“The number of people suffering from gluten intolerance in Finland has doubled in the past 20 years, according to a Finnish scientist. In the early 1980s, about 1 percent of Finnish adults had gluten intolerance, but the figure has since gone up to 2 percent.

"We've already seen a similar trend emerge earlier on where allergies and certain autoimmune disorders are concerned. Screening has shown that gluten intolerance occurs in 1.5 per cent of Finnish children and 2.7 per cent of the elderly. The higher figure for older people is explained by the fact that ...

“The anti-smoking campaign in Finland is continuing apace with municipal employers and companies beefing up their smoke-free workplace policies. Seinäjoki, Vaasa and Helsinki are in the process of making their campuses completely tobacco-free, while Nokia, Ylöjarvi and Espoo have already prohibited the practice.

So determined are employers to stub-out that they have even taken to covering the costs of nicotine replacement therapies, with cash bonuses being offered in some cases where the habit has been successfully kicked. The return for such an outlay is an overall improvement in the health of the workforce and fewer sick days, reports YLE.

“UPM-Kymmene Oyj and other papermakers will need to focus on Latin America and China as their European home markets stagnate, Chairman Björn Wahlroos said in an interview in Helsinki yesterday. ‘The trend of expanding in areas where there are new and competitive raw materials and in the markets where demand for the final products is growing certainly is true. Most global papermakers will be expanding in pulp in Latin America and in paper in China and India, because that is where the action is.’

“It’s only been a month since Google’s Street View went public in Finland, but the complaints are pouring in, leaving officials wondering how to handle them. The country has extensive laws protecting personal privacy and governing data protection, but Google’s service, which offers ground-level views of people’s homes and backyards, may have fallen into a gap.

In response to a government official’s inquiry, Google’s carefully-worded reply would seem to imply that Finnish laws don’t apply to the U.S.-based firm. In one case, the Street View camera caught a scantily-clad man in his backyard. Under Finnish law, it would be ...

“While other big phone manufacturers (like Samsung) are using solar energy as an alternative to charge their phones’ batteries, Nokia intends to use piezoelectricity and kinetic energy. The Finnish giant has filed a patent for a ‘Piezoelectric Kinetic Energy Harvester’ – which is actually a cell phone battery “contained within a first frame that is coupled to a second frame by one or more piezoelectric elements.”

“For a man who claimed to be speechless, Teemu Selänne had many things to say when he arrived in the interview mixed zone Friday. He was disgusted. He was humiliated. He even admitted he wished there was a mercy rule in hockey. They shake hands in curling, he noted, so why not here?

‘Losing like this is tough and it's something you don't want to experience,’ the frustrated Finn said following his country's embarrassing 6-1 defeat to Team USA, a result that exiled Finland to tonight's bronze medal game and the Americans into Sunday's Olympic final.

“A Finnish court will begin hearings in Tanzania today in a case related to the Rwandan genocide. The District Court of East-Uusimaa has moved to Dar es Salaam to hear from 19 witnesses in the first Finnish case about universal jurisdiction and genocide.

The defendant, François Bazaramba, arrived in Finland as an asylum seeker in 2003. His application was denied in 2004 because he was suspected of involvement in Rwanda’s 1994 genocide. In 2006, Rwandan authorities issued an international warrant for his arrest and in 2007 Bazaramba was detained. The Rwandan government filed a request for Bazaramba’s extradition, but it was denied by the Finnish Ministry of Justice on the grounds that the defendant was likely to face an unfair trial in Rwanda.

“The Finnish Evangelical Lutheran Church is desperately seeking reconciliation between conservatives and reformists as it searches for a new Archbishop to preside over what is becoming an increasingly acrimonious conflict.

With the first round of elections due this week, no candidate is expected to gain a significant number of votes due to the polarised opinions of the church members. ‘The internal debate involves sabre-rattling from the opposite ends. Ever since it was made clear in 2006 that it is not permissible to avoid working together with female clergy, the atmosphere has been unsettled,’ claimed the University of Helsinki’s church historian Mikko Malkavaara.

“A Finnish couple who employed a British rabbi to circumcise their son must pay their child 1,500 Euros in damages after a Helsinki court found them guilty of conspiracy to commit bodily harm.

Moshe and Miriam Levi, members of Helsinki Community Synagogue, asked Chabad of Finland, to organise the circumcision for their son Aviv, their first child. Dan Kantor, executive director of the Jewish community of Helsinki, said the couple were strictly Orthodox and did not want to use the mohel of the Helsinki shul, or a mohel from Sweden. He said: ‘Usually circumcision is performed by our mohel, who is a member of our synagogue.’ Chabad arranged for Rabbi Yossi Simon of Golders Green, London, a registered member of the Initiation Society, to fly to Helsinki in April 2008 to perform the circumcision.

“New mobile apps for smartphones are receiving a lot of attention these days, but a Finnish firm, BookIT, continues to develop SMS- based solutions that make lives easier for all of us… Their latest application, iSMS® scheduling, allows medical centers to eliminate queues by scheduling and confirming appointments via text message.

The first medical center in Finland to use iSMS® appointment scheduling, Lääkärikeskus, reported that the efficiency of BookIT iSMS® service exceeded expectations; in less than 24-hours more than 60 per cent of patients used the text message service to schedule an H1N1 flu vaccination. Many replies ...