Finland's Ovi

Archbishop Jukka Paarma, the head of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland, the country’s biggest, said at a synod in Turku on Monday that a member of the clergy who refused to officiate should seek other posts within the church.

Referring to a group of clergymen who refuse to officiate alongside female colleagues, the primate added that a Christian church could not condone any brand of discrimination or refusals to perform official duties.

Archbishop Paarma said he hoped the clergymen would seek posts that they could carry out with a clear conscience.

The Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland ordained its first woman priests in 1988.

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Molodaya Gvardiya (Young Guard), the youth wing of the leading United Russia party, has entered Atlet, a brand of cheese, and Gefilus yoghurts on its blacklist in St Petersburg. 

Both products are made by Finnish dairy group Valio in Estonia.

Representatives of the Young Guard on Monday posted a list of products to be boycotted on the fence of Estonia’s consulate in St Petersburg.

The boycott is a protest against the relocation of a Soviet second world war memorial away from central Tallinn.

Most of the products Valio exports to Russia are made in Estonia.
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The annual total of Finns who marry foreigners has risen by 30 per cent in the space of a decade, regional daily Keskisuomalainen reported Friday. 

In 2005, there were 3,000 such marriages whereas in 1996 the corresponding figure was 700 lower.

More Finnish men married foreigners then Finnish women did. In 2005, more than 1,600 marriages were registered between Finnish men and foreign women. The foreign spouses of Finnish men were most likely to hail from Russia, Thailand or Estonia, whereas Finnish women preferred Britons, Americans and Turks.

Number of recipients of Finnish citizenship falls

Last year, 4,450 people permanently resident in Finland were granted Finnish citizenship, down from 5,700 in 2005, Statistics Finland (SF) said in a statement Friday.

A total of 2,550 citizens of European countries became Finnish citizens, 1,140 fewer than in 2005.

The top three groups of recipients according to nationality were Russians (1,400), Somalis (450) and Iraqis (400).

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The Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland intends to commission a report on the events of 1918, Social Democratic party organ Uutispäivä Demari reported on Friday.

Archbishop Jukka Paarma was quoted as saying by news agency UP-uutispalvelu on Thursday that the research project would be launched with a seminar early next year.

Next year will mark 90 years since the end of the Finnish civil war.

Archbishop Paarma told the paper that a recent statement by Matti Viialainen, the vice chair of the Central Organisation of Finnish Trade Unions, was a positive initiative. Mr Viialainen had urged the trade union movement to apologise for the persecution of the clergy during the civil war.

The primate added that it was time that all sides left no stone unturned.

“We know a thing or two about what happened: quite horrible things took place, such as the murders of priests, which Mr Viialainen brought up,” he told Uutispäivä Demari.

“On the other hand, many priests certainly treated the fallen Reds and their families rather harshly.”

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Global warming sent marauding wolves into an Alaskan hamlet, killed Norwegian reindeer with unlikely parasites and may even spur suicide among Inuit youth, Arctic leaders said on Thursday.

As scientists and government officials in Bangkok put the finishing touches on a report by the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change on what to do about global warming, the three Arctic emissaries came to Washington to tell how the phenomenon was making their lives more difficult now.

Sarah James, a member of the Gwich’in nation, said climate change had brought formerly unheard-of species — black bears, beavers and cottonwood trees — to the small community of Arctic Village, Alaska, where she lives.It also changed the way wolves hunt for food, forcing them to band together in a pack and prey on dogs tied up outside villagers’ homes instead of hunting solo in snow-covered areas, James said.

That is because the snow failed to come as expected last September; it finally arrived in December, but by then the ground was frozen deep and solid, James said in an interview. “The wolf, it’s hard for them to run after caribou or rabbit for food because they can’t run fast on hard ground because it tears up their skin under their paws,” she said.

“They’re much easier to run on soft snow, so they couldn’t get their food, so they had to pack.”James represents Gwich’in Council International and has won the Goldman environmental prize for defending the caribou herd that has sustained her people for 20,000 years. She has no doubt the changes in the north are due to global warming.Neither did Olav Mathis Eira, a Norwegian reindeer herder and vice president of the Saami Council, which represents the indigenous Saami people of Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russia.

“READ THE ICE”

“We’re seeing the same changes in Norway too on the other side of the pole,” he said in the same interview. Eira said there was more precipitation and more extreme weather, including thawing and refreezing in winter, which creates layers of ice that make it hard for reindeer to find food.There are also new “bugs” that manage to survive the winter to attack the reindeer, Eira said.

“They (the reindeer) were infected with a parasite that usually dies during a cold winter, but since the winter was so warm, it survived and infected the reindeers and they found about 70 reindeers that had died of that infection,” he said. “That’s quite scary.”Megan Alvanna-Stimpfle, who is from Nome, Alaska, and heads the Inuit Circumpolar Youth Council, said the change in climate undermined a supportive culture and may be one cause for suicide among the young.

“There’s a high rate of youth suicide in Inuit villages and we think it’s correlated to our loss of language and the ability to live healthily in isolated Arctic communities,” Stimpfle said in the interview.The youth council aims to revive Inuit culture, she said, “but it’s complicated by the change in the climate, because people are unable to read the ice.”

“Reading the ice” means relying on millennia of Inuit observation to determine when and where ice is safe, Stimpfle explained. The changing Arctic climate has undermined that traditional system, and some Inuit have fallen through ice in places where it used to be safe, she said.But why should the majority of the world’s people, who live in temperate or tropical areas, worry about the effects of global warming in the Arctic?

“You will see the changes first in the Arctic … but the changes are coming south,” Eira said. “And the people here will face these changes in the near future.” 

Minister falls short of calling for postponement of EU-Russian summit

On Wednesday, Finland’s Minister for Foreign Affairs Ilkka Kanerva (National Coalition Party) sharply condemned recent events at the Estonian Embassy in Moscow, which has been besieged by demonstrators opposed to the Estonian government’s decision to move a Soviet war memorial in the capital Tallinn.
“We roundly condemn these kinds of violations; it is very important that all states should respect the Vienna Convention [on diplomatic relations]”, Kanerva said during a visit to Tallinn.

Commenting on the fact that Sweden’s Ambassador in Moscow had visited the Estonian Embassy in the city, Kanerva emphasised that it is important for all EU member states to act in the same way. “Finland is ready for such a visit. It is not a problem.”
According to unofficial information, member states of the EU have agreed that some will pay such visits to the Estonian Embassy in Moscow, and some will invite Ambassador Marina Kaljurand for a visit.
Finland’s Ambassador in Moscow, Harry Helenius, said that he had not heard of any such agreement. He only returned to Moscow from a visit to Kiev by train on Wednesday morning.

Kaljurand was to have come to a meeting at the Finnish Embassy in Moscow on Wednesday afternoon. Helenius said that Kaljurand had cancelled the planned meeting because of the disruption of a press conference that she had attended earlier in the day. The meeting was broken up by demonstrators protesting the monument issue.
On Tuesday, a number of diplomats from the Swedish and Latvian diplomatic missions, and that from the European Commission, visited the Estonian Embassy in Moscow.
The Estonian Embassy says that the aim of the visit was to let the various diplomats see with their own eyes what the situation is like in front of the besieged embassy compund.
Diplomatic vehicles were able to get through unharmed, as police guarded the street.

In Tallinn, Finnish Foreign Minister Kanerva came out against proposals to postpone a planned summit meeting of the European Union and Russia. Such a move would be a protest against the encirclement of the Estonian Embassy.
“The summit is a good opportunity to continue discussions between Russia and the EU. What is significant is to continue dialogue with Russia”, Kanerva said.

Finnish Ambassador Helenius in Moscow says that it is good to keep the two events separate - events in Tallinn, and the actions keeping diplomats from doing their work.

Estonian Foreign Minister Urbas Paet thanked Foreign Minister Kanerva and Prime Minister Matti Vanhanen for their support.

Also commenting on the dispute between Estonia and Russia was Finnish President Tarja Halonen. During a visit to Berlin, Halonen said that she hopes that the Russian leadership shows its capacity to cooperate in the statue dispute.
“Everyone should respect diplomatic rights”, Halonen said, adding that she felt that the events in Moscow have been serious and worrying. Halonen stressed that the ongoing spat is a matter for the entire European Union, and she noted that the task of mediating should fall immediately on the current holder of the rotating EU Presidency, Germany.
In some quarters there has been shock that the EU has remained as passive as it has over the travails of one of its small members. Some foreign affairs experts have characterised the current state of affairs as a Russian test of European solidarity.

Police Clash With Protesters as Estonia Removes Soviet-Era War Memorial

Police clashed with protesters at a Soviet war memorial in Tallinn on Thursday as authorities prepared to remove the bodies, The Associated Press reported.

After largely peaceful rallies throughout the day, a group of protesters tried to break through a line of police officers guarding the grave and the Bronze Soldier statue next to it.

Some protesters said police fired tear gas, but police spokeswoman Tuuli Harson said they used a type of foam for crowd control. “People tried to break through line and attacked police officers,’’ she said.

Dozens of police had formed lines to keep some 600 protesters away from the monument after workers erected a tent over the memorial to shield the excavations from public view.

Estonia’s government intends to relocate the Soviet grave, believed to contain the remains of 14 soldiers, and the statue next to it.

The Baltic state’s ethnic Russians — about a third of the population — see the memorial as a tribute to Red Army soldiers who died fighting Nazi Germany and have vowed to protect it. Many ethnic Estonians, however, say the memorial is a bitter reminder of five decades of Soviet occupation.

Eleven people were detained, Harson said. Some protesters shouted, “Estonia is a disgrace,’’ and one was detained after trying to jump the police barrier. Three others were detained after locking themselves in a car and refusing to obey police orders. Officers smashed the windows of the car.

There were no immediate reports of injuries.

The dispute over the monument has aggravated tensions between Estonia and Russia, which has repeatedly called on its small neighbor to halt the plans to move the grave.

“We express deep anxiety in connection with the plans of the Estonian government for transferring the buried soldiers of various nationalities who gave their lives for the liberation of Europe from fascism and for tearing down the Soldier-Liberator Memorial in Tallinn,’’ Russia’s Foreign Ministry said Thursday.

Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov called for economic sanctions against Estonia and rerouting the transit of Russian exports to other countries.

Soviet troops invaded the Baltic countries — Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania — in 1940, but were pushed out by the Nazis a year later. The Red Army retook them in 1944 and occupied them until the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.

Anticipating unrest, Estonia’s border guards this week stepped up security checks on the frontier with Russia and Tallinn’s police force was beefed up with reinforcements from across the country.

The government has said it wants to identify the remains in the war grave and then relocate the entire monument to an undecided location. On Wednesday, Prime Minister Andrus Ansip said the excavations would last up to two weeks.

Readers of the print paper this Thursday morning may have been surprised at the content of Page B2 in the foreign news section, sandwiched between reports of the disturbances in Moscow.

Readers of the print paper this Thursday morning may have been surprised at the content of Page B2 in the foreign news section, sandwiched between reports of the disturbances in Moscow. 

Readers of the print paper this Thursday morning may have been surprised at the content of Page B2 in the foreign news section, sandwiched between reports of the disturbances in Moscow. 

Readers of the print paper this Thursday morning may have been surprised at the content of Page B2 in the foreign news section, sandwiched between reports of the disturbances in Moscow. 

Along with other newspapers in Finland and around the world, Helsingin Sanomat marked World Press Freedom Day on May 3rd in stark fashion: the newspaper devoted an entire page, pasted up as if it were a normal page of the paper, to stories in which the pictures were more or less blacked out and the headlines, byelines, captions, and texts were replaced by strings of barbed wire.

The page is a sombre reminder of the fragility of press freedom. The advertisement was produced by the Finnish Newspapers Association, and the design took a Silver Award at last year’s Grafia Best of the Year competition.

The image, and another depicting a speech-bubble made of barbed wire, is shown in this link.

Norwegian shipbuilder Aker Yards said Thursday it would move some subcontracting away from Finland in order to reduce the risk of delays. 

Finland’s shipyard industry suffers from a labour shortage.

Yrjö Julin, the chief executive fo Aker’s cruise and ferries arm, said Finland’s small maritime cluster was creaking at the seams.

Aker reported on Thursday that its orderbook had swelled to 11 billion euros from six billion a year ago. The biggest single order is the 900-million-euro Genesis class cruise ship, to be built for Royal Caribbean in Finland.

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Aker Yards for sale
Norwegian conglomerate hopes to get good price for booming business. The Norwegian industrial company Aker is putting the shipbuilder Aker Yards up for sale. Aker wants to sell off its entire 40 per cent holding in the shipbuilding unit. The purpose of the move is to free up capital up capital for the development of other Aker operations. 

There are three shipyards run by Aker Yards in Finland, located in Turku, Rauma, and Helsinki. Aker Yards has a total of 17 shipyards in seven countries, which employ about 20,000 people. The Finnish yards are part of Aker’s cruise liner and car ferry group, as are as the French shipyards in Saint Nazaire and Lorient.
     
On Wednesday Aker announced that it was offering more than eight million shares of the shipping company to Norwegian and international institutional investors with a total value of about EUR 630 million, based on Tuesday’s share price. Aker Yards is run by Norwegian billionaire Kjell Inge Røkke, and the shipbuilding company’s other ownership is dispersed.

The second-largest owner is the Swedish bank SEB, which has a 10 per cent stake. After the announcement Aker shares dropped by about 10 per cent on the Oslo Stock Exchange.
     
There were calls from the Finnish labour union movement to bring Finnish shipbuilding back to Finnish ownership. The Central Organisation of Finnish Trade Unions (SAK) and the Metalworkers’ Union called on the state capital investment company Finnish Industry Investment Ltd. to buy the entire 40 per cent holding that is now up for sale.

The unions feel that Finnish ownership would help secure the future of shipbuilding in Finland. Aker Yards employs about 3,800 people in Finland. If the subcontractor network is taken into account, the whole shipbuilding industry in Finland employs about 20,000.
     
The decision to sell Aker Yards at this time is attributed to the brisk business currently being done in the manufacture of cruise ships and offshore vessels. With the order books full, and share prices going up, Aker can get a good price for its holding in the shipbuilder, says Erkki Vesola, analyst at EQ Bank.

Vesola predicts that the most likely buyers of the Aker slice are financial investors who already have a holding in the company. For other shipbuilders, such as the Italian Fincantier, a 40 per cent share of Aker Yards would probably not be enough.

HELSINKI (Reuters) - The world’s top cellphone maker Nokia Oyj unveiled a thin ‘Barracuda’ phone and six other new entry level handsets on Thursday, including its cheapest 1200 model, which is expected to sell for 35 euros ($48). 

The Finnish firm, which sells more than a third of all phones across the world, has a strong position in emerging markets, but in developed markets Motorola and Samsung have attacked it with popular thin phones.

The Barracuda, or Nokia 2630, is slightly below 10 millimeters (0.4 inch) thick, comparable with most of thin phones of its rivals.The phone will hit the shelves next quarter, with an estimated retail price of 85 euros, when excluding operator subsidies and taxes.

“At these prices the largest volumes are sold — on both developed and emerging markets. Of course we expect to see very high volumes from Barracuda,” Kai Oistamo, head of Nokia’s mobile phones unit, told Reuters.

Oistamo displayed the Barracuda at an investor event last November, in a gesture which calmed many investors’ fears on Nokia’s answer to thin phones.

“It was a sign of change in the overall thinking …. It’s the whole new approach to marketing and communications as a whole, clearly less conservative and somewhat more aggressive and forward-looking than earlier,” Oistamo said.

All new phones are priced below 100 euros and are set to appear in the shops this quarter or next. Shares in Nokia were 0.4 percent lower at 18.91 euros by 0745 GMT, in line with slightly softer DJ Stoxx European technology index. Also:  Ovi Nokia

By Steven Eke

Journalists will mark World Press Freedom Day on 3 May amid growing concern about what campaigners say is a continuing global decline in media freedoms.

Russia is again singled out, as a country whose government is allegedly taking aggressive measures to curb media freedom.In its recently published annual study, the US-based Freedom House suggests that Vladimir Putin’s policies have been a “template” for repressive governments the world over.

It asserts that Russia’s once “lively and probing” press, has been turned into “a toothless sounding board” for official opinion.The Russian government counters such accusations by pointing to the thousands of non-state publications.Generally, Russian officials react extremely badly to suggestions that their country ranks alongside Burma, Cuba and North Korea, for media freedom.

They insist that there is a genuine pluralism of opinion - in the printed media, at least.However, television remains the predominant source of information for the majority of Russians. And it does not allow opposition voices to be heard.

Many Russia-watchers have followed the change of tone and content of state television over recent years.

Shift to ‘positive’ news

Increasingly, hard-hitting investigative journalism has been replaced by Soviet-style “razoblacheniya” - or exposes. They often look crude and carry unsubstantiated allegations.

In addition, any form of satire aimed at the president or his closest associates seems to be totally forbidden.Equally, there is an obvious shift in favour of “positive” news, presenting an optimistic picture of Russian life, especially when compared to events in the neighbouring countries, which are often portrayed as unstable.The governments of some of those countries - especially Ukraine, Georgia, and, most recently, Estonia - complain that Russian state television sometimes broadcasts allegations that are simply untrue, and which exacerbate xenophobic sentiments.

Two weeks ago, Russian police and the FSB (internal security service) raided the offices of Educated Media Foundation (EMF), the main partner of the California-based InterNews Network.Investigators have brought criminal charges against the organisation’s director, Manana Aslamazyan, who had failed to declare 9,500 euros on a customs form.Lawyers say she acknowledges her error, but insist that it should in no way serve as a justification for the raid on, and subsequent closure of, EMF.Foreign cash
In an unprecedented response, nearly 2,000 Russian journalists, including many household names, have signed an open letter deploring the authorities’ action as “another step infringing on the civil rights enshrined in the Russian Constitution”.

The letter called on President Putin to intervene personally, to prevent the “destruction” of an organisation it described as producing “the pride of Russian television”.

There seems to be little realistic chance of that happening. In his recent - and probably final - address to parliament, the Russian leader warned of “ever-increasing flows of cash from abroad”, allegedly being used to finance opposition groups.

Media freedom groups warn that the Russian government may soon take measures to regulate the internet. Access is growing very quickly in Russia, there are thousands of ISPs, and content is not, so far, controlled by the government.

Last month, President Putin signed a decree establishing a new body to supervise the mass media and internet content. Officials insist it will be in charge of licensing, rather than regulating, what’s available.

But Russia’s parliament - which critics say rubber-stamps President Putin’s proposals - is considering ways of clamping down on “extremism” on the internet.

And in Russia, the concept of “extremism” has been widened significantly, beyond the initial intention of tackling violent racists and neo-Nazis. Increasingly, the mainstream opposition finds itself branded “extremist”.

Contract-style murders

Some of Russia’s leading online journalists say the government will not succeed in controlling the internet, if that is its intention. They point to the failure of similar measures abroad, especially in China and Turkey.

To be fair, there are newspapers in Russia - Novaya Gazeta, and Kommersant, among others - that carry considered, informed, balanced writing. Their readerships are not large - perhaps in the tens of thousands.

But they do put Russia in a different league than North Korea or Turkmenistan.

This said, Russian liberals warn that, in the current atmosphere, critical journalists are increasingly likely to be targeted for physical retribution.

Russia is acknowledged to be a dangerous place to be a journalist, with very few of the contract-style murders of journalists in recent years resulting in a conviction.

By Juha Merimaa
 
In August last year videos began popping up on YouTube in which “Markku”, dressed in a Mika Häkkinen shirt and a baseball cap, extolled the amazing features of Finland in very broken English to Eurovision Song Contest fans flocking to this country. Markku, who admires Renny Harlin and Lordi, sings the praises of icebreakers, the sauna, and Nokia in ways that made many viewers rub their eyes with wonder. “Surely, no, really, he can’t be serious”. 

“Of course, Markku is serious”, Antti Toivonen answers. “Markku is sincerely proud and enthusiastic about Finland and Finnishness. There is no irony there.” However, the videos themselves are not absolutely genuine. Markku is a sketch character developed by a group of friends calling themselves Ruttoryhmä (”Plague Group”). Toivonen himself is the person behind the false moustache.Toivonen, a 28-year-old advertising agency copywriter, is amused by the controversy concerning Markku’s authenticity. “We never thought that anyone would take Markku seriously, but that’s what happened. He is a figure that was invented a few years ago, and it came to us to link him with the Eurovision Song Contest last spring.”At first, the sketches were meant primarily for their friends, but the joke began to spread. Now the most popular Markku sketches have had more than 60,000 hits on the YouTube site. Although Markku’s videos would appear at first glance to be aimed at foreign tourists, their real target is the Finns. According to Toivonen, much of the Markku character involves laughing at himself.“Actually, at one time or another, I have said everything that Markku says about the achievements of the Finns.” Toivonen says that typical Markku behaviour can be seen everywhere in Finland. “A couple of evenings ago I happened to sit in a hotel bar. On both sides there were groups of international businessmen with Finnish hosts. I listened to both groups talking about the World Championships in ice hockey in 1995, the Eurovision victory of Lordi, and the Nokia success story.”Even the most glaring excesses have proven to be surprisingly true to life. “In the summer Markku went to the Finland-Sweden athletics meet, and it could not be said that he would have stood out from the rest of the group. I had put flags of Finland into my cap in order to look ludicrous, but right in front of me there was a row of guys with the same kinds of flags sticking out of their hats.”

Markku, who has so far appeared only on the Internet, is now getting onto television. SubTV will run Markku’s half-hour morning show, Markku’s Morning Comb to Eurovision, from May 2nd at 8:00 AM. The Markku character comments on text messages and videos that are sent in, draws attention to Eurovision Song Contest phenomena, and interviews guests.

So far, Markku has appeared only in short sketches. So how will the character withstand a longer format? “It remains to be seen”, Toivonen answers. The idea of the morning show is to inform Eurovision tourists about the events and happenings of the day. What sight in Helsinki would Markku especially recommend? “The Olympic Stadium. The Olympics were held at the stadium in same year that Armi Kuusela was chosen as the best woman of universe. In the tower you can also remember the arrival of Coca Cola into Finland.”

HELSINKI (Reuters)—New Zealand-based company Michael S Sutton Ltd. has filed a complaint against Nokia in the United States for infringing a data packaging technology patent and is seeking damages, court documents showed. 

The complaint—which says the world’s top cellphone maker is using in its messaging applications technology patented by Sutton—was filed in United States District Court for the Eastern District of Texas on April 30.

Nokia said it would actively defend its rights in the case.

“This case was previously filed against Nokia and then voluntarily dismissed by the plaintiff. We will analyze the details of the new case which was filed on 30 April, 2007 and actively defend the rights of Nokia,” a spokeswoman said.

Legal rows in the wireless industry have increased as the complexity of technologies in phones grows.

Nokia is currently in a major dispute with U.S. Qualcomm on a cross-licensing agreement between the two firms.

UPDATE:

Nokia CEO says Qualcomm can’t set industry rules

HELSINKI (Reuters) - The world’s top handset maker Nokia Oyj said on Thursday its talks with Qualcomm over technology patents were continuing, but the U.S. chip maker shouldn’t be allowed to dictate rules to the industry.

“Talks are ongoing, the situation is open, and I have to say, the agreement cannot be reached before both parties have agreed,” Nokia CEO Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo said at the annual shareholders’ meeting.

“It’s completely clear that we cannot give one company, in this case Qualcomm, a chance to dictate rules for the whole industry. The issue is not Qualcomm versus Nokia, it’s more about Qualcomm versus the rest of the industry,” he said.

A major cross-licensing agreement over technology patents between Qualcomm and Nokia expired partly last month, and their increasingly bitter battle is worrying investors and the industry on both sides of the Atlantic.

The legal dispute between the two centers on Nokia’s use of Qualcomm patents for high-speed wireless technology, but it also has a bearing on Qualcomm’s chips business, which according to Nokia uses many Nokia-patented technologies.

The world’s top wireless network maker Ericsson said last month it hopes to see a quick solution in the technology license dispute before it hurts the whole wireless industry.

Ericsson is part of a group of six companies including Nokia that have complained to the European Commission about how much Qualcomm charges in royalties for use of its technologies.

Shares in Nokia were 0.8 percent lower in Helsinki, in line with weaker DJ Stoxx European technology index, while Qualcomm shares were 0.5 percent weaker.

Also:  Ovi Nokia

First of May celebrations culminated on Tuesday in sunny but rather chilly weather, as people convened in the Kaivopuisto area for their traditional May Day picnics.

First of May celebrations culminated on Tuesday in sunny but rather chilly weather, as people convened in the Kaivopuisto area for their traditional May Day picnics. 

Police estimated that nearly 50,000 people were in Kaivopuisto. The Student Union of the University of Helsinki and the YL Male Voice Choir greeted President Tarja Halonen and her husband, Dr. Pentti Arajärvi at the Presidential Palace at 11:00 in the morning. An estimated 1,250 people took part in the traditional workers’ May Day march. A Jesus march organised by the Pentecostal Church attracted about 2,000 participants.
     
Police responded to 752 emergency calls during the day, which is nearly 100 more than in the previous years. The number of assaults grew from last year’s 47 to 73 this year. Firefighters had to put out a number of fires in rubbish dumpsters. The most serious accidents were home fires in Puotila and Pihlajamäki. A man was seriously injured in the Pihlajamäki fire.
     
Portable toilet facilities were vandalised in Kaivopuisto on Monday night.

Päivi Räsänen, the chair of Finland’s opposition Christian Democrats, said in a statement Wednesday that the government should offer unambiguous support to Estonia in the dispute over Tallinn’s Bronze Soldier monument.

According to Ms Räsänen, the Finnish government should come out unequivocally on Estonia’s side as Russia’s actions in applying pressure on the country have been unacceptable.

Ms Räsänen added that Estonia had been treated in a humiliating way and that the country’s call for EU support was justified.

Last week, the Estonian authorities moved the Soviet-era second world war monument away from the centre of the capital, causing rioting and outrage among Estonia’s Russian minority and in Russia.

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