Four runaway coaches of a long-distance train overran the buffers and crashed into the office wing of the Holiday Inn Hotel in Finland’s capital Helsinki today, Helsingin Sanomat reports.
Nobody was seriously hurt in the incident that happened around 8:30am today, as the employees of the accounting firm Ernst & Young located in the office wing narrowly escaped the crash. The scope of the damage to the hotel building is not known yet, but …

Four people were murdered today in a shopping mall in Espoo, near Finnish capital Helsinki, police also found the body of a suspect and another murder victim in a private flat, newspaper Helsingin Sanomat reports.
It’s suspected that Ibrahim Shkupolli murdered four young people in a Prisma shopping mall in Espoo, all of the victims – three men and one woman – were Prisma’s staff. Police hunting the suspect later found a fifth victim – suspect’s former girlfriend and also a former Prisma employee…

Latvia and Finland are theoretically prepared to support Estonian President Toomas Hendrik Ilves for the President of the European Union, Estonian media reports.
Latvian Prime Minister Valdis Dombrovskis said that Ilves is an honourable candidate for the unelected EU presidency.
Finnish Prime Minister Matti Vanhanen said today that Finland is ready to support Ilves as the EU President.

The world’s largest cruise liner began its maiden voyage to Florida today, gliding out from a shipyard in Finland with an amphitheater, basketball courts and an ice rink on board, the AP reports.
The 16-deck Oasis of the Seas spans 1,200 feet from bow to stern, and its 2,700 cabins can accommodate 6,300 passengers and 2,100 crew.
Commissioned by Royal Caribbean International, the ship cost £894 million and took two and a half years to build at …

Finland’s Government passed a law that entitles every person in the country to a one megabit-per-second internet connection, the Daily Telegraph reports.
The Ministry of Transport and Communications have committed to ensuring that every person in Finland can access the internet at a minimum speed of one megabit per second from July next year.
The Government had already committed to rolling out 100 megabits per second broadband connections across the country by 2015. It’s the first country …

Finland’s Government are drafting a new smoking law in order to become the first country on Earth where people don’t consume tobacco.
Finnish Ministry of Social and Health Affairs gave the draft of the new law to the Parliament today, Finnish national broadcasting reports.
“As the first country on Earth, we have written a law to end smoking at all,” Government’s adviser Ismo Tuominen said. “If we only tried to reduce it, that would be accepting smoking …

Finnish national broadcasting Yle yesterday censored its own internet poll on “What is the reason for xenophobia”, probably in an effort to make it more “politically correct”.
At 10:55am there were seven options and reply percentages:
1. People are afraid of everything unkown 4%
2. Prejudice grows if it’s fed 4%
3. Silent acceptance 4%
4. Upbringing and surrounding people 4%
5. Envy 1%
6. Bad experiences 81%
7. Stupidity deepends in a group 2%
At 13:40 something was different:
1. People are afraid of …

A school staff in Finland called the police after a 13-year-old pupil took an extra fishfinger during lunch hour and refused to put it back, newspaper Helsingin Sanomat reports.
The pupil was supposed to have three fishfingers, but insted took four. The school staff tried to talk the boy into putting the extra fishfinger back, but the kid refused. Thus the staff called the police, reporting later that it was done “to guarantee the safety of …

Last June a car was stolen in Lapua, some 380 kilometres (235 miles) north of Helsinki. It was soon found near a railway station in Seinaejoki, about 25 kilometres from where it was stolen.
“A police patrol carried out an inspection of the car and they noticed a mosquito that had sucked blood. It was sent to the laboratory for testing, which showed the blood belonged to a man who was in the police registers,” inspector …