At Helsinki’s The English Book Club discussion a reader joked about how she kept frequenting the hotel bar where the book’s heroine, Annie Adams, met her husband, Griffin. “I’v

A Finnish man has been handed a whopping 54,000-euro fine for speeding, it's reported. Finland's speeding fines are linked to income, with penalties calculated on daily earnings, meaning high earners get hit with bigger penalties for breaking the law. So, when businessman Reima Kuisla was caught doing 103km/h (64mph) in an area where the speed limit is 80km/h (50mph), authorities turned to his 2013 tax return.

Tough Viking is the largest and toughest obstacle race series in the Nordics. This year, a total of nine races will be organised in the Nordic countries, two of which are in Finland. The first, the Arctic Tough Viking was held in Levi, Finland, and is the first extreme obstacle race in the world. The race was held 170km north of the Arctic Circle with over 300 participants and around 1,500 spectators.

Finland has one of the best education systems in the world. The prestigious PISA rankings place it among the world’s highest for maths, reading and science, and teachers flock to the country from all over the globe to learn from its success. It may come as a surprise, therefore, that Finland is undergoing a radical overhaul in its education system, dropping ‘teaching by subject’ in favour of ‘teaching by phenomenon’.

Credit: Roopesh Davda

How did Finland moved having the highest incarceration rate in Europe to having one of its lowest? Part of the answer lies in its open prisons, where prisoners — even those convicted of crimes like rape and murder — can be gradually eased back into normal life. “It’s quite relaxing to be here,” says Hannu Kallio, a convicted drug smuggler. “We have bunnies.” The 70 inmates in this facility go to work every day in the greenhouse. Today, they’re potting seedlings...

The Finnish navy drops underwater depth charges as a warning to a suspected submarine in waters near its capital, Helsinki.

Testing uploading and posting. The image is from midsummer 2013.

Finnish Police counter the Taxi Association's request and say that monitoring should be equal - not merely a tool to single out one operator.

Some toy and game shops sell sets of drinking games such as Beer Pong, which do not themselves include any alcohol. However, retail chains such as Tiger are allowed to refuse to sell of the games to minors.

For anyone who has ever grumbled about the plodding pace of play in baseball, the Finnish version of the game offers something previously unimaginable: America’s pastime without wasted time.

Love the tribe suggestion engine for suggesting Finland on that one. :)

Plans to build a Russian nuclear reactor in Finland suffered a setback on Thursday afterthe government said its probe into the ownership of a Croatian investor pointed to Russia. The Croatian company reported a net profit of just $20,000 last year and has Russia-born owners, its documents and Finnish media reports showed.

Welcome to the nerve-wracking reality of being Finland. By Masha Gessen.

Kimmo Kalliola knows the feeling that thousands of Finns have been dealing with over the last couple of years. He spent more than a decade working on geolocation positioning at Nokia, a highly technical job, but the Finnish tech giant hit hard times. In late 2012, Mr. Kalliola and 10,000 others at the company were laid off.

Toronto Maple Leafs forward Leo Komarov appears to be set to pay a heavy fine for speeding in Finland. According to Finnish news outlet Helsingin Sanomat, Komarov was fined more than 35,000 euros on Friday as result of two counts of speeding and two counts of fraud. The amount in Canadian dollars is more than $51,000.

Equipment used: Pentax K-30 body, Pentax-DA 35mm Macro Limited lens. Sunset picture taken with a Pentax-DA 18-55mm lens. Photos taken at Merijärvi and Kalajoki, Finland.

Finland's government on Thursday proposed increasing capital gains tax and income tax on high earners to help pay for a 10-fold increase in refugees expected to arrive this year, its finance minister said. The EU migrant crisis proposes a political as well as a financial challenge for the coalition, whose foreign minister, Timo Soini, heads the Eurosceptic party, The Finns, which campaigned for tighter controls on immigration.

Hundreds of predominantly Iraqi migrants who have travelled through Europe to reach Finland are turning back, saying they don't want to stay in the sparsely-populated country on Europe's northern frontier because it's too cold and boring. Migrants have in recent weeks been crossing back into Sweden at the Haparanda-Tornio border just an hour's drive south of the Arctic Circle, and Finnish authorities have...

The Finnish Social Insurance Institution is to begin drawing up plans for a citizens' basic income model. The preparation's director Olli Kangas says that full-fledged basic income would net Finns some 800 euros a month.

Basic income — the concept of giving people money with no strings attached— is having anything but a basic year. Three months ago, the Dutch city of Utrecht announced it would launch a program to give people on welfare unconditional free money. The plan was so popular that it has spread to more than two dozen Dutch towns. Now Finland wants in on the action. The big difference: the country wants to give money to everybody, not just people on welfare.

The Finnish Social Insurance Institution (KELA) has given some preliminary elements concerning Finland’s plan to experiment and then generalize the implementation of a basic income in the country. In its final version, the basic income would replace other benefits people currently receive, and would therefore be rather high, as indicated by Kela’s Research Department Director Olli Kangas. It is considered that all Finnish citizens would be paid an untaxed benefit sum free of charge by...

Imagine this: as you're worried about how to pay bills and make your rent, you get a check from the government for $876. Every month. That's what Finland is doing. The Nordic nation is getting closer this month to finalizing a solution to poverty: paying each of its 5.4 million people $876 tax-free a month — and in return, it will do away with welfare benefits, unemployment lines, and the other bureaucracy of its extensive social safety net.

The police in Finland arrested Iraqi twin brothers on Tuesday suspected of being members of the Islamic State and of shooting 11 unarmed prisoners in Iraq in June 2014, Finnish news reports said Thursday. Finland’s National Bureau of Investigation said on Thursday that the men had arrived in Finland in September and were arrested following an investigation. News reports said they did not resist arrest.

A Facebook campaign has been launched for Norway to give their flat Finnish neighbour a mountain that would become its new highest peak as a gift for the centenary of its independence. The campaign, “Halti as an anniversary gift” has won the support of the head of the Norwegian Mapping Authority, and been warmly received in Finland where one commentator claimed the gesture "would be remembered for a thousand years”.

If you're on the lookout for magical reindeer this year, don't bother gazing skyward... By Cara Giaimo.

In a tense and thrilling climax to the 2016 World Juniors, Kasperi Kapanen's overtime winner at 1:33 gave host Finland a 4-3 gold medal victory over Russia.

Finnish police reported Thursday an unusually high level of sexual harassment in Helsinki on New Year's Eve and said they had been tipped off about plans by groups of asylum seekers to sexually harass women. Helsinki deputy police chief Ilkka Koskimaki told AFP: "There hasn't been this kind of harassment on previous New Year's Eves or other occasions for that matter... This is a completely new phenomenon in Helsinki."

The digital archive contains around 160,000 photographs from the Second World War from a time period of six years, from autumn 1939 to the summer of 1945. The pictures portray life on the home front, damage done by bombings, the war industry, the evacuation of Finnish Karelia as well as events and operations at the front.

"Kaasua 5" Finnish rally crash & action compilation 2015. Crashes, over 50 rolls, close calls and other action. Thanks to JJalovaara, check out his channel and subscribe.

Finland’s prime minister, Juha Sipila, has said he will not be able fulfil a promise to put up a family of asylum seekers. Sipila, a former telecoms executive, prompted controversy in September by saying he would open his second home in northern Finland to refugees. ‘Refugees are warm, emotional people. There’s a lot we can learn’ But on Sunday he told public YLE radio that he had had to put the plan on hold because of security concerns...

A group of scientists in Finland are the definition of fashion forward. They're working on designing the clothes of the future -- smart clothes. Their work is part of the Smart Clothing project at the VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland Ltd., a nonprofit research and development organization in Finland. Scientists have developed smartphones, smart cars and smart homes. Now, they're working on smart clothes. In this instance...