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HELSINKI, April 4, 2024 (AFP) – Finland on Thursday said it would extend its border closure with Russia “until further notice”, after it was shut in response to a surge in migrant crossings. Finland, which joined the NATO military alliance following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, says the surge in asylum seekers has been orchestrated by Russia, a charge that Moscow has denied. The two neighbours share a 1,340-kilometre (830-mile) border. The Nordic country closed the […]
HELSINKI, April 2, 2024 (AFP) – Finnish police said a 12-year-old child died and two others seriously wounded after a peer opened fire Tuesday at a school just north of the capital Helsinki. “Today, after 9:00 am, a shooting incident took place at a school … in which a sixth grader, a student of the school, died,” Ilkka Koskimaki, police chief of Eastern Uusimaa police department, told a press conference, adding two others were “seriously […]
HELSINKI, March 20, 2024 (AFP) – Finland remained the world’s happiest country for a seventh straight year in an annual UN sponsored World Happiness Report published on Wednesday. And Nordic countries kept their places among the 10 most cheerful, with Denmark, Iceland and Sweden trailing Finland. Afghanistan, plagued by a humanitarian catastrophe since the Taliban regained control in 2020, stayed at the bottom of the 143 countries surveyed. For the first time since the report […]
HELSINKI, March 15, 2024 (AFP) – Finland’s government on Friday said that it wanted to adopt a temporary law to curb “instrumentalised migration”, following a spike in migrant crossings that Helsinki labelled a Russian hybrid attack. A draft of the legislation, which would enable the government “to restrict the reception of applications for international protection in a limited area on Finland’s national border and in its immediate vicinity”, was sent out for comments on Friday, […]
HELSINKI, Feb 2, 2024 (AFP) – Public transport ground to a halt across much of Finland on Friday as part of mass strikes over the government’s proposed labour reforms, leaving Helsinki’s normally-bustling city centre unusually quiet. About 300,000 people in a wide swathe of sectors were estimated to be taking part in the strike action, which began on Wednesday when day care workers walked off the job. Conservative Prime Minister Petteri Orpo has proposed changes […]
STOCKHOLM, Jan 4, 2024 (AFP) – Hundreds of cars were stuck along highways in southern Sweden and Denmark on Thursday, authorities said, with heavy snowfall behind the gridlock as a cold snap hit the region. In Sweden, military personnel were dispatched to assist rescue services working to aid stranded motorists between the towns of Horby and Kristianstad in Sweden’s far south. After drivers who requested help were evacuated, the people who remained in the area […]
NUIJAMAA, Finland, Nov 17, 2023 (AFP) – Dozens of asylum seekers arrived at four Finnish border crossings with Russia on Friday, just hours before they were to close, a border guard captain told AFP. Finland is to shut half of its eight crossings along its eastern land border with Russia from midnight (2200 GMT). Authorities have accused Russia of seeking to destabilise Finland by letting undocumented migrants — mainly from the Middle East and Africa […]
HELSINKI, Aug 23, 2023 (AFP) – Finland, Europe’s largest producer of fox fur, is culling 120,000 farmed foxes and minks in response to bird flu outbreaks in the country’s fur farms, officials said Wednesday. “A culling order has been issued for 13 farms,” Tuija Gadd, head of the virology unit at the Finnish Food Authority, told AFP. “Culling has already been completed on 10 farms.” H5N1 bird flu outbreaks in seagulls were reported in […]
MOSCOW, Aug 9, 2023 (AFP) – Moscow accused Poland and Finland of threatening its security on Wednesday and vowed a response to multiplying “threats” on Russia’s western frontier from NATO members. Poland, Ukraine’s staunch ally and neighbour, has strengthened security on its border with Belarus after Minsk became a new base for Russian Wagner fighters. Finland, which shares a long border with Russia, joined NATO in April in a historic move fuelled by Moscow’s Ukraine […]
HELSINKI, June 20, 2023 (AFP) – Finland’s parliament on Tuesday elected conservative Petteri Orpo as prime minister at the head of a four-party coalition including the far-right Finns Party which plans a major crackdown on immigration. Parliament voted in favour of Orpo, who won April elections and has been in thorny negotiations to build a coalition since then, by 107 in favour, 81 opposed and 11 absent. Orpo was to be formally appointed as prime […]
HELSINKI, May 24, 2023 (AFP) – Record numbers of Russians, by far the highest in three decades, moved to neighbouring Finland in 2022, official statistics published Wednesday showed. A total of 6,003 people moved from Russia to Finland last year, according to Statistics Finland, making it the top country of origin for immigration. Immigration to Finland was up overall, with almost 50,000 people moving to the country, compared to an average of between 29,000 and […]
HELSINKI, Finland (AFP) — Finnish telecom giant Nokia reported Thursday a lower-than-expected rise in earnings in the first quarter as economic headwinds affect spending by its customers. The telecommunications equipment maker, which is locked in a battle for 5G networks with Swedish rival Ericsson and China’s Huawei, said its net profit jumped 32 percent to 289 million euros ($317 million). But its earnings per share amounted to six cents, weaker than the seven cents expected […]
