Jussi Halla-aho on Monday announced he is not seeking a second term at the helm of the Finns Party. The right-wing opposition party will convene to elect his successor in Seinäjoki in August. (Silja-Riikka Seppälä – Lehtikuva)

JUSSI HALLA-AHO on Monday startled the Finnish political landscape by announcing he will not seek re-election as chairperson of the Finns Party.

“Not everyone will like this decision, at least immediately. I’d tell them that I’m not making this decision, or any other, on flimsy grounds on the spur of the moment, but after long and exhaustive consideration. This is the most right decision I can make,” he stated in a press conference.

Payments made with OP payment cards have in recent weeks risen to the highest level during the coronavirus pandemic. A fall in the coronavirus infection rate and the lifting of lockdown restrictions have sped up the recovery in consumer spending. Recovery in leisure time entertainment services is, however, in its infancy due to the restrictions.

In June, payments made with OP Financial Group’s debit and credit cards have risen to their highest level during the coronavirus pandemic.

An activist watched as police officers carried another into a police vehicle in downtown Helsinki on Sunday, 20 June 2021. (Teemu Salonen – Lehtikuva)

POLICE in Helsinki brought a total of 117 people into custody in connection with a demonstration organised by Extinction Rebellion Finland on Sunday.

Helsinki Police Department reported yesterday that 104 people were taken into custody for failure to comply with police orders to vacate the road on Mannerheimintie, the main thoroughfare of Helsinki, and 12 on Unioninkatu. One more person was taken into custody for contumacy to the police in conjunction with a counter-protest organised on Sunday.

COVID-19 patients suffer from cognitive and behavioural problems two months after being discharged from hospital, a new study presented at the 7th Congress of the European Academy of Neurology (EAN) has found.

Issues with memory, spatial awareness and information processing problems were identified as possible overhangs from the virus in post-COVID-19 patients who were followed up within eight weeks.

The Finnish Meteorological Institute has issued high temperature warnings for half of Finland today as Eastern and Southern parts of the country are expected to bear the brunt of the ongoing heat wave. 

Southeastern Finland will likely experience the highest temperatures, with the mercury forecast to rise above 30°C. The warm weather (with an average temperature of 24 degrees) is expected to continue till Thursday, with Tuesday slated to be the hottest day of the week. 

LEHTIKUVA / AFP

Here are the most eye-catching images of this week, from all around the world.

The nitrogen present in agriculture, vehicle emissions and industry gets deposited in the soil via the air and impacts vegetation- to the detriment of the butterflies, as researchers at the University of Basel have discovered.

In the journal Conservation Biology, the research team reports a connection between this unintentional fertilization and the low diversity of butterflies in Switzerland.

Urgent action needed to reassure fellow citizens.

A backlog of a third of a million applications by EU citizens who wish to stay in the UK must be addressed immediately by the Home Office, Europe Minister Jenny Gilruth has said.

There are almost 300 000 citizens in Espoo of whom 50 000 doesn’t speak Finnish or Swedish as native language. The change has been rapid when comparing to my time as a schoolkid. For example, every fourth of my children’s classmates speaks something else than Finnish or Swedish as their native language.

Four years ago, I grabbed to this matter and as a result the city strategy of Espoo mentions the use of English as an “official service language”

Recently a Johns Hopkins School of Medicine study found that although two SARS-CoV-2 variants are associated with the higher transmission, patients with these variants show no evidence of higher viral loads in their upper respiratory tracts compared to the control group.

The emergence and higher transmission of the evolving variants of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, has been concerning.

A car parked in front of a block of flats in Helsinki on 2 July 2020. (Olivia Ranta – Lehtikuva)

THE WANING of the coronavirus pandemic will cool down the housing markets in the Nordics, predicts Danske Bank.

House prices have climbed rapidly across the region in the past year as people have looked for abodes with more space for remote work, study and free-time activities – by as much as 18 per cent in Denmark and Sweden, 11 per cent in Norway, and almost five per cent in Finland.

A lot has changed during the last 12 months. People are spending more time at home and the internet has evolved from being a luxury to a basic necessity of life due to the rise of remote working, distance learning and online grocery shopping.

As so many aspects of our lives have been affected and altered by the sudden shift to digital, it is fair to say that our perceptions of what is possible have changed with it.

Displaced people who fled Goma after the eruption of the Nyiragongo volcano stand in a street in Sake with their belongings, waiting to board a bus to be taken home on June 8, 2021. LEHTIKUVA / AFP

Reaction by Jan Egeland, Secretary General of the Norwegian Refugee Council, on the newly released global displacement figures:

“Today’s global displacement figures are an epic failure of humanity. Every year for the past nine, record numbers of people have been forced from their homes because of violence and persecution. Yet despite the staggering statistics, world leaders have been inept to resolve the greatest emergency of our generation.

Private consumption is forecast to recover, albeit at a slower rate than expected due to the cautious approach taken to lifting restrictions, in Finland in 2021–2022. (Vesa Moilanen – Lehtikuva)

ECONOMIC GROWTH in Finland will pick up to 2.6 per cent in 2021 and to 2.8 per cent in 2022, forecasts the Ministry of Finance.

The Ministry of Finance on Wednesday pointed out that although the economic situation has fluctuated notably in the first half of this year due to the coronavirus pandemic, the positive signs have strengthened clearly, with the outlook for both exports and investments becoming brighter.

Finland has committed to reducing transport emissions by at least 50 percent by 2030 and altogether by 2045. This is very much needed, since traffic causes about a fifth and private cars alone about 10 percent of Finnish transport emissions.