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Finland and Sweden plan to work more closely with Nato by signing a pact that allows assistance from alliance troops in the Nordic countries in emergency situations, officials said on Wednesday. The move comes as Nato prepares for a summit next week in Wales amid heightened tensions with Russia over the crisis in Ukraine. Finland shares a 1,300km (800-mile) border with Russia. The Finnish government said the host nation support agreement applies to situations which include "disasters, disruptions and threats to security". It also enables joint training exercises and military cooperation. Finnish defence ministry senior adviser Mika Varvikko said Finland...

(Reuters) - Sweden put its top military staff on higher alert on Friday as a result of the situation in Ukraine, the armed forces said. It is already participating in international maneuvers in Finland, which borders Russia, and has moved its quick-response fighter jets to the island of Gotland in the Baltic Sea, off Sweden's southeast coast.

(Reuters) - Russia's defense ministry has denied that a Russian aircraft entered Finnish airspace, local media quoted the ministry as saying on Sunday. Finland's defense ministry said a day ago it suspected a Russian state aircraft briefly entered its airspace over the Gulf of Finland without permission on Saturday afternoon.

Finnish defence forces announced on Saturday that they are to conduct an unusually large-scale military exercise close to the Russian border next summer. Up to 8,000 reservist troops from all regiments will take part in training in the border district of Pielinen Karelia in June 2015. Major Markku Vääntänen said military exercises on this scale are only organised in the region about once every ten years. The training will be the defence forces' principal exercise event next year.

Dozens of warships have arrived at Turku harbour today Friday for Nato’s annual Northern Coasts war exercise, organised since 2007 and which Finland is hosting this year for the second time. The appearance of the impressive military hardware raises mixed emotions in Turku residents. Part of the populace welcomes the ships and their crews with open arms, but especially younger citizens say they are troubled by the grey battleships. Sign language student Salla Haapaporras said the ships make her feel threatened. ”It’s a pretty scary thought, they’re right there when they’re usually in another part of the world,” Haapaporras described...

This handout picture from the Finnish Air Force taken Thursday shows a Russian AN-72 transport plane, taken by a Finnish aircraft pilot. Finland's Defense Ministry said it suspects a Russian military aircraft on Thursday violated Finnish airspace — the third such incident in six days. Ministry spokesman Max Arhippainen told The Associated Press that a Russian AN-72 transport plane is believed to have crossed into the Nordic country's airspace over the Gulf of Finland for a few minutes. (Finnish Air Force/Lehtikuva via AP) Finland's Defense Ministry said it suspects a Russian military aircraft on Thursday violated Finnish airspace — the...

US, Russia held secret Ukraine meeting on Finnish island: Helsinki AFP | Aug 27, 2014, 03.20 AM IST HELSINKI: The United States and Russia met on a small Finnish island in June for confidential talks on the Ukraine crisis, the Nordic nation's foreign ministry said on Tuesday. The ministry said the meeting was held on the island of Boistoe off the southern coast of Finland, but did not divulge who participated or at what level, and also did not disclose what was discussed. "The foreign ministry confirms that the meeting was organised and the ministry helped at the request of...

The Finnish foreign ministry announced on Tuesday that back in June the United States and Russia held secret talks over Ukraine on Boisto Island in Finland. This startling announcement and synchronised information about the result – a ‘24-Step Plan to Resolve the Ukraine Crisis’ - were clearly timed to coincide with the meeting in Minsk between, among others Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko and Russia’s President Vladimir Putin. There were a number of crucial differences between the peace initiatives and one key similarity. Despite the Finnish report, the Boisto meeting, albeit sponsored by Finland’s foreign ministry, was between Russian and US...

New rules about to come into force could put an end to recycling discarded car tyres. The changes mean environmental specialists are now racing to find other ways to save thousands of tonnes of scrap rubber from going to waste. One potential deployment for the unused tyres could be water purification, with a technique that is currently being tested in Kitee, Eastern Finland. Every year, some 50,000 tonnes worth of used car tyres are withdrawn and sent to scrapyards -- where they are in fact put to good use. The rubber in the tyres is almost 100 percent recyclable, finding...

Finland could face an economic crisis because of European Union sanctions against Russia and Helsinki will seek financial compensation from the EU if it is disproportionately hit by the measures, its prime minister said on Wednesday (6 August). Last week, the EU imposed tough sanctions targeting Russia's banking, oil and defence sectors over Moscow's stance in the Ukraine crisis. The West accuses Moscow of actively backing pro-Russian rebels in eastern Ukraine and blames them for downing a Malaysian airliner last month. Russia denies the charges. Russia is Finland's third largest export market, accounting for about 10% of total Finnish sales...

This might help you recover from the long weekend.

Most of the world’s media have dedicated themselves to a narrative fiction that innocent Gazans are being cruelly slaughtered by callous Israelis. When information leaks out that challenges this narrative, they respond with anger, often attempting to cover-up the disclosures.Some of this may be due to fear of retaliation from Hamas, but some, no doubt, is motivated by anti-Semitism, and peer pressure, as well as editorial policies handed down from the top of their organizations. Consider the case of Finnish television correspondent Aishi Zidan. William Jacobson of Legal Insurrection reports: We reported on the Finnish reporter who disclosed that there...

By comparing the residues found in the walls of cooking pots from two separate eras and cultures, dating to circa 3900 BC to 3300 BC and circa 2500 BC, the more recent pottery fragments showed evidence of milk fats. This coincided with the transition from a culture of hunting and fishing – relying mainly on marine foods – to the arrival of ‘Corded Ware’ settlements which we now know saw the introduction of animal domestication. Lead author Dr Lucy Cramp, from the Department of Archaeology and Anthropology at Bristol University, said: “This is remarkable evidence which proves that four and...

A Finnish couple has narrowly won the 19th World Wife Carrying Championships - a quirky competition in which men race to be the fastest while carrying a female teammate. Ville Parviainen and Janette Oksman cleared the grueling 253.5 meter (278-yard) obstacle course in 63.75 seconds, less than a second ahead of Britain's Rich Blake Smith and Anna Marguerite Smith. The rules stipulate that the woman must be over 17 years of age and weigh at least 49 kilograms (108 lb). Organizers say male contestants could "borrow a neighbor's wife" if they didn't have a female companion.

The highest human rights court in Europe shattered hopes that it would judicially impose same-sex marriage when it told a male to female transsexual and his wife that a civil union should be good enough for them. European human rights law does not require countries to “grant access to marriage to same-sex couples,” according to a judgment of the European Court of Human Rights in a case that tests the remote boundaries of possibility in law and fact. The parties to the litigation and supporters of same-sex marriage acknowledge the result was predictable. Nevertheless the judgment has a devastating effect...

More than 1,000 people took part, Thursday, in a pro-Israel rally in front of the Finnish parliament building in Helsinki.

President Barack Obama has nominated a lawyer who raised campaign money for him in the 2008 and 2012 elections as ambassador to Finland. The lawyer, Charles C. Adams Jr., is the managing partner at the Geneva office of the international law firm of Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld. He was among a group of Obama fundraisers in 2008 that raised between $50,000 and $100,000 for the campaign. In 2012, he was among Obama's top fundraisers, bringing a minimum of $500,000 to the president's re-election effort.

Tuesday, 3 June 2014Dr James Thompson Renée Zellweger cropped.jpg Cold Winter theory is very simple: warm blooded, warm climate adapted humans drifted North in search of game, and perished unless they could hunt, cope with the climate, and plan wisely so as to live from one winter to the next. Hence, survivors had more forethought, more behavioural restraint regarding immediate gratification, and a whole lot of other changes to help them adapt to hunting and later farming in cold climates. If any of this is true, people living in the far North should be very bright. All the short-term-ist, happy...

A Finnish citizen who wanted the state to recognize her new gender after surgery and remain legally married to woman at the same time lost her case at the Strasbourg-based European Court of Human Rights on Wednesday (16 July). Heil Hamalainen underwent male-to-female gender reassignment surgery in 2009, years after she married her partner. But Finnish law does not recognize same-sex marriages. State authorities said that for Hamalainen to have her new gender recognized, she would need to turn the marriage into a civil partnership or get a divorce—something the couple refused. …

Archaeologists in Finland are celebrating the discovery of a number of artefacts in Lapland, northern Finland. A series of surveys by the forestry watchdog Metsähallitus has unearthed hundreds of hunting pits, several prehistoric habitations, pottery shards and a stone spearhead. The most exceptional part of the archaeological find was a stone spear tip or a possible prehistoric knife, which was discovered close to the Norwegian border. The stone implement has been uncovered by high winds as it lay in a sand pit. Experts estimate that the rough blade had been used during the Stone Age or the early metal age,...