Finland's Ovi

(AFP and NTB)

A Finnish peacekeeper died of wounds received in a roadside bomb attack in Maimana in Afghanistan Wednesday morning, the Finnish Defence Command said in a statement.

The Finnish soldier was part of an infantry patrol that also included two Norwegian peacekeepers. The patrol was protecting hospital staff, part of the International Security Assistance Force (Isaf), when the bomb exploded at about 9am Finnish time (GMT+2).

The Finn died about an hour after the explosion. Also the Norwegians were wounded.

An Afghan intelligence official was quoted as saying by Agence France-Presse that the bomb might have been remote-controlled.

Norwegian news agency Norsk Telegrambyrå (NTB) reported that four Norwegians were slightly wounded, whereas according to the Finnish defence ministry, three Norwegians were wounded.

The Finnish Defence Forces told the Finnish News Agency (STT) that another Finnish peacekeeper had been near the accident and escaped unscathed.

Jyri Häkämies (cons), the Finnish defence minister, conveyed his condolences to the family of the killed soldier and said the exact course of the events had yet to be established. He told STT that Finland had not yet drawn any conclusions about the future of Finland’s participation in the Afghanistan operation.

Jens Stoltenberg, the prime minister of Norway, told the country’s Parliament that Norway did not intend to pull out its troops from Afghanistan. A Norwegian soldier was killed in Kabul in 2004.

Tarja Halonen, the president of Finland, issued her condolences to the family of the Finnish soldier.

The Finnish government honoured the casualty with a moment of silence.

(HELSINGIN SANOMAT)

The youth organisation of the opposition Left Alliance Party, the Left Youth of Finland, has narrowly passed a resolution calling for the legalisation of the use and home cultivation of cannabis. The decision came at a convention of the organisation this past weekend.

The initiative won by two votes. One of those voting against the measure was Jussi Saramo, who was re-elected as President of the group. In his view, the matter should have been given more consideration, and should have been debated in a broader context of policy toward intoxicants, with input from experts in the field.

“However, as chairman, I stand behind the decision”, he added.
The decision was not a big change to the organisation’s previous policy line on drugs; Saramo noted that an earlier statement on drug policy issued by the Left Youth states that there should be no punishments for personal use and home cultivation of cannabis.

However, the policy line, accepted four years ago, stated “Cannabis should not be legalised in Finland”. Now the executive of the organisation will have to update that document.

“We don’t need any more drugs, but victimising the users does not help”, Saramo says.
Left Alliance Chairman Matti Korhonen says that the party is distancing itself from the vies of its youth organisation. In his view, holding a vote at a convention is not the right way to decide on such big matters.

“The party’s starting point is one of zero tolerance”, Korhonen notes.

He added, however, that he welcomes drug policy debate as such.
In November the chairman of the Satakunta section of the Left Youth of Finland was sentenced by Pori District Court to a fine for growing and smoking marijuana.

An aide to a Left Alliance MP, who lived in the same commune, but was not convicted in the case, was nevertheless not allowed by the party to run as a candidate in the Parliamentary elections in March.

ovi

By Anna-Stina Nykänen

The new Minister of Culture Stefan Wallin, 39, travels nearly every weekday morning from his home in Turku to work in Helsinki. In the capital, as a part of his work with the Culture Ministry portfolio, he handles gender equality matters. Last Friday, for instance, he made a speech in which Finnish fathers were urged to take a greater part in the care of their own children.

“Usually he manages to say hello to the girls before he leaves, as they are waking up. But sometimes he has to take the 5 o’clock train - we call it the Horror Express”, explains Wallin’s wife Elina Pirjatanniemi.
     
The family’s morning carousel is left for Dr. Pirjatanniemi to operate. She feeds and dresses the children and takes 7-year-old Stella to preschool and her 5-year-old little sister Freja to kindergarten, before she heads off to her own workplace - teaching future lawyers at the University of Turku, preparing lectures, and writing scientific articles on her special subject of environmental law.

The 40-year-old Pirjatanniemi also picks the kids up in the afternoon before her husband gets back home from Helsinki.
“The house is not in the sort of shape where we could invite guests over any old time. There are piles of piles everywhere: piles of washing, piles of stuff, piles of papers”, says Pirjatanniemi.
      Fortunately these days a minister is no longer obliged to have a “representative home”.

The modern government minister can in this respect at least enjoy a normal family life. This whole vexed question of putting together the ministerial duties and those of parenthood has in recent years been increasingly in the news. Back in the 1990s, the then Prime Minister Esko Aho was branded by his political opponents as “a cellphone daddy”. Before that, nobody paid much attention to how much a male minister contributed to family life.
In the last government term, the Foreign Trade and Development Minister Paula Lehtomäki took off for maternity leave while in office. There were a few questions asked as to whether this was the end of her political career.

Now Lehtomäki is back, this time behind the Environment desk in the new centre-right administration, and she is expecting her second child, but she is not the only member of the government with the patter of tiny feet in prospect.

The young men in the government have pointed out that they, too, have small children at home.

The Swedish People’s Party chairman Wallin in particular has come out and declared himself a feminist, and said he firmly intends to make sure he has enough time left for his family.
How do ministers manage the juggling act of work and family? Are they simply ludicrously hard-working, do they have some kind of robot at home to do the chores, or are there more hours on their wristwatches?

Can the state be a flexible employer with regard to ministers’ family matters?

Elina Pirjatanniemi is particularly pleased at a recent comment by Prime Minister Matti Vanhanen.

“Vanhanen said more or less that now we are not in crisis mode, and that the work can be done during the daylight hours. This won applause from the troops at home. And it could also be an example to the corporate sector.”

She notes at the same time that according to the statistics it is the upwardly mobile fathers of young children who put in quite the largest number of overtime hours.
Pirjatanniemi finds the feminist sentiments of her husband perfectly natural. She says there are plenty of feminist men among her colleagues and circle of friends.

“There’s nothing so very special about him. But it is nice that in this position he has been able to bring out that side of him. Some might think that there is a little home-tyrant lurking behind it all, but the truth is that this is his own personal mission.”
Wallin intends to be away from home for a maximum of two nights a week, and no more. He wants to take his turn at ferrying the kids to their medical check-ups and he will not give this up for ministry meetings.

“I did suggest this to him once, but he almost got upset at the idea [of skipping a visit]. I was, I suppose, more traditional than him in my way of thinking.”

What about doing chores around the house? Does it work?
      “We do things in different ways. Sometimes I get annoyed at the way he goes about it, and I’m sure the feeling is mutual at times.”
     
The job of a minister of state is not some emergency detail; it can go on for years.

This means that routines have to be developed for getting through the everyday, ones that keep everyone satisfied, says Pirjatanniemi.
      “My own work is important to me, too. It’s not like I shove my own needs into a bottom drawer.”
      Two years ago, when she was writing her doctoral thesis, Elina Pirjatanniemi’s husband stayed at home for two months. Her study on environmental crimes was very well received as a pioneering piece of research.

“At that time everything revolved around me. Steffi was wating at home with the kids, when I came back tetchy after a day of writing. There was no need for me to spend my time and energy wondering if he’d be able to find the girls’ welly-boots and coveralls, and that was important for us.”
     
Things probably would not have gone as smoothly if one of the partners had not concentrated totally on the home front.
      “It is a utopian idea to think that two people with a family can simultaneously be in an intensive phase of their career. You have to get a sense of rhythm going.”
      She takes the view that working life allows a woman rather more freedom to have different phases in her career. A man is supposed to go ballistic, like a rocket.
     
Now it is the wife’s turn to stretch herself thin between home and work. The Wallins are fortunate in that Pirjatanniemi has a flexible job. As a researcher she can to some extent determine for herself whether she works at home or on the campus, at night or during the day.
      “Anything that comes up suddenly is my responsibility. If one of the kids has a tummy problem, I’m the one who bends and tends to it. Our life would get out of shape immediately if both of us were working to a stopwatch schedule.”
      Both husband and wife cook, and the washing machine gets filled by the one whose shirts or blouses happen to be on the bottom of the pile. “I do the ironing, yes, because I happen to like it. Steffi deals with the aquarium and the car.”
     
Evening tasks are divided: one makes dinner, the other reads a bedtime story to the children. If Wallin has been away for any amount of time, the kids are all over him like a rash, and their mother can withdraw into the background to do her own thing.
      “He has to make up any shortfalls in his reading to them: the children calculate that each of us read about as much, and keep us to it. Then the other one can go and watch Sportsnight.”
     
A cleaning firm comes every second week to keep the place tidy - the result of a common Christmas present between the parents. Grandparents and friends also help out. Many of those friends also have small children of their own, so it requires some thought before asking them for help.

“In this respect, I think we probably are on the debt side of things”, Elina admits.

A good kindergarten provides the children with the sort of stimuli that they might not get at home.

“In my own personal version of Hell, the day would be spent in handcrafts and making stuff”, confesses Pirjatanniemi, with obvious relief that the task can be performed at the kindergarten and preschool instead.
Wallin has excellent powers of concentration. This helps in keeping work and home on an even keel. At the summer cabin he can answer an important call and as soon as he has hung up he can be back loafing on the jetty as before.

“He can also write a newspaper column at the same time as the kids are playing a board game on the floor right next to him. I can’t manage that sort of thing. If the children are getting over an illness and are with me at work for the day, drawing or something, I cannot get my thoughts focused properly.”
Sometimes Pirjatanniemi gets her own timetable wound too tight, and tries too hard. “I can get through the day’s tasks alright, but I’m glum, I sigh a lot, and I swig down coffee by the bucketful. And then at work when I’m supposed to be coming up with creative ideas, I can’t string a sentence together.”

Bad conscience is also a familiar visitor for Elina Pirjatanniemi. At work she frets over a child’s runny nose and at home she worries about an unfinished article. A sense of inadequacy strikes. On Friday it can feel as if she has run a steeplechase course and collapsed in a heap over the finish line. At that point it is necessary to stop engines, wind down, and read a good book.

It is worth keeping the weekday routines as simple as possible.

“The ideal is to just be and just wig out on Fridays. And on Saturday mornings you don’t get out of your pyjamas until it is absolutely necessary.”
When she was the Minister of Culture in the previous government, Tanja Saarela was criticised for not “getting about” more during her summer vacation, for not being seen at cultural events and the festivals that litter the short Finnish summer.

Saarela wanted to spend her holiday time in peace with her children. A Minister of Culture (and Sport) can very easily fill the evenings and weekends with work-related engagements.

Yes, it would be possible to go to family-type events with the children in tow, but for the kids it might not be so much fun to have their father along in “minister-mode”.

“Sometimes the girls ask their father if he’s going to be making another of those speeches. ‘Is it going to be a long one?’”

Speeches are always too long. The only way the children can be got through them without complaint is with the bribe of a lollipop in their mouth.
A minister from a small political party such as the SPP is less in the public eye than one from a big party. Even so, the publicity thing affects the children.

“I worry a bit that the girls will think that their father’s work is more important than others’. I’ve explained to them that there are jobs that are important, even if you do not see the people who are doing them”, says Pirjatanniemi.
She has even had to defend political cartoonists when her daughter was offended by the pictures of her father: ‘Why do they always draw Daddy like that?’

Mother explained that the drawings are part and parcel of democracy. If there is someone in power, there must also be counterweights to that power. It is necessary to be able to write and draw freely about those holding the reins.
The greatest difficulties for Elina Pirjatanniemi in the new situation have come from the way the people around tend to relate to her - although she is slightly embarrassed at having to make the admisasion.

“I have always been very egocentric in my way. It was a tough pill to swallow when people started to think of me through the filter of another person. It was annoying to be Mrs Minister.”

The law doctorate wife has been asked if she is “still at work”.

“I’m not a little girl any more, and to me it seemed like I was having a dishrag thrown in my face. Oh, so I should suddenly quit my job, because my husband is a minister? It’s a idea out of the stone age, and politics isn’t like that any longer. Yuck! Scary stuff.”
There have even been those who wonder aloud that she has her own surname. They don’t exactly grumble at it, but kind of stare, as you would at a strange breed of dog, she says.

One thing she has got used to, however, is that going out to do things with her husband in town can be a lengthy exercise, as people are forever stopping him in the street to talk.

“Yes, it’s like going out for a walk with a snail”, she laughs.
Helsingin Sanomat

People live well in the North, close to nature, but not in some backwoods backwater. Children are red-hot at texting on their Nokia mobiles, even when they are out picking lingonberries amongst the bears somewhere. Some of them even ski to school - at least if you believe what they tell you at the Foreign Ministry.

The Finnish Embassy in London has opened a web portal for British schoolchildren under the name “Kidzone Finland”. The intention is to provide a broader picture of what Finland is like, through information and quizzes, explaining how life is in a country that is a blank spot for most British kids, who know little more than Tove Jansson’s Moomins, if even that.
Birdsong twitters in the background as Kidzone tells us that Finns send gazillions of SMS messages each year.

Older technology is also featured prominently: a massive icebreaker is pictured to show how Finland copes with its chilly winter.

Finnish design is not forgotten, either. “Finland is a very stylish country”, we are told, “When Emilia turned nine, her aunt sent her a Marimekko T-shirt”.
Emilia is one of three Finnish children with whom the English kids can play and interact in the pages.

One trick to pull in and hold the readers is a series of quizzes, and the winner of a competition can get a trip to Finland. The British children’s author Michael Morpurgo has agreed to serve as the jury for the competition. The writer has not visited Finland himself, but nevertheless believes that the Finns have a direct and caring attitude to their natural surroundings that the British kids could learn from.

As Kidzone reports: “Forests are well cared for in Finland, using a way that copies the forests’ natural life-cycle… If looked after properly and wisely, forests will always grow new trees. This makes them an important ‘renewable resource’”.

The British attitude to their natural surroundings is “more sentimental” in the view of Morpurgo. Cute domestic animals are cosseted like members of the family, but nobody has any qualms about slaughtering foxes, regarded as vermine.

“The same goes for children. If they are cute, they are spoiled rotten, but throughout history children have been treated in the most horrible fashion - enslaved, abandoned, beaten up.”
Morpurgo remembers well the furore that emerged at the beginning of the year over a European survey of children’s well-being. The Dutch won it, the Finns were on the podium or thereabouts, while the British children came at the bottom of the heap. As Morpurgo notes: “I guess the Finns are doing something right.”

The writer hazards a guess that unlike in the stiff and hierarchical British school system, Finns perhaps pay more attention to the main event - children’s wellbeing. In Britain, school classes can also be excessively large, at worst well over 30 pupils to a class.

The desks at the back in these giant classes in large faceless schools are occupied by pupils who cannot master the basics of English or of mathematics. Often they are not seen in class anyway, as it is relatively easy for the marginalised to vote with their feet and play truant.
As for Finland, Kidzone reports once again that: “Finland has come up with a system called the Welfare Society that means the government cares for people who most need it. This gives kids lots of rights!”

Michael Morpurgo does offer the reminder that Finnish kids and British children do have much in common, too, including the fact that in both countries many teenagers are regular and enthusiastic binge-drinkers.
The best idea of what Kidzone is about can be gained from visiting the site and logging in. It does not appear to require the sort of registration that will fill your e-mail inbox. The format is to provide information, and then to check understanding by a series of multiple-choice questions. Users can gain badges for their “backpack”, and by answering bonus questions they can get to see Moomin video-clips. It works quite smoothly. The venture is a British localisation of “Project Finland”, which was presented by the Finnish Embassy in Washington DC some years ago.

More trash containers, ashtrays, and guidance in store

The City of Helsinki is increasing the number of public trash containers. Signs emphasising the virtues of cleanliness will be posted in parks and along walkways, and new containers for deposit bottles are being set up in different locations.

The investment is part of a city plan aimed at making the city more enjoyable, safer, more attractive, and more conducive to employment.

The aim is to have a city in which it is fun to be, said Mayor Jussi Pajunen at a press conference announcing the new cleanliness campaign of the Public Works Department of the City of Helsinki.

This year 130 new deep waste bins will be set up in Helsinki’s parks. Dubbed “Molochs” because of their large volume, the bins, which look quite ordinary from the outside, extend below the surface with a volume of up to five cubic metres.

A few hundred of the deep containers have been placed around the city so far.

New types of containers for empty deposit bottles and cans are being set up in parks, with signs inviting those who make extra money by returning deposit containers to help themselves. The aim is to fight both glass shards and other litter, as bottle collectors would no longer need to break open trash containers to get at a bottle.
Another upcoming change is that the city plans to take over maintenance of trash containers at bus stops and on sidewalks by the spring of 2009. Until now such containers have been the responsibility of the owners of the adjacent buildings.

Some property owners have shirked their responsibilities, which is has led to insufficient numbers and overfilling of the containers.

Raimo K. Saarinen, head of the Street and Park Division of the city’s Public Works Department says that new smoking legislation that takes effect in June might force the city to increase the number of public ashtrays, as smoking increasingly moves from inside restaurants to the streets.

The city also plans to conduct a survey on what Helsinki residents think about the litter problem.
Increasing volumes of litter are a problem in other Finnish and European cities. The phenomenon is seen to be linked with the spread of disposable packaging, and an emphasis on a lifestyle focusing on the individual. At the same time, there has been a rise in the overall feeling of insecurity.

“For instance, the lack of cleanliness and the feeling of insecurity at Metro stations on the outskirts of the city often coexist”, Mayor Jussi Pajunen says.

He adds that the issue goes beyond the proliferation of trash containers.

“This is not a project, but rather a state of will”, Pajunen explained.

Or as Raimo K. Saarinen puts it: “No amount of money would be sufficient for keeping the city tidy by cleaning it up. We need education, guidance, and changed attitudes.”

(HS)

The increasing demand for district heating in Espoo, Kauniainen and Kirkkonummi has made it feasible to build a new efficient combined heat and power plant

Fortum has decided to build a new combined heat and power production plant adjacent to the existing Suomenoja power plant in Espoo, Finland. The preplanning for the new plant has been completed and the purchasing of main equipment has been agreed. The value of the investment is about EUR 220 million. The power plant will be completed for production by the end of 2009, according to Fortum. 

The increasing demand for district heating in Espoo, Kauniainen and Kirkkonummi has made it feasible to build a new efficient combined heat and power plant, the company said.

The new power plant will use natural gas as fuel. Its power production capacity will be 234 megawatts (MW), and the district heating capacity 214 MW. The annual district heating production corresponds to the district heating usage of 85 000 one-family houses and the annual electricity production corresponds to the electricity need of 100 000 electrically heated one-family houses in Finland.

Thanks to the new plant, the use of coal and oil in district heat production in the area will decrease. This will mean less coal and ash transportation in the area and a decrease in sulphur dioxide and particle emissions. There will be no substantial change in the emissions of nitrogen oxides. Compared to produced energy, carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions will decrease by more than 10%.

“Combined heat and power production is an efficient and environmentally benign way to produce energy. The new power plant will not have immediate effects on the price of district heating in the area. Our goal is to keep the prices of district heating competitive both now and in the future,” said Timo Karttinen from Fortum.

During construction, the employment effect will be around 300 man-years. The new plant has a valid environmental license, which was issued in August 2006. The preparation work for the the power plant construction will be started this summer.

By Juhani Saarinen

Promising crop yields in southeast

“It looks sparse now, but in the autumn there was such a jungle here that you couldn’t get through”, says farmer Ari Niemi.

Stalks of hemp about two metres high fill Niemi’s field. The stems, which are nearly one centimetre thick, break easily. The dried plants are ready for harvesting.

A century ago the sight would have been a very ordinary one, as the fast-growing hemp was a very common agricultural plant in Finland. Nowadays the plant is familiar mainly from pictures of police operations, because the plant is the raw material for the drug cannabis.

Niemi’s plants have a different purpose. The fibre hemp that he grows almost completely lacks the psychoactive component.

The fibre hemp is used as a source of energy. The crop in Valkeala is part of an experimental programme by Kotka Energy, where the company is cultivating hemp as a power source.

There has not been much study in Finland about the applicability of hemp as an energy plant. Reed canarygrass (phalaris arundinacea) has been the more common energy crop. Last year the state paid subsidies for the cultivation of nearly 16,000 hectares of canarygrass, and only for 36 hectares of hemp.

Kotka Energy has planted more than 30 hectares of hemp in different parts of the Kymenlaakso area. The results of the experiment, which began last year, are promising.

“Depending somewhat on where it is grown, it would seem to be an even better-yielding alternative”, says Vesa Pirtilä of Kotka Energy.

Like reed canarygrass, hemp used for energy is planted in the spring and harvested a year later. However, as an annual plant, the seeds have to be sown each year.

The plant can be burned along with peat or wood chips. The energy from one hectare of hemp is enough to meet the energy needs of a single detached house for one year.

The biomass yield from hemp is up to twice that of reed canarygrass. Hemp is also better suited for burning in a power plant.

However, it is not easy to draw far-reaching conclusions on the basis of one year’s results, because last summer was exceptionally dry. Also, hemp has its disadvantages as well.

“The problem is, perhaps, that it requires a large amount of fertiliser and is an annual”, said special researcher Katri Pahkala, of Agrifood Research Finland.

Kotka Energy is nevertheless optimistic about hemp, noting that there have been good results in Sweden as well.

“Let’s hope that the amount of rain in the summer is normal, so that we can see which way to develop energy from agriculture”, Vesa Pirtilä says.

(HS) Attack on other Finnish site apparently from domestic server 

The website of the Finnish Broadcasting Company (YLE) was hit on Monday and Tuesday by at least three denial-of-service (DoS) attacks, which effectively paralysed the site’s service for short periods.

First indications, according to F-Secure expert Mikko Hyppönen, were that the attempts were launched by a Romanian or East European group, who had made earlier threats of such attacks.

Speaking on TV on Wednesday morning, Hyppönen did not rule out the possibility that there might be Finnish members in the attacking group.
In the course of Tuesday it was possible to access the YLE site only intermittently, owing to the massive loading from a hostile attack.

A denial-of-service attack - DoS, or in the case of a co-ordinated series of attacks DDoS (for distributed denial-of-service - is when a website is “swamped” or saturated with malicious intent by external communications requests, such that the victim site is rendered unavailable to its intended, legitimate users.

The company was able to get the servers up and running again, but is apparently braced for further attempts. The head of security at the public broadcaster was unable to identify a motive for the attacks or their possible perpetrators, but the high profile accorded the company during the Eurovision Song Contest - YLE was host broadcaster for the competition in Helsinki - was offered as one reason. YLE has not been the target of such cyber-harassment in the past.
Other Finnish sites to be hit in the past two days have included Eniro and the Suomi24 discussion forums.

In the case of Eniro, it was reported on Wednesday that one such attack was routed through a Finnish server. The company is anticipating further trouble, and forecasts that the problem may trickle down to smaller companies with a web presence.
The Finnish Communications Regulatory Authority collected information on the attacks on Tuesday and passed this to the government.

According to a data security expert at the Authority, the attacks were carried out in an exceptional fashion, making use of peer-to-peer file sharing sites, such that all requests were directed to the YLE server. The logjam was released when YLE restricted all access to the site from foreign IP addresses. There was no intent to penetrate the system, only to cause annoyance and disruption.
Attacks against websites in Estonia continued on Tuesday, apparently an extension of the disturbances that sprang up in the wake of the dispute with Russia over the relocation of the bronze World War II memorial in Tallinn (see attached article).

No evidence has been found as yet to directly link the latest Finnish incursions to those on Estonian government sites in Tallinn and elsewhere, but the Finnish government is reportedly geared up to ward off any such attacks if they should occur.

(HS) Half of Finns are in favour of granting all wage earners approximately equal basic pay hikes in relative terms. However, a poll commissioned by Helsingin Sanomat and conducted by Suomen Gallup shows that the other half of the population feels that some groups should get considerably higher increases than others.

Nearly 80 per cent said that they are in favour of an incomes agreement that promotes gender equality.

Support for equal pay hikes was 55 per cent among labourers. A majority of pensioners were also in favour of equal pay rises. High-ranking white-collar professionals tended to favour differentiation in pay hikes depending on the profession involved.

A breakdown along party affiliation showed that supporters of parties of the left tended to favour equal basic pay hikes for all. Among Social Democrats the figure was 64 per cent, and among Left Alliance voters it was 67 per cent. Supporters of the Greens and the National Coalition Party were at the other extreme.

The same is borne out by the answers to a question from the opposite perspective: 58 per cent of National Coalition Party supporters and 71 per cent of Green voters were willing to grant significantly higher pay rises to certain professions than to others.

A clear majority of Finns (78 per cent) were in favour of granting public sector employees in predominantly female professions, such as nurses, higher pay rises than others. Only one in five are opposed to such a move.
Favouring predominantly female professions gets support from members of all professional groups.

A large majority of pensioners support an incomes agreement that promotes equality. The greatest support for the idea is among those with a high level of education. Support is lowest among those with just a basic education.

Supporters of all political parties also tend to take a positive view of favouring typically women’s professions. The greatest support is among the Greens (88 per cent), the National Coalition Party (83 per cent) and the Left Alliance (83 per cent). Among Centre Party voters, support for higher pay for women’s professions stands at 78 per cent, and among Social Democratic voters it is 74 per cent.

The Uusimaa region, and other densely populated areas tend to be the most favourable to gender equality in pay.

The United States has declined a Finnish request for a meeting between President Tarja Halonen and US President George W. Bush this week.

At the same time, a meeting was arranged with Swedish Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt, who is scheduled to meet Bush today, Tuesday.

According to the office of the President, Finland had asked about the possibility of a meeting with the US President during Halonen’s visit to the United States. The request was turned down for scheduling reasons.

Scheduling problems are routinely invoked in international diplomacy to turn down a proposed meeting.

President Halonen travels to the United States on Wednesday to attend the Annual Gala Dinner of the American Scandinavian Foundation. The Nordic Countries take turns sending a leader to attend the event, and this year is Finland’s turn.

In New York Halonen meets with UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon as well as representatives of US research institutes, says the President’s office in a statement issued on Monday.
Swedish Prime Minister and conservative leader Reinfeldt travelled to the United States on Sunday and like Halonen, he began his programme with a meeting with Ban Ki-Moon in New York.

Reinfeldt says that the main theme of his Tuesday meeting with President Bush is climate policy. The same topic will take Reinfeldt to California, where he meets with Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger on Wednesday.

Reinfeldt said in an interview with the Swedish news agency TT that his aim was to get a better understanding of the US strategy against climate change.

Speaking to Swedish journalists in New York, Reinfeldt denied that he was an ideological partner of Bush and said that he disagrees with him on matters such as the death penalty and abortion.
US leaders also met with representatives of the Swedish government more frequently than those of Finland also when the Social Democrats were in power in that country under the leadership of Göran Persson.

Both Finland and the United States have denied that the infrequency of meetings between Finnish and American leaders is an indication of problems in relations between the two countries.

Halonen met with President Bush during a working visit to the USA in 2002. After that bilateral meeting, the two have met only in connection with international gatherings.

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has invited Foreign Minister Ilkka Kanerva for a visit to Washington. The exact date of the visit remains open, but the Foreign Ministry says that the aim is that it should take place during the summer.

About 63 per cent of respondents in a poll made public by the newspapers Turun Sanomat and Väli-Suomen sanomalehdet on Tuesday said they opposed membership in Nato.However, support for Nato membership has also risen, by three percentage points to 27 per cent.

Some 78 per cent of the respondents in the latest poll said Finland would have to organise a referendum on whether or not to join the military alliance.

Research company Taylor Nelson Sofres interviewed 1,000 Finns aged 15 and above, excluding residents of the Åland Islands. The stated margin of error is three percentage points.
STT

Statements Aim has been preventing terrorists from entering Finland.

Finland’s Security Police (SUPO) says that its possibilities of doing an effective job could be seriously jeopardised by recent decisions handed down by Finnish administrative courts.

As a consequence, SUPO is threatening to stop issuing statements on whether or not a foreigner seeking entry into Finland might pose a security risk.

The warning is contained in a document acquired by Helsingin Sanomat, which was sent by SUPO to the Supreme Administrative Court in April.

The aim of the statements on foreigners is primarily to help officials - mainly at the Directorate of Immigration - to prevent terrorists, spies, and other potentially dangerous individuals from entering the country.

The issue at hand focuses on the extent to which SUPO should be allowed to restrict fundamental rights on the basis of national security concerns. Persons considered dangerous by SUPO have not been told the basis of suspicions against them.

The Helsinki and Kuopio Administrative Courts have overturned at least five decisions for the refusal of residence permits to foreingers coming to Finland on the basis of SUPO assessments. The decisions leaned heavily on statements from the Security Police.

The courts found that the negative decisions by the Directorate of Immigration should have indicated why the Afghani, Pakistani, Somali, and two Iranians were seen as a “threat to state security, or to public order”.
The dispute is now before the Supreme Administrative Court. SUPO has given the court a statement concerning each of the five cases, in which it sharply opposes granting the foreign citizens in question the right to know what information it has about them, or if there is any information at all.

The Security Police says that it would probably stop issuing statements on foreigners if the people in question were to be given access to the information.

 ”The knowledge that there is information about a person in the registry of the Security Police could in itself endanger state security”, SUPO says.

 SUPO’s sources include “information provided by the person him- or herself in a naturalisation interview, or which comes from other officials, from public or non-public sources of information, and in recent years, increasingly from foreign security officials”.

SUPO says that in some of the five cases in question, the the sources included foreign security services.

SUPO notes that it does not even have the right to pass on information without the consent of the original suppliers of the information.
The Security Police say that it is likely that foreign security services would not share classified information with SUPO if there is a possibility that it might pass it on.

“In the worst of cases, the flow of information might dry up completely”, SUPO writes.

According to SUPO, its possibilities to fight terrorism and illegal intelligence gathering “would be rendered almost non-existent” if it would not be able to protect its secret information.

Clicking endlessly with a digicam like a trigger-happy brat inside the sanctum sanctorum of one of the most sophisticated nuclear plants in Nordic Europe, one feels privileged to have a day out in an otherwise forbidden zone.

There is safety paraphernalia galore before one enters the unbelievably sanitised nuclear plant at Olkiluoto after donning white robes, blue helmets and socks like researchers in an infectious disease lab. But for an Indian journalist on this nuclear mission, it is a virtual kid’s corner inside, thanks to the permissiveness of the authorities.

So the cameras of the media team click and zoom on the blue light waters of the advanced nuclear reactor and mind-boggling maze of equipment like on sultry models at a fashion show.

Olkiluoto, about 200 km from Finnish capital Helsinki on the Baltic Sea coast, is a picture of the same openness and gusto with which Nordic Europe is pursuing its nuclear energy agenda to counter rising oil and gas prices and meet energy needs, especially in a country with a cold climate, long distances and energy-intensive industry.

With the legacy of the 1986 Chernobyl disaster and rising environmental concerns clouding the nuclear horizon, EU nations stopped building nuclear plants for 15 years.

But Finland ended that moratorium in 2005 by starting the construction of a third-generation pressurised water reactor at Olkiluoto, designed by the French company Areva. It’s to come on-line in 2009.

‘It is currently the most advanced reactor in terms of competitiveness, safety and environmental protection,’ said Anneli Nikula, senior vice-president, communications, TVO (Teollisuuden Voima Oy), a private limited company established in 1969 to produce electricity for its shareholders at cost price.

Overlooking the vast blueness of the Baltic Sea and verdant forests, Olkiluoto is home to two of Finland’s four nuclear power plants and the fifth is being built. The ongoing project - now known as Olkiluoto 3 - is the first EPR (European Pressurised Reaction) plant by TVO.

‘Economic growth in Finland is higher than the US, European Union (of which it is part) and Japan. Energy consumption is growing and we cannot increase hydro electricity anymore while wind power is not reliable. Nuclear energy is the only option,’ said Penna Urrila, a senior official of the Confederation of Finnish Industries EK.

The Areva-Siemens consortium, entrusted by TVO with the job of building the Olkiluoto 3 nuclear power plant, hopes to commission the new one during the second quarter of 2010, with electricity to be generated for the first time at the end of 2009.

The Olkiluoto 3 by EPR is the world’s first Generation 3 reactor.

Martin Landtman, senior vice-president, project, said: ‘The construction of the third nuclear plant at Olkiluoto is one of the biggest ever industrial investments. More than 60 companies are involved in the construction of Olkiluoto 3 and the electricity generated by the new plant will be used in every corner of Finland.’

‘The third unit now under construction is a European Pressurised Water Reactor (EPR) with a capacity of around 1,600 megawatt. It is a more advanced version of the latest French and German N4 and Konvoi power plant units, and represents state-of-the-art nuclear power technology,’ he said.

Olkiluoto has also been determined to become the site of disposal of Finnish nuclear waste.

A visit to the huge nuclear waste disposal site Onkalo here is a mind-boggling experience in itself. ‘We are maintaining the highest safety measures here,’ said Nikula.

Finland sources 27 percent of its electricity needs from its four nuclear reactors, the first operating since 1977.

But the new emphasis in Europe on nuclear energy has met with opposition from the environmentalists and organisations like Greenpeace.

‘All operational reactors have inherent safety flaws, which cannot be eliminated by safety upgrading. Highly radioactive spent fuel requires constant cooling. If this fails, it could lead to a catastrophic release of radioactivity. They are also highly vulnerable to deliberate acts of sabotage, including terrorist attack,’ said a Greenpeace campaigner.

But Europe is reconsidering the nuclear option again for reducing greenhouse gases, with Finland showing the path for their cost-effectiveness.

There are 173 nuclear reactors producing power in Europe (excluding Russia), with four under construction and others planned. Though some countries like Germany and Spain, are committed to phasing out nuclear power; others like Britain are considering which way to proceed. Several others, including Ukraine and Finland, are building new power plants

According to a report in CBS News, though nuclear power plants remain unpopular with a majority of Europeans, who are worried about what happens to the radioactive waste, industry officials are playing on the public’s competing worries about the effect of greenhouse gases on global warming. Nuclear plants, they point out, emit practically no CO2.

‘Nuclear is the only game in town if you are serious about cutting greenhouse gases as the European Union has pledged to do under the Kyoto Protocol,’ Ian Hore-Lacy, spokesman for the World Nuclear Association, was quoted by CBS.

With India’s civil nuclear deal with the United States and plans for more reactors afoot, nuclear energy seems a natural choice for most nations worldwide.

(Sujoy Dhar can be contacted at sujoi@vsnl.com) 

SERBIA’S Marija Serifovic won the Eurovision Song Contest overnight, beating competitors from 23 other countries in a three-hour televised mishmash of power ballads, ethnic rhythms, and bubble-gum pop.

Serifovic, 22, scored 268 points from telephone voters in 42 countries with her potent but simply staged ballad Molitva, or Prayer.

“I honestly think that a new chapter has opened for Serbia and not only in music. I’m proud”, Serifovic said after the contest, broadcast live across Europe to an estimated 100 million viewers.

Serbia spent the 1990s embroiled in Balkan wars and largely isolated internationally under Slobodan Milosevic, and its transition to democracy has been marked by failed elections and political assassinations.

It was Serbia’s first solo appearance in the contest, held this year in the Finnish capital Helsinki after monster-masked rockers Lordi secured Finland’s first win last year.

The contest is a live showcase for pop music talent selected by each nation in preliminary rounds.

An elegant black-tie event throughout the 1950s, the flagship of the European Broadcasting Union’s light entertainment programming is now widely derided in Western Europe for often trite and lightweight performances.

But it has drawn increasing interest from viewers in Eastern Europe and thousands of fans and journalists travel to the host country.

Serbian fans were delighted at Serifovic’s victory.

“She has a great voice, and it was a great performance. Finally a great song won the … contest,” said Aleksandar Miscevic, a 22-year-old airline steward.

“Serbia had a great song, we really showed Europe what we can do. It was the best song, and she is one of the best singers anywhere,” he said.

While most Eurovision winners quickly, and perhaps deservedly, fade back into obscurity, the contest helped launch the careers of ABBA and Celine Dion.

Serifovic’s sombre performance was in stark contrast to Ukrainian drag queen Verka Serduchka and his bombastic techno-dance tune Dancing Lasha Tumbai, which finished second with 235 points.

Russian pop trio Serebro finished third with 207 points.

In 2004, Ukraine won and Serbia and Montenegro came second.

Lordi reprised last year’s winning song Hard Rock Hallelujah pyrotechnic-filled opening number in front of an audience of 10,000 in Helsinki’s Hartwall arena.

Nearly 25,000 fans watched the show on giant screens in the city’s central square.

All countries in this year’s contest avoided the dreaded “nul points”.

Ireland, which has won seven times, was last with five points.

Britain and France jointly finished in the next spot up from Ireland with 19 points.

Eighteen countries were eliminated in semi-finals on Thursday.