‘This may be just the beginning’: the guards at Finland’s closed Russian border

Standing inside the border station at Raja-Jooseppi – with leather gloves tucked into his fleece-lined hat on the table in front of him and snow falling in the darkness outside – Lt Col Ville Ahtiainen paused to reflect on the geopolitical drama that has descended on this remote part of the Arctic.

“Maybe this is over, or maybe this was just the beginning,” said the deputy commander of the Lapland Border Guard. “I hope this is over and we can back get to normal life, but we will see.”

Chinese ship is focus of investigation into damaged pipeline, Finland says

Finnish police have said a Chinese ship whose movement coincided with the time and place of the suspected sabotage of a pipeline between Finland and Estonia that was damaged this month is now the focus of their investigation.

After a leak led to the shutdown of the Balticconnector pipeline on 8 October, Finnish authorities have been investigating the damage they say was caused by “external” activity.

Nato vows to respond if Finland-Estonia gas pipeline damage is deliberate

Nato has promised a “determined” response if damage to an undersea gas pipeline between Finland and Estonia proves deliberate, as investigators said traces of an “external, mechanical force” had been found on the seabed.

Amid widespread media speculation about the likelihood of Russian sabotage, Risto Lohi of the Finnish national bureau of investigation told a press conference in Helsinki on Wednesday: “There is reason to suspect an external force … caused the damage.” The force, he added, “appears to have been mechanical, not an explosion”.

Finland May Have Found The Answer To Increasing Global Unemployment

HELSINKI ― As the planet prepares for a potentially isolationist Trump world order and leaders gathered in Davos to debate the impacts of globalization, it is difficult to imagine what to make of the future of international integration. But a new basic income program in Finland aimed at curbing the negative side effects of globalization head on, may just be what the the global community needs to ease fears of widespread unemployment.

This proposed system, now in its early stages in the Nordic nation, allows citizens to receive a fixed sum of money from the government, which could be the trick to at least starting to lift bottom incomes and serve as a solution for the economic ills of globalization. In a world where the day worker and short-term employee feel more and more disconnected from who they perceive as the overpaid elites, this effort is more important than ever.

Hey Finland! Canada Tried Guaranteed Income Once, and It Worked

It's said nothing can stop an idea whose time has come, but politicians know you can sure slow it down. A Canadian social experiment in the 1970s might have prevented 40 years of a widening income gap and social misery. Instead, conservative politicians -- federal and provincial -- ended the experiment and suppressed most of its findings.

Now the idea is coming back, not in Canada but in countries like Finland and Germany: the idea of a guaranteed annual income for everyone, working or not. If those countries succeed in establishing guaranteed incomes, the pressure on Canada to do the same could be wonderfully irresistible.

Finnish Finance Minister Calls State-Owned Postal Company’s Links to Tax Havens 'Repulsive'

Finnish state-owned postal company Itella has offshore subsidiaries in both Cyprus and the BVI, documents obtained by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists show.

The revelation comes at a time when the Finnish government promised to be at the frontline of the fight against tax evasion. Since 2011, Finland has explored the possibility of adopting a stricter set of criteria for tax havens, surpassing the standards applied by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

One in 10 Finnish men now unemployed

The increasing rate of unemployment in Finland has been especially hard on the country’s men, one in 10 of who are out of work. Finland’s unemployment rate has now reached the nine per cent mark, but the rate among men is closer to 10 per cent.

Finland recently conducted a labour force survey which indicates about 41,000 public and private sector jobs have disappeared from the country since 2012, adding 9,000 more people to the list of 236,000 Finnish citizens now searching for jobs.

Finland's Super Kids

Everyone agrees that Finland -- a small, cold, northern country with about the population of B.C. -- is, as the BBC once called it, an "education superpower." Only South Korea really matches the Finns on the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), the accepted yardstick for comparing school achievement around the world.

The Finnish model: A beacon for education reform?

For the last decade, Finland’s success on international tests has caught the attention of education policymakers around the world. What is it about this small Nordic nation that has led to its students’ high performance in science, math and reading assessments? Are there lessons for other countries, such as Canada? Pasi Sahlberg, a former teacher and education expert, endeavours to answer these questions in Finnish Lessons: What Can the World Learn from Educational Change in Finland?

What is most perplexing for international experts is that Finland has produced top-performing students while eschewing market-based education reforms premised on competition and standardized tests. “Finland is an example of a nation that lacks school inspection, standardized curriculum, high-stakes student assessments, test-based accountability, and a race-to-the-top mentality with regard to educational change,” Sahlberg explains.