Finnish Customs wants to turn back the tide on Temu

"Chinese shopping platforms fuel a culture of disposable consumption and pose a serious threat to the future of responsibly operating businesses," Elo said in a statement. "It's completely unsustainable — not only for the environment and the climate, but also for workers' rights and consumer safety."

One of the surprising things when I first arrived here in Finland was the prevalence of second hand stores.

It is totally normal for people to buy second hand stuff. That does not align with what Temu and Shein and other brands like these mean to do in this world.

"What's the point?" - Survey reveals fewer international techies plan to stay in Finland permanently

Firstly, they called for an incentive-based immigration model with faster access to permanent residence and more flexible rules for families.

The unions also suggested measures to reduce "brain waste," including stronger anti-discrimination laws, anonymous recruitment, and improved employment services.

Their final recommendation is to strengthen integration through workplace language training, city-led networking, and by including trade unions in integration course planning to improve workers' understanding of rights.

Education expert blames Finland's neglect of gifted students for PISA rankings decline by YLE

"If everyone studies exactly the same content and does the same tasks, the weakest fall behind and the most gifted get bored," she said, adding that this boredom and loss of motivation are linked to underperformance.

Makes sense, if, how mentioned in this article all the gifted children do is assist their teachers. They should get time to explore things on their own, not just help others get better.

Helsinki daycares step up against mini bullies by YLE

Helsinki said its early childhood education staff will receive an introduction to the updated anti-bullying programme and support material for parent-teacher conferences. The city also noted that intervening in and preventing bullying is one of the key tasks of early childhood education.

Average age of cars in Finland nears 14 years amid sluggish sales

The average Finnish car is 13.6 years old — compared to 11 years in Sweden, 9.6 years in Denmark, and 11.1 years in Norway.

I am a bit surprised by this. I see newer cars on the road. Or maybe what I see is well-maintained cars. From time to time I do see some old cars too though. Super old Yaris and so on. I guess there is a market for those.

I recently bought a car. It’s a 3 year old Qashqai. It’s good to know there’s a market for selling it again after I’m done.

Finland backs Nokia-led plan for AI gigafactory

The European Commission’s InvestAI initiative is targeting 200 billion euros’ worth of investments in AI and high-performance computing (HPC), including a huge push for AI infrastructure. The petascale supercomputer Lumi is partly funded by the Union’s EuroHPC Joint undertaking.

I was just reading about this yesterday, the different types of funding government can do to guide deployment.

“Now is the right time to influence the development of the European artificial intelligence infrastructure,” she said in a statement last month.

The government bills Finland as "an ideal location for an AI gigafactory, largely due to clean energy grids and land availability".

I wonder how much new electricity is coming up in Finland, so that there is no impact on electricity prices for normal consumers because of all these data centres that are coming up.