Finland's Ovi

Tarja Halonen, the Finnish president, said in a statement Friday she had sent a message of congratulation to Al Gore and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) for their being jointly awarded the Nobel peace prize.

The president said she was very pleased that the pioneering work had been recognised at such high a level.

“Well-being for mankind and nature go hand in hand. Sustainable development on a global scale can become a reality if we take true care of people and if we have a strong environmental awareness. There are positive signs of attitudes changing and of a stronger common will to act on climate issues”, President Halonen wrote to Mr Gore and Rajendra Pachauri, the chairman of the IPCC.

Prime Minister Matti Vanhanen (centre) said the Nobel committee had made a good choice.

Anders Fogh Rasmussen, the Danish prime minister, joined Mr Vanhanen in praising the award for pushing climate issues higher on the political agenda.

Source:STT

By Miranda Hitti

Test Using a Tracer Chemical May Show Which People With Memory Loss Will Get the Disease

A brain scan test may help predict which people with memory loss will develop Alzheimer’s disease, a preliminary study shows.

Memory loss is a symptom of Alzheimer’s disease. But most people with memory problems don’t develop Alzheimer’s.

Another hallmark of Alzheimer’s disease is the buildup of plaque in the brain. That plaque, made of amyloid protein, has been found in brain autopsies of Alzheimer’s patients.

The new study, published in Neurology, focuses on people with mild cognitive impairment, defined as memory loss that doesn’t impair daily life and doesn’t qualify for dementia diagnosis.

The study included 13 people in Finland with mild cognitive impairment. They were 70 years old, on average.

For comparison, the study also included 14 older Finnish adults (average age: 65) without memory problems.

Participants got an infusion of a tracer chemical called PIB, which binds to amyloid protein.

The researchers — who included Juha Rinne, MD, PhD, of Finland’s University of Turku — used positron emission tomography (PET) brain scans to watch participants’ brains absorb PIB.

Brain Scan Test
The brains of the patient group with memory loss tended to absorb more PIB than the comparison group without memory loss.

“This pattern of increased PIB in patients with [mild cognitive impairment] resembles what’s seen in Alzheimer’s disease and is suggestive of an early Alzheimer’s disease process,” Rinne says in an American Academy of Neurology news release.

But Rinne’s team didn’t follow the participants over time, so it’s not clear if any of them developed Alzheimer’s disease.

Larger, longer studies are needed to learn whether the PIB test predicts Alzheimer’s disease in people with mild cognitive impairment, note the researchers.

The journal notes that Rinne has a consultancy agreement with a branch of GE Health Care, which makes PIB.

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more about mild cognitive impairment

Billionaire investor Warren Buffett annouced that he is donating $37bn (£20bn) to Bill Gates’ charitable foundation.

He said he was overjoyed, “This has been coming for 50 years…There’s never really been any other plan in terms of where the money should go.”

I think the most amazing aspect of this is the fact that the size of the foundation’s cash pile dwarfs that of other organisations, especially the $12bn annual budget of the United Nations.

Mr Buffett is worth an estimated $44bn, according to Forbes magazine, but I guess the value of his golden heart is priceless.

Nice one, Mr Buffett.

Sometimes real life shows that the worst is not here yet and when it comes from your native country it makes it really bad. It was back in issue 4 of Ovi magazine where I wrote a lengthy article about underage crimes and since then I found myself often thinking about it.

Oddly the last few days while writing some articles for our next Ovi magazine came some news from Greece that combined the theme of the magazine, boundaries (for issue 15) and underage crime. But I’ve better tell you what’s going on.

In northern Greece a group of 12 and 14 year old kids killed a 12 year old boy because he was a foreigner, or better an economic immigrant. I’m serious, this was the reason, they were bulling him for a whole year and in the end they killed him.

That combines everything, hate crime, boundaries and underage crime but most of all combines all my disgust for the world where we are brining our kids into.

Suddenly Mr. Jone Nikula and his copycat Ovi magazine looks so small however much it upset me the unfairness of the event.

The last years I often heard the problems second generation kids facing in the country which suppose to hosted their parents and even though not a refugee or a financial immigrant myself that scared me. I have often used the example of a friend’s daughter who every time she applies for a job, she needs to insure them that she speaks Finnish, that Finnish is her mother tongue and even though she carries her fathers surname she’s been in his country only for holidays.

And this happening in Greece? A country that has more Greeks living abroad than Greece? Melbourne is on the top ten cities with Greek population after Athens and Salonica. Greeks know well what immigration means. Is it possible that thing like that happen in Greece? And what about the next generation? The hope for the future!

These kids did a worst crime than killing their immigrant classmate, they killed hope for a better future and I find so difficult to express how I feel been an immigrant even by choice with a little kid myself!

Has been removed, thanks to the dmca.

Monaco’s Prince Albert has reached the North Pole on his four-day expedition to highlight global warming. The prince left a base in Russia on Thursday with seven others in the dog-sled expedition. He planted a flag of Monaco and one of the International Olympic Committee, of which he is a member.

The prince said: “We must try to find solutions [to global warming], with scientists obviously, but at the individual level.”

How long it will be until the Arctic has the same climate as Monaco is one of the positive aspects of seeing more high profile individuals campaigning for change, but it will take more than the head of a principality trekking to the top of the earth.

Maybe next we should send Bush and Blair into space on a fact-finding mission.

His only comfort is six shots of morphine a day and a toy giraffe named Melle, but Tille, a six-month-old Swedish boy, has captured the hearts of people around the world.

Tille is suffering from a very rare disease that always leads to death in babies and those of us who have been caught up in his story helplessly wait for him to die at any moment.

Doctors have said many times that the end is near, yet, against all odds, he continues to fight day after day, living on air and love. During the last two months, he has lost more than half of his weight and now he does not eat and barely has water.

The disease is called Epidermolysis bullosa (EB) and he has Epidermolysis Bullosa Herlitz lethal, the worst kind. Babies with Herlitz have approximately 6-8 months to live and no child in Sweden has lived to see their second birthday.

A couple of weeks after his birth last September big blisters appeared on his face that later became sore wounds. A couple of months later EB was diagnosed; almost two babies are diagnosed with EB every year in Sweden.

His mum, Therese Vesterlund, and dad, Nicklas Svensson, don’t want to let his pain go on any further and have chosen not to put him on a life support machine. They want him to die at home, in peace. They have told him that it is ok to let go, they are ready. For them it would be a relief to find him dead in the morning; it wouldn’t be nice for them, but for Tille.

The whole of Sweden is following Tille and the family are getting loads of mail, letters and presents from Finland, Norway, Germany, the USA and more. Thousands have read his mum’s online diary, which she started writing after the diagnosis in an attempt to work with her feelings. At the same time, she started a discussion forum about children with deadly diseases and the response became enormous.

There’s a Tille-foundation that collects money for research.

Visit Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet for more.

UPDATE: Tille passed away on Saturday 16th. Ovi sends our heartfelt condolences to all of Tille’s family in this time of sadness.

Education officials are worried that students are spending too long on high school studies. The Ministry of Education is considering new laws to pressure schools to encourage students to graduate earlier.

Under the proposals, municipalities might be penalised and lose out on education funding, if students stay in high school for more than three years.

The Finnish education has always confused me, especially the fact that so many students seem to spend nearly a decade getting a degree and they aren’t even becoming a doctor or teacher.

What makes staying at school so attractive to so many students? Do they get substantial interest free loans or are they sleeping with the lecturers? Perhaps if they remain classified as students it keeps Finland’s unemployment figures down.

News today that Finland’s Radiation and Nuclear Safety Authority gave permission to restart concrete production at the site of the fifth nuclear power station in the country was received with a disturbing silence.

Where are the Green Party politicians shouting that the environment is far more important and should be respected? Where are the protestors now that building has resumed?

What’s the point! They are all far too busy to bother with something as minor as the building of a nuclear power plant, sorry the FIFTH nuclear power plant, in Finland.

According to a UNICEF report from last March, Finland and Demark have the least number of children suffering from poverty in the industrialised world. Sadly that number is still too high with Finland’ number standing at 130,000 in 2003.

The number of children living in foster care is around 14,000, a number considered high by STAKES.

The Finnish government says it is trying to help those suffering from economic hardships, but what can it really do to ease the situation?

A US company is set to begin a trial of a vaccine which it claims halts the progress of multiple sclerosis.
MS experts have welcomed the research but urged caution because other vaccines have not been successful.

Does this mean that President Bartlett might be back for an eighth season of West Wing?

Human rights activists in Greece have welcomed a new law passed by parliament which for the first time allows people to be cremated rather than buried. The Greek Orthodox Church has until now opposed cremation, describing it as a violation of the human body.

The graveyards in Athens are already full to overflowing. For many a burial plot is only rented for three years before the body has to be exhumed to make way for the next coffin.

Graveyards, well there are always people dying to get in.

Nazis march in black neighbourhood

A fist-fight breaks out and police make several arrests during a neoNazi rally in a black neighbourhood in Florida.
Source: REUTERS

Hmm..
For me the word ‘Nazi’ is equal to ‘racist’. And in this case I can say I am a Nazi to Nazis, because I hate them and I wish them the worst possible.

I wish they would be born in another body with another skin and then be beaten to death by their own Nazi families! God, can’t someone just kill ‘em all?

A mosquito-borne disease has directly or indirectly killed 77 people on France’s Indian Ocean island of La Reunion, French Health Minister Xavier Bertrand said. “Chikungunya” fever, for which there is no known cure or vaccine, had affected some 130,000 people on the island off the southeast coast of Africa.

Bertrand said that was 20,000 more than a week ago. Around one in six inhabitants has now been affected on La Reunion, which has a total population of some 775,000 people. Bertrand said the situation was not expected as ‘’chikungunya'’ disease, which is extremely painful and causes high fever, was not previously thought to be lethal.

The illness, which has also travelled to the nearby Indian Ocean islands of the Seychelles and Mauritius, is marked by high fever and severe rashes. Most people recover although it is extremely painful. First recognised in East Africa in 1952, it also leaves the immune system weak, proving opportunities for other diseases to set in.

The name Chikungunya comes from the Swahili for stooped walk, referring to the posture of those afflicted. French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin, who is to travel to La Reunion on Sunday (February 26), said the entire island should be ridden of mosquitoes to stop the disease from spreading. Villepin said it was still safe to visit the island, which is a popular tourist destination for European travellers.

The Reunion Committee on Tourism has reported tour cancellations but has not provided figures for costs incurred. Authorities say people should remove stagnant water, use mosquito repellents and bed nets and spray bedrooms at night.
Source: REUTERS

Ok, first Crazy Cows, then Chickens and now Mosquitos? Is it just me or does it look like the diseases are caused every time by smaller and smaller animals. What next? Air? Microbacteria that is nested in oxygen…oh I see bad times coming!

A Finnish scientist for the Institute of Marine Research doesn’t believe that the melting of glaciers in Greenland will affect Finland very much.

Jari Haapala says his research indicates that the current rate of melting also won’t affect the Gulf Stream, which is critical for maintaining Finland’s environment.

Phew, Finland will be all right, so they don’t have to worry about the environment and can happily build another nuclear power plant.