there for the last two days but we bulldozed it away and then melted it with saline solutions This is more effective and less time-consuming than loading snow on the trucks and taking it outside the city,» he added around 32 centimeters of snow were dumped on Vilnius streets over past Tuesday and Wednesday Lithuania’s electricity distribution company told BNN Wednesday noon that electrical service has been disrupted to nearly 55 thousand Lithuanian households during Tuesday and Wednesday this week the country’s top-five municipalities that suffer now most from heavy snowfall-triggered blackout are Vilnius region where 17 500 households were left without electricity; the runner-up in the statistics is Utena region where 14 800 households still await restoration of service; and the other worst-hit regions are Kaunas region 7 100 and 3 100 households went dark,» Kalmantas said Enquired if ESO ranks the emergency as extreme the official of Lithuania’s electricity distribution company shunned the description but emphasized that the situation still remains «difficult» «What is characteristic to the snow fallen this week is its dampness Namely the sort of snow causes the biggest damage – however indirectly: when falling trees and/or their branches tend to rupture electricity lines the snowfall make some rural settlements hardly accessible or completely inaccessible,» Kalmantas said He said the company was working at full capacity to restore supply to thousands of households left without power «Of around 55,000 customers without electric supply at the peak approximately 35,000 saw their electricity back during the first half of Wednesday,» he added were working across the country to restore service The official did not comment on how much it might cost to eliminate the effects of the snowfall One worker was killed and five others were injured by a metal structure that fell off a bridge under construction in Kaunas it is unclear if the tragedy is related to the heavy snowfall communications officer at Lietuvos Draudimas (LD) told BNN Wednesday afternoon that LD has already reserved 100 thousand euros for compensation of damage done by the nature phenomenon the massive snow Lithuania saw this week is nothing out of very extraordinary to Donatas Valiukas head of Research and Development Department at Lithuania‘s Hydrometeorological Service «The snow cover we had this week is not record-breaking when the thickness of the snow cover was nearly one meter – 94 centimeters when the average thickness of the snow cover throughout the country was 40 centimeters The record thickness stood at 68 cm in Telšiai region that year,» Valiukas told BNN The probe was launched after “it became known that information about migrants who had crossed the border from Belarus in Varėna District and their whereabouts in Lithuania were being hidden from the law enforcement,” VSAT said in a statement on Thursday morning VSAT would not confirm whether the probe concerned the Sienos Grupė telling LRT the case involved “the previous two cases” Last week, five Pakistani nationals were admitted into Lithuania after an interim measure by the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) ordered the country not to push them back to Belarus. The migrants in Varėna District had been in the country for five days, something the volunteers knew about. a Syrian man was admitted into hospital after being found in a forest Medics from Doctors without Borders (MSF) were also on-site when the Syrian man was located The Prosecutor General's Office would not disclose more details.Read more: MSF among volunteers fined for helping migrant on Lithuania-Belarus border sisters and family circle of the late Paul and Varena Creelman R.I.P wish to thank most sincerely all those who sympathised with them in their recent tragic bereavement A very special thanks to the Emergency Services who attended the scene and to Fr Ciarán Hegarty C.C. who officiated at the funeral and graveside services and for all their spiritual support to the family Thanks to all the kind friends and neighbours who sent Mass cards called at the family home and who turned out in large numbers to line the route and to pay their respects in Kilrea Thanks to those who attended the funeral and requiem Mass to The Gribbin Girls for the beautiful singing and to Wishy Drain who prepared the grave We wish to sincerely thank Dempsey Funeral Directors especially Mairead for her advice Trusting this will be accepted by all in grateful appreciation The months mind Mass for Paul and Varena will be in St Mary’s Church Drumagarner Kilrea on Friday 28th August at 7.30 pm Share this sad news with friends and loved ones 11-13 Coleraine Street,Kilrea Coleraine,Co [email protected] Link a representative of the Lithuanian Railways informed the municipality police that several suspected irregular migrants were noticed on one of the trains six dark-skinned people were removed from the train They were passed on to the State Border Guard Service (VSAT),” Julija Somorokovskaja according to VSAT representative Giedrius Mišutis “We have started questioning these migrants Read more: Migration crisis in Baltics and Poland Vilnius recorded an absolute record of only 5.1 hours of sunshine in January, while the previous national record of 7 hours was set in Utena in January 1986. Records for the minimum time of direct sunlight in January this year were recorded at five meteorological stations: in Vilnius, Varėna, Utena, Dūkštas and Lazdijai. In Vilnius, the direct sunlight lasted just 5.1 hours, compared to the previous record of 9 hours set in 1984. In Varėna, moments of direct sunlight lasted 6.1 hours – the previous record was 10.5 hours in January 2011. According to the report, other places in the country were less cloudy, but the average duration of direct sunlight in Lithuania was only 35 percent of the January norm. Meteorologists predict that a colder air mass will cover Lithuania over the weekend, with pressure rising, increasing the chances of seeing the sun shining at least through clouds. Early autumn is a busy time for amateur mushroom pickers, but also processors that sell and export fresh, dried and pickled mushrooms. Over twenty seasonal workers are sorting yellow chanterelles at Vipreka, a company based in Varėna, southern Lithuania. Virginijus Varanavičius, the director and the president of the Association of Mushroom and Berry Businesses, says that competition is intense – not so much for the forest goods but for workers. Last year, his company employed twice as many. “The big companies in Vilnius, Alytus are busing people from here,” he says. All processors in Varėna District struggle with labour shortages and the national Employment Agency is unable to meet the demand for seasonal workers. That affects the output. “There is no one to work, the employment agency didn't send a single person to us,” says Vidmantas Budrikis, the director for commerce at Tandemus. “We couldn't fill the processing room. [Otherwise] we could have bought and sold much more produce.” Most of the production of Lithuanian mushroom processors, about 95 percent, gets exported, mostly to Germany, Italy and Scandinavia. Yet, only a tenth of the raw mushrooms are sourced locally. “We need to spread our risks and have more than one supplier from more than one country,” says Tomas Gulbinas, the executive director of Adex.lt. “Our geography extends 5,000 kilometres.” His firm and other Lithuanian processors source mushrooms from Russia, Belarus and Ukraine in order to insure against unfavourable weather. But despite shortages of both raw stock and labour, businesses say they are not considering moving their plants abroad. “We cannot move out of Lithuania after having made big investments here,” Budrikis says. His company, Tandemus, has already opened a packaging plant in Belarus, in response to growing wages and the price of raw wood in Lithuania. But moving the entire operation is not in the plans yet. “We'll see how it goes, the labour situation [in Belarus] is not simple either,” according to Budrikis. Credit: PresseyeThree members of the same family have been laid to rest after losing their lives in a road traffic collision just outside Portglenone and her brother Phil Hegarty – all from Kilrea – were held on Friday They were all sadly pronounced dead at the scene of a crash involving their car and another vehicle on the Lisnahunshin Road on Monday morning The three family members were buried close to each other following mass at St Mary’s Church Read more: Portglenone crash victims named as three family members Kilrea 27/07/2020 Suddenly as the result of an accident Son of the late Johnny and Georgie and brother of Sean Phil is reposing in Dempsey’s Funeral Home Kilrea where friends may call from 11am on Wednesday His remains will be removed from above at 9.30 am on Friday to St Mary’s Church Drumagarner Requiem Mass will be held at 12 noon .Interment afterwards in the adjoining churchyard Those who wish may stand along the route to pay their respects whilst maintaining social distancing in accordance with government guidelines Deeply regretted by his sorrowing brother nieces and family circle Sacred Heart of Jesus have mercy on his Soul.Family flowers only donations in lieu of desired to Northern Ireland Chest Heart and Stroke c/o Dempsey Funeral DirectorsEnquiries to Dempsey Funeral Directors Kilrea 02829540226 [email protected] LTG Infra has announced plans to install Lithuania’s first battery-powered train charging station in Varena by 2026 Local firm UAB Fima will design and build the revolutionary facility The project is set to cost $3,36 million and is expected to be completed by the end of 2026 LTG Infra CEO Vitis Žalimas said that this project is an important step towards enabling passengers to travel to Varena on modern battery-powered trains The station in Varena will provide 2–2,5 MW of energy per train and will be connected to the 10 kV grid to keep the energy distribution stable The charging of the trains' batteries can take up to 45 minutes and will be done via pantograph during passenger boarding This will create a system that will operate with high efficiency Stadler Polska will deliver six battery-powered trains to Lithuania’s rail network between 2025 and 2027 The purchase of these eco-friendly trains will be financed by the Nordic Investment Bank (NIB) and the European Investment Bank (EIB) The investment will support Lithuania’s efforts towards sustainable rail solutions while increasing green travel in the region The new trains will minimise environmental impact by reducing fossil fuel use and offer passengers a clean quiet and sustainable transport alternative This will accelerate the transformation of Lithuania’s railway network and inspire future projects This battery-powered train charging station in Varena will not only modernize rail transport in Lithuania but will also be a leap forward for green travel in the Baltic states This project reinforces Lithuania’s leadership in the railway sector and paves the way for regional transformation with environmentally friendly transport solutions UAB Fima's expertise will ensure that the station is built to the highest technical and operational standards the initiative will develop Varena's transport infrastructure and integrate it with wider regional networks LTG Infra aims to move Lithuania’s public transport landscape towards a green and sustainable future The $3,36 million investment will make a significant contribution to Lithuania’s infrastructure goals and pave the way for environmentally friendly railways This development will set an example for other Baltic countries and further strengthen railway innovation in the region Discover the potential of kefir to reduce the risk of Alzheimer's. 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