Evening News writes that the President of Turkey Recep Tayyip Erdogan is "added to its long list a second requirement that Finland and Sweden must meet before Turkey can accept NATO membership;".
Speaking at a joint press conference with his Venezuelan counterpart Nicolas Maduro Erdogan announced on Wednesday that Turkey will not be able to accept Finland and Sweden into NATO until they end television interviews "terrorist leaders."
"NATO is a security organization, not an organization that supports terrorism. As long as interviews with terrorist leaders are broadcast on Swedish state television, we cannot welcome the country to NATO. The same applies to Finland," he is said to have said.
Ilta-Sanomat writes that it is still unclear what the interviews Erdogan meant.
In an interview with President IS on Wednesday Sauli Niinistö said Erdogan’s demands specifically concern terrorism. Arms export restrictions in Finland and Sweden are mainly a side issue for Turkey.
Evening newspaper in turn points out that, unlike Turkey or Russia, Finland and Sweden do not have state-controlled television channels. Presumably Erdogan’s reference "state television" meant public service broadcasters SVT in Sweden and Yleä in Finland.
Åland 100 years
Helsingin Sanomat tells about this that President Sauli Niinistö and his wife Jenni Haukio is on Thursday in Åland participating in the 100th anniversary of Åland’s autonomy and demilitarized status.
In addition to the presidential couple, there are other guests King Charles XVI of Gustav and Queen Silvia Speakers of the Swedish and Nordic parliaments and representatives of the Finnish government.
As Helsingin Sanomat points out, Åland is an autonomous demilitarized province of Finland, whose only official language is Swedish. According to their self-government, the people of Åland have the right to regulate their internal affairs and exercise budgetary power.
Åland Provincial Council, known as Lagtinget, consists of 30 representatives elected every four years. Åland also has its own county government, which is appointed by the assembly. Åland has one Member of Parliament in Finland’s 200-member parliament.
Cash is still needed
Farmers’ Association Rural Future looking at recent research which shows that 64 per cent of Finns believe that digitalisation has made Finnish society vulnerable by reducing the use of cash payments.
However, only a third of those who responded to the survey in May said they believe the cash will be completely out of use in the near future.
Compared to many European countries, the level of digitized payment transactions in Finland is quite high. Cash currently accounts for only about 12 percent of the country’s payments. In Spain, cash accounted for 83% of transactions in 2019 and in Greece for 80%, according to a study commissioned by the European Central Bank.
MST writes that the war in Ukraine and the tense international situation have led many Finns to consider the importance of cash.
The magazine quotes Risto LepoThe country manager of Suomen Nosto’s ATMs said that Finns should consider whether they are giving up cash too quickly without a thorough risk analysis.
"It is not that we want to slow down digitalisation and move back to cash. The fact is that the world is not yet ready to give up cash and must therefore be considered as one means of payment alongside others," Rest pointed out.
Oops
Subscribers to the Helsinki Region Traffic (HRT) e-mail change notification notifications received a surprise on Wednesday when they were notified that buses 202 and 203 would be out of service between 10.05 am and 12 noon. "maintenance due to nuclear war".
Like most Helsinki daily newspapers, The Hufvudstadsbladet reports this that the regional transport authority was conducting preparedness exercises for new employees, including training on the traffic incident reporting system.
Apparently one of the trainees meant it a little dark, but someone seems to have pressed the wrong button and sent it to the audience.
The magazine interviewed, a spokesman for the Transport Authority Sari Kotikangas stated that HRT did not indeed host war games. The exercise focused on more common problems, such as rail interruptions, he said.
The source of the report was investigated.
"Of course, you can always learn something from this. This was a human error, no one will be punished for it, and I don’t think it led to major problems for any of our clients," Kotikangas told Hufvudstadsbladet.
Source: The Nordic Page