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Camille Auer wanted to change her gender, was diagnosed with a mental illness and is now making art on the theme – "People should have the right to their own body"
Dozens of patient reports are hanging from the ceiling of the Project Room gallery of the Academy of Fine Arts.
The name of Camille Auer is written on every one of them.
The reports tell a long story of what kind of an interpretation other people have written of Auer and her identity –
decided on who she is on her behalf.
"I wanted to disclose my personal medical history to highlight the violence of the whole process", Auer says.
Here, "process" refers to her sex reassignment procedure.
It is a many-year examination period, including meetings with psychologists, psychiatrists, nurses and physicians.
The process starts with a referral to diagnose a gender identity disorder. These diagnoses are performed in Tampere and Helsinki.
Auer's process started four years ago.
Before this, she had already been using oestrogen ordered from the internet and was also otherwise far in her own reassignment procedure.
Even though she felt like a woman, Finnish legislation states that an individual must undergo a reassignment procedure before the gender can also be altered legally.
The Act on the Legal Recognition of the Gender of Transsexuals (563/2002), or the trans act, obligates transgender people to a compulsory sterilisation so that their correct gender can be registered, for example, in the Population Register Centre and their passport.
Currently, each person about to change their gender is required to have a psychiatric diagnosis and a certificate of their inability to reproduce.
People should have the right to decide on their own body.
"This situation is intolerable and in violation of human rights", Auer says.
Amendments to the Finnish trans act have been on the table for long.
The UN Human Rights Council has issued eight concerns regarding the act, and the European Court of Human Rights has a precedent that obligates parties to the European Convention of Human Rights to adhere to the right of self-determination.
The former Government of Finland prepared the amendments to the act under Susanne Huovinen, the then Minister of Social Affairs and Health.
After the following elections, the Finns Party received seats in the Government.
Now, the amendments are again at a standstill
due to internal disagreements that are not even related to this particular act.
"The Government is not willing to handle the act, as there are disagreements over the amendments within the Government", says Frank Johansson, director of Amnesty Finland.
The front of the exhibition area is dominated by two large installations.
One of these is made of the packages and instructions of medicinal products used by Auer.
Any visitor to the patient record installation can read, for example, the interpretation a psychologist working in the transgender department of Tampere University Hospital has made of Auer.
The psychologist met Camille Auer two times and, on the basis of these meetings, wrote a report that would define Auer's rights to receive treatment and assistance.
The patient's sense of reality is reported to be close to shaking.
The patient's conception of herself seems to be disorganised as a borderline case and the unstable features of her personality are emphasised.
Auer does not recognise herself from these reports.
"It was shocking to hear that I was diagnosed as mentally ill", Auer says.
What was even more shocking was that Auer was not given access to gender reassignment surgery.
According to the nursing staff, she did not have sufficient resources to start the process.
Her own identity was denied from her.
On that day on 11 February 2015, Auer walked out of the meeting and smashed a TV in the waiting room of the transgender department.
Later, that TV evolved into a Monument for the Excluded, a work of art through which Auer reflects on her experiences in power and how it is exercised.
"It's crazy that anyone defined as a woman at birth can have their breasts enlarged. But, to have breasts removed altogether, a diagnosis is needed", Auer says.
You do not own your body if you feel that your gender is not the one defined at birth.
Unfortunately, Auer's experience is not unique.
For many, a gender reassignment process is tougher mentally than physically as a result of medical operations.
Anyone who undergoes the process meets dozens of people to whom they must explain their existence and right to a gender identity.
"It's crazy that treatment is denied from people who need help and support by saying that they don't have sufficient resources", Auer says.
Many applying for the process have suffered from mental disorders: depression, anxiety and possibly bullying.
By appealing to these, the nursing staff can decide that the process cannot be started.
"If people are not given access to treatment and assistance, their situation may even become worse than it was before the process", says Auer.
Auer's personal exhibit also deals with anxiety and thoughts of suicide.
In the exhibition brochure, Auer writes: "I've had suicidal thoughts throughout my adult life, and this is something people find hard to accept."
Auer has received medicine for her depression. When she started to take hormones, she also started to feel better.
She was finally able to put into words the feelings she had had since her childhood and teenage –
why her wide chin did not seem to be quite right for her body and why her pectoral muscles were round instead of flat.
Auer has always found it important that she has people who can truly see her close to her.
Being seen is a basic need.
"I need to explain my existence through my words, clothes, voice and motions", she says.
Currently, Auer feels that she is seen, and exists as a woman.
However, in the first phases of the process, random comments by people close to her hurt.
What hurts me the most is when people close to me define my gender incorrectly.
"They should know who I am, and they do know it, but they refuse to accept it or can't accept it", she continues.
However, not all transgender people want physical alterations.
They do not suffer from the body dysmorphic disorder, whereby their body or its parts can cause anxiety or even physical pain.
Without the use of hormones or a lengthy examination process, it is not possible to have an official status for one's own gender.
"There is no medical basis for these examinations", Auer says.
This is true.
For example, in Denmark, Parliament approved a new procedure for identifying the legal gender in June 2014.
The new legislation is based on the right of self-determination when it comes to the legal gender.
An adult applicant needs to file a written application for a new personal identity code, indicating that they feel like they represent the other gender.
After a reconsideration period of six months, the applicant needs to confirm their application in writing, after which the ministry will provide the applicant with a new personal identity code.
A similar right of self-determination is also demanded in Finland, and this is also what characterises Auer's exhibition.
The exhibition has not been any therapeutic experience for the artist; it is a political and artistic collection.
"I want to believe that art still matters and it helps to achieve political changes, during a time when politicians have forgotten about human rights."
Camille Auer's exhibition Antiphallic Dick at the Project Room of the Academy of Fine Arts on 4–28 July 2017.
Civil rights group issues travel warning for Missouri
The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People has put out an alert for people of color traveling to Missouri because of the state's discriminatory policies and racist attacks.
"The NAACP Travel Advisory for the state of Missouri, effective through August 28th, 2017, calls for African American travelers, visitors and Missourians to pay special attention and exercise extreme caution when traveling throughout the state given the series of questionable, race-based incidents occurring statewide recently, and noted therein," the group's statement reads.
A recent Missouri law making it harder for people to win discrimination lawsuits, as well as the state's law enforcement disproportionately targeting minorities prompted the group to issue the travel alert, the NAACP said.
"You have violations of civil rights that are happening to people.
They're being pulled over because of their skin color, they're being beaten up or killed," the president of the Missouri NAACP, Rod Chapel, told The Kansas City Star.
"We are hearing complaints at a rate we haven't heard before."
It is the first such warning that the organization has issued for a state in the US.
The group cited incidents such as racial slurs against black students at the University of Missouri and the death of Tory Sanders, 28, a black man from Tennessee.
Sanders died under questionable circumstances earlier this year after he ran out of gas while traveling through the state, and was taken into custody by Missouri police without being accused of a crime.
The advisory also points to a recent report by the Missouri Attorney General's Office showing that black drivers in the state were 75 percent more likely to be pulled over than whites.
"The advisory is for people to be aware, and warn their families and friends and co-workers of what could happen in Missouri," Chapel said.
"People need to be ready, whether it's bringing bail money with them, or letting relatives know they are traveling through the state."
Missouri recorded 100 hate crimes in 2015, according to the latest figures from the FBI's hate crime reporting program, ranking the state at 16th in the country in terms of the number of such violations.
The travel warning is also a response to a new Missouri law that would make it more difficult to sue a business for housing or employment discrimination.
Previously, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) had issued travel advisories for Texas and Arizona after the states passed immigration enforcement laws requiring local law enforcement to detain people on immigration violations which the ACLU said would increase racial profiling.
Travel warnings are usually issued by the State Department for other countries, but lately, advocacy groups have resorted to the measure in response to certain laws and trends inside the US.
Yle: Lintilä asked Finnair to clarify the CEO's additional pension
Yle reports that Mika Lintilä (Centre Party), Minister of Economic Affairs in charge of Government ownership steering, has asked Finnair to clarify the additional pension paid to CEO Pekka Vauramo.
According to Lintilä, this is in conflict with the Government's definitions.
Vauramo's additional pension of EUR 130,000 hit the news this week when Helsingin Sanomat reported on the development on incentives paid to directors of listed companies.
Suomen Kuvalehti reported on Vauramo's additional pension in February.
Finnair announced its intention to discontinue additional pensions in 2013.
The Government has defined that no additional pensions should be used as incentives.
The state holds more than half of Finnair.
According to the company, this decision is in line with last year's decision-in-principle on ownership steering.
Sanctions immediately resulted in heated talks
Some time ago, it still seemed that US-Russia relations were turning from cold to hot.
When meeting at the G20 summit in Hamburg, Donald Trump, the President of the USA, and Vladimir Putin, the President of Russia, seemed to get along nicely.
Later on, the relationship has become notably colder.
Russia showed a bitter response to the new economic sanctions approved last week by the US Congress and signed by Trump on Wednesday.
So far, the most stunning response has been heard from Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev who said that the sanctions bill signed by Trump will result in a "full-scale trade war."
Even if the Russian responses were shrugged off merely as exaggerations and aggravations belonging to political rhetoric, the increased tension between the USA and Russia is a fact, following the short honeymoon after Trump's election.
In the USA, passing the sanctions act concerning Russia, Iran and North Korea was no simple process.
Then again, the US Congress was remarkably unanimous in passing the bill. However, it was told that accepting the bill was much more difficult for the president.
Soon after signing the bill, Trump criticised it as being "significantly incomplete."
The sulkiness of President Trump was probably caused by Russia, even though it must have also felt disagreeable to sign a bill that limits the president's own power.
As is widely known, the USA is investigating Russia's possible involvement in the presidential election and any links between Trump's campaign and Russia.
After a short honeymoon, the relationship between the USA and Russia has turned decidedly colder.
As the turnover of White House staff has been high and different scandalous twists and turns have been revealed nearly every day, it seems to be more apparent that US foreign policy is not run by the president, but regardless of the president.
Such a situation is in no sense a preferable one.
If the Russian relations are a tricky business in the USA, the same goes with the European Union.
In addition to economic sanctions, the intensified security situation in the Baltic Sea region tightens the relationship.
The EU has visibly highlighted the situation in Ukraine in its relationship with Russia and demanded the execution of the Minsk Protocol.
Even though the EU has remained unified, at least visibly, in its Russian policy, its member states have fairly differing interests.
For a member state such as Finland that trades frequently with Russia, economic sanctions are a constant nuisance.
The impact of the new US sanctions act remains unclear.
The EU has feared that sanctions will make the life of many European companies difficult.
In Finland, the act may have an impact, for example, on the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline project and the Fennovoima nuclear power plant project.
Another cause of sourness in Europe is that liquefied natural gas, which is important for US finances, has been excluded from the sanctions.
Trade sanctions are a global way of showing disapproval.
However, economic sanctions must be well-considered and accurate,
or they become harmful rather than useful.
Is nothing sacred?
Now Trump's White House is targeting the Statue of Liberty
The surest mark of regime change is when they start attacking the statues.
Americans appreciate this as well as anyone - hence the carefully stage-manged toppling of Saddam Hussein in Firdos square in Baghdad in 2003.
Stephen Miller, one of the key ideologues of the Trump regime, surely knew what he was doing when he took a symbolic axe to the Statue of Liberty in a heated argument with CNN's Jim Acosta over the president's proposals to drastically limit legal immigration.
In fairness, Miller did not attack the statue itself.
A horde of boat-trip owners and Liberty impersonators would have lynched him if he did.
But he did attack its meaning, and in particular the meaning ascribed to it when Emma Lazarus's famous poem was added to its base in 1903, 17 years after the monument itself was completed.
As Miller scolded Acosta: "I don't want to get off into a whole thing about history here, but the Statue of Liberty is ... a symbol of American liberty lighting the world.
The poem that you're referring to, that was added later and is not part of the original Statue of Liberty."
Miller is factually correct, but as he put it himself, this is not really about history.
It is about the contemporary resonance of Lazarus's startling words, the only ones in which a state has appeared to invite not just any old immigrants, but the poorest of the poor: "Your tired, your poor, / Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, / The wretched refuse of your teeming shore."
There has never been a time when the "wretched refuse" has been more visible on our screens.
Miller was not engaging in literary criticism - he was making it clear that these people are not welcome in Trump's USA.
This conflict about the meaning of a statue is part of a wider political and cultural war: it is really a conflict about the meaning of America.
Lazarus - and her friends who campaigned to place her words at the base after her death - knew very well that they were engaging in a highly political act.
The sculpture was intended to mark the connections between French and American republicanism by representing in a well-worn classical trope, the female embodiment of Liberty.
Lazarus changed that meaning: in her poem the female figure is no longer abstract - she has a voice.
And she gives herself a very different name: Mother of Exiles.
The marrying of the poem to the image is a brilliant feminist coup and a devastating attack on American nativism.
And just as Lazarus changed the meaning of the statue, rightwingers have long wanted to change it back.
The great loudmouth Rush Limbaugh, a kind of John the Baptist for the coming of Trump, argued in 2010 that Liberty is not inviting anyone in, but is rather an early neocon, taking the American flame out to the benighted world: "Lady Liberty is stepping forward.
She is meant to be carrying the torch of liberty from the United States to the rest of the world.
The torch is not to light the way to the United States."
Rather unusually, Limbaugh actually hit on something.
The meaning of the statue is entirely a matter of the angle of perception.
Lazarus's great imaginative act was to see it as it would be seen by exhausted, wretched but hopeful people on the decks of ships after long and often dreadful journeys.
It is literally about seeing the world from the perspective of people seeking refuge and a chance to better their lives.
Her statue speaks back to them the words of hope and welcome they need to hear.
And of course, this is not the perspective Miller and Trump want ever to recognise.
Their torch is meant not to light the way, but to inflame the hatreds that are their only source of power.
World Championships 2017: Neil Black praises Scottish members of Team GB
Eilidh Doyle recalls a time when only two Scots made the GB team
UK Athletics' performance director Neil Black says the 16-strong Scottish contingent in the World Championships squad will make "a massive contribution to the team."
A record number of Scottish athletes have been selected for London 2017, which starts on Friday.
Black believes "there's something special evolving" in Scotland and UK athletics must learn from that.
"We embrace it and we're trying to understand it and we'll push on that until we work it out," Black said.
"I speak to people in the Scottish Institute of Sport and they think it's something to do with what they've done.
Scottish Athletics think it's something to do with what they've done.
British athletics: it's something to do with what they've done.
And the guy on the corner street, too.
Whatever the combination of circumstances, it's absolutely brilliant."
Several of the Scottish athletes are medal contenders, including Laura Muir and Andrew Butchart - who will race against Sir Mo Farah in the 5,000m, while Eilidh Doyle was voted by the squad to be team captain.
"Eilidh is slightly modest.
Her captain's speech was incredible," says Black.
"A number of athletes, whether they were Scottish or wherever they live or train, walked out of that room feeling hugely proud and really motivated.
The passion and real feeling that Eilidh naturally put into it were great."
The Commonwealth silver medallist, who will compete in the 400m hurdles at her fifth World Championships, says it's "incredible" 16 Scots are in the British team.
Scotland's previous best total of athletes at the worlds was seven, achieved in 1983 and 2015.
Middle-distance runner Muir is leading the way, having set five British and two European records in the past year.
She will go in the 1500m and the 5,000m.
Chris O'Hare, who runs in the 1500m, is another Scot to watch, following a great season that included victory at the British Team trials and the Anniversary Games.
Doyle remembers her first world championships, when the only other Scot in the team was Lee McConnell.
The team captain says she's "hugely proud" of the fact so many of her compatriots have not only made the team, but, in some cases, will be challenging for medals and competing to make finals.
"The special thing about being team captain is that it was voted for by the other members of the team, so that it was such a huge honour anyway but to know that your teammates have voted for you and chosen you made it extra-special for me," she added.
"Obviously, I'm very proud of all the Scots who've made the team.
It just shows how far we've come.
And they're here as well-established athletes, athletes that are going to be looking to get on podiums.
As for my captain's speech?
Yeah, I think it went well.
I just drew on the fact that we're very lucky in this situation in that we've got a home World Championships.
So it's really just the importance of drawing on that home support and thriving on the fact that we're back at the Olympic Stadium.
I'm getting a second chance to go out there and compete and it's just going to be such an amazing atmosphere out there."
Blocking critics from Facebook: Don't run for public office, if you can't take heat from voters
The father of our country knew something about bad press.
Americans loved George Washington, but it didn't take long for newspapers to start slamming him on everything from domestic policy to his political principles.
He chafed at the criticism, sure.
But he did not silence his critics.
Because back in 1783, Washington said, "the freedom of Speech may be taken away - and, dumb & silent we may be led, like sheep, to the Slaughter."
That brings me to Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, who needs to work on being more like Washington.
Hogan's staff has blocked and deleted the posts of at least 450 people who voiced their opinions on his official Facebook page.
And the American Civil Liberties Union sued him for that earlier this week.
The governor's staff dismissed the lawsuit as frivolous, and the online commentary was rich with a "who cares?" backlash.
"It's only Facebook," plenty of folks said.
But it matters.
And it especially matters when it's a guy like Hogan.
This is a Republican governor in an overwhelmingly Democratic state who is astonishingly popular.
He has the second-highest approval rating of the nation's 50 governors.
Hogan is not a reactionary hothead.
He's shown a steady hand in leading his state and a stern adherence to principles.
He's also been pretty deft at using Facebook as a primary means to connect with his constituents, playfully debuting his hairless head after chemo treatments on his page.
So blocking people who come to the governor's page - which is a public forum, labeled as official and administered by staff members paid public tax dollars - is unnecessary and ultimately dangerous.
In an interview with The Washington Post, Hogan spokeswoman Amelia Chasse defended the governor's actions, arguing that blocking the comments was nothing more than moderating them.
But it's too easy to use the image of trolls or spammers or hateful folks lashing out online.
The Post talked to some of the real people blocked by Hogan.
And they're just that - real people talking to their elected leaders: a teacher, a business owner and a pastor, not trolls.
They all said that their comments were respectful, thoughtful and not profane.
The pastor quoted the Bible in his post, appealing to Hogan's Catholic faith.
Attorney Lakshmi Sarma Ramani of Bowie, Md., wasn't hateful, but she asked about hate crimes.
"I politely commented that I was disappointed in his lack of response to hate crimes and other recent news items," she wrote in the comment section of The Post's news story.
"I also do not appreciate that idea that when a number of people comment on the same topic, they are immediately disregarded by some as a so-called collective effort, rather than recognized as a large group of concerned citizens."
What the governor's staff called a "concentrated spam attack" others would probably call "advocacy."
The Facebook era makes it easy to tailor a message by simply blocking a critic or deleting a negative comment.
It's a lot cleaner than the old days, when doing the same would have required sending staff out to collect and burn newspapers with critical editorials or arresting and silencing protesters.
But that's exactly what's happening, only digitally.
Hogan isn't the first public official to be criticized for defanging Facebook and other social media.
President Trump is being sued by Twitter users who were blocked from his Twitter feed.
One of the first landmark rulings on this issue came down last week in Virginia.
The chair of the Loudoun County Board of Supervisors violated the First Amendment, according to U.S. District Judge James C. Cacheris in Alexandria, when she banned a constituent from her Facebook page.
And in Kentucky, Gov. Matt Bevin (R) also got a visit from the ACLU over his use of Facebook and Twitter.
This shouldn't be so hard.
In Washington's time, the era of affordable postage had an impact much like the Internet.
The number of newspapers quadrupled between 1776 and 1800, and anonymous letter writers hammered his leadership.
And even back then, Washington had anonymous trolls.
People using the pseudonyms "Juricola," "Valerius," "Belisarius," and "Portius" all wrote letters to newspapers trashing Washington's decisions.
Petitions criticizing his stand on the Treaty of Amity, Commerce, and Navigation with Britain overwhelmed his office, according to the historical documents collected by the online Papers of George Washington Project.
But he did not silence them.
Freedom of speech, dissent and discourse lie at the very foundation of our nation.
And true leadership means accepting that.
Summer bird feeding should be stopped at once
"We have received samples from roughly five locations and online reports from two to three places.
Most of these are from southern and south-western Finland, but there are also individual reports from Haapavesi and Seinäjoki", says senior researcher Marja Isomursu from the Finnish Food Safety Authority (Evira).
European greenfinches have died of trichomoniasis, an infectious disease
caused by a parasite called Trichomonas gallinae.
It has been known to infect doves, particularly pigeons.
In the 2000s, the disease was also discovered in finches.
The most devastating news was heard in 2009
when trichomoniasis significantly reduced the number of European greenfinches in Finland, after which the species has slowly recovered.
"We have seen evidence of diseased European greenfinches, but not on a large scale, at least not yet", says Juha Honkala, senior museum technician at the Finnish Museum of Natural History.
"We fear that the previous epidemics will recur, unless we do something.
What we need to do is very simple: everyone must stop summer bird feeding at once."
More news will be released later.
Ronan Rafferty hopes for home comforts at Renaissance Club
Former European No 1 Ronan Rafferty will be hoping for home comforts over the next three days as the Renaissance Club in East Lothian hosts the 25th edition of the Scottish Senior Open.
The Northern Irishman, who led next door at Archerfield Links heading into the final round last year before losing out to Paul Eales, is attached to the new venue and is acting as tournament ambassador on behalf of the club's founder and CEO Jerry Sarvadi.
"I watched Renaissance Club being built, and we're seeing it come to its glory with this event," said Rafferty.
"The players will see this course at its finest, it is in fabulous condition.
Jerry has done a fabulous job setting this place up.
He's a keen advocate of this game and is proud of his achievement here.
This is a great showcase for this course."
Englishman Eales is looking forward to defending a championship for the first time despite winning on both the European Tour and European Challenge Tour in his 32-year career.
"This does feel really special," said the Southport-based player.
"I didn't get to defend the Extremadura Open because that was taken off the schedule the year after I won it.
Coming back to this part of the world is magical.
It's a wonderful place to play golf in.
The memories from last year are coming back and it was special for me and my wife Sharon to win last year.
It was a really special time and one we will always cherish."
Making his return to action on home soil is Gary Orr, who joined the European Senior Tour after turning 50 earlier this year.
This event will be his first Scottish appearance since the Aberdeen Asset Management Scottish Open in 2013.
"It always means a little bit more when you're playing at home," said Helensburgh man Orr.
"You want to do well; but you do feel that extra pressure.
I've really enjoyed playing again and I've played some solid golf.
I'm happy with how it's going so far."
Joining the trio in the field are former Masters winner Ian Woosnam and Senior major champions Paul Broadhurst, Roger Chapman, Mark James and Mark McNulty.
Orr and former Ryder Cup captain Sam Torrance are among six Scots in the field, the others being Andrew Oldcorn, Stephen McAllister, Bill Longmuir and Ross Drummond.
Admission is free of charge, with car parking charged at £5 per car with one occupant and £10 per car with two or more occupants.
All proceeds go to Prostate Cancer UK.
Possible indoor climate problems investigated in Säkylä
The Pori Brigade has reported that, so far, no indoor climate problems have been discovered in the building of the signals company in Säkylä.
Investigations are still in progress.
The investigations started after a man had to interrupt his military service as he suspected that his state of health deteriorated due to the poor indoor climate at the barracks.
According to lieutenant colonel Mika Holma, chief of staff of the Pori Brigade, there have been no problems regarding the health of other conscripts.
"It turned out that this was a separate incident, and no other conscripts serving in the same unit have experienced any problems.
We take every report seriously, and we wanted to thoroughly investigate this case.
Currently, we are not aware of any indoor climate problem", Holma says.
The press release issued by the Pori Brigade says that it was necessary to relocate some material to the barracks to make room for new conscripts in July, which may have increased the volume of dust temporarily.
"The air may have felt stuffy because of this", Holma says.
Poverty and Death in Indonesia's Land of Gold
When Bardina Degei cooks dinner, she doesn't use a stove.
She rarely even uses a pot.
In her wooden home in Enarotali, the capital of Paniai regency in the restive Indonesian province of Papua, the housewife usually just places a sweet potato - known locally as "nota" - directly into the fireplace.
After half-an-hour, the charred tuber is retrieved and devoured with eager, unwashed hands.
Degei sits on the mud floor - she has no furniture - which is where she also performs her daily chores, such as washing clothes with murky water from the nearby swamp.
A bucket in a roofless room serves as a latrine.
As the youngest of her husband's four wives, she has been assigned no fields to tend.
Polygamy is common here.
Of course, working late can be dangerous: Most of the village men are unemployed and many drink heavily, plus there are the soldiers.
"No one dares to walk around the village after 5 p.m.," she says.
It's a rare glimpse of daily life in the highlands of Papua, a former Dutch colony that was absorbed into Indonesia in 1969 following a controversial referendum, when just 1,026 elders were forced to vote through a public show of hands before occupying troops.
An existing movement agitating for independence against Dutch rule swiftly turned its ire against the Jakarta government, which maintains tight control over the region, barring foreign journalists or rights monitors.
In 2003, the province was officially split into Papua and West Papua, with independent Papua New Guinea occupying the eastern part of the island.
Enarotali is as remote as it is desolate; the journey here involves a 90-minute flight from the provincial capital Jayapura to Nabire, and then a stomach-churning five-hour drive by hire car.
There is no public transport.
The town of some 19,000 people consists of wooden houses ringed by bamboo fencing, corrugated iron roofs transformed by rust into varying tawny shades.
Very few Indonesians have made the journey here, let alone journalists, and practically no foreigners.
Before Christian missionaries arrived, Mee Pago Papuans worshiped a God named Uga Tamee.
There were other changes, too.
"We were not used to wearing these clothes," says Degei, indicating her vividly colored, hand-woven turban, dark shirt and a bright skirt.
"Before, we only wore leaves on our bodies."
Papua is Indonesia's poorest province, where 28% of people live below the poverty line and with some of the worst infant mortality and literacy rates in Asia.
But it is also Indonesia's land of gold.
The world's largest and most profitable gold mine, Grasberg, owned by Phoenix-based Freeport McMoran, lies just 60 miles from Paniai, a highland province around the size of New Jersey and home to 153,000 people.
In 2015 alone, Freeport mined some $3.1 billion worth of gold and copper here.
In addition, Papua boasts timber resources worth an estimated $78 billion.
These riches are, however, a source of misery for Papuans, ensuring Indonesia's powerful military maintains a suffocating presence.
A 2005 investigation in The New York Times reported that Freeport paid local military personnel and units nearly $20 million between 1998 and 2004, including up to $150,000 to a single officer.
Papuan calls for greater autonomy threaten this golden goose, and are dealt with mercilessly.
According to rights activists, more than 500,000 Papuans have been killed, and thousands more have been raped, tortured and imprisoned by the Indonesian military since 1969.
Mass killings in Papua's tribal highlands during the 1970s amounted to genocide, according to the Asia Human Rights Commission.
Indonesian police arrested more than 3,900 peaceful protesters in the region last year alone.
We Will Lose Everything, a 2016 report by the Archdiocese of Brisbane, contains testimony of atrocities committed the previous year, such as extrajudicial executions, torture - rape and electrocution are especially popular, according to another report - and the brutal crushing of peaceful demonstrations.
"It's difficult to count the number of victims as incidents happen every week," says Andreas Harsono, Indonesia researcher for Human Rights Watch.
The screws have tightened as Papua's resources bring an influx of settlers from elsewhere in Indonesia.
The province's 3.5 million population is 83% Christian, but the demographic is changing as Muslim economic migrants arrive from Indonesia's populous islands of Java, Borneo, Sumatra and Sulawesi.
Javanese warung canteens sell fried chicken and gado-gado mixed-vegetables served with peanut sauce.
Local people struggle to compete.
"The migrants started to sell chicken and vegetables in the traditional market cheaper than the local Papuans," explains Abeth You, a 24-year-old Paniai native who moved to the provincial capital Jayapura for work.
"It made the native Papuans - the mama-mama [the women] of Papua - lose their market."
Indonesian President Joko Widodo, popularly known as Jokowi, vowed to address the inequalities and rights abuses in Papua during his election campaign in 2014.
The former carpenter secured 27 of Papua's total 29 districts - including Paniai - on the way to the Presidential Palace in Jakarta.
But precious little has changed in Papua, and today local people feel betrayed.
"Our hearts have been broken because in 2014 we voted for Jokowi, with the expectation that he would fulfill our hopes for justice to be restored," You says.
In fact, Paniai suffered a nadir just two months after Jokowi's October inauguration.
On Dec. 7, 2014 a group of 11 children were outside singing Christmas carols in front of a bonfire in Enarotali when two Indonesian soldiers on a motorbike broke through the gloom.
The startled children told them that they should turn on their headlights.
One of the soldiers took umbrage at their tone and later returned with four soldiers, according to local Pastor Yavedt Tebai.
The soldiers, who had been drinking, chased and beat the group with their rifle butts, said victims and witnesses.
Then one of the soldiers fired into the group of children.
One child, 16-year-old Yulianus Yeimo, was beaten so badly he fell into a coma.
A couple of hours later, the nearby government Election Commission building was set ablaze, and things escalated the following day.
About 1,000 young Papuan men, women and children gathered on a soccer field in front of the local police station and military command center to demand justice.
They carried ceremonial hunting bows and performed the waita dance - running in circles and simulating birdsong - of Papua's Mee Pago tribe.
Some protesters started hurling stones at police and military posts.
As tempers grew more heated, an order was sent to the soldiers through internal radio: "If the masses offer resistance more than three times, shoot them dead," it said, according to an official document seen by TIME that has not been released to the local media.
Yeremias Kayame, 56, the head of the Kego Koto neighborhood of Enarotali, saw the impending danger and appealed for calm, imploring the crowd to go back home.
Nobody was in the mood to listen.
"When I turned around I suddenly got shot in my left wrist," he told TIME on the porch of his brightly painted wooden house.
Kayame still doesn't know who fired but says the bullet came from the ranks of amassed soldiers.
"It was crowded, many shots were fired," he adds.
Local man Alfius Youw was hit three times, according to his cousin who witnessed the shootings.
"I ran to him and examined his body to make sure it was him," Yohanes, who like many Indonesians only goes by one name, told TIME somberly.
"I saw he was dead ... I kissed him."
The Papua Police Chief Inspector General Yotje Mende told reporters that his officers were only "securing" their station because it was under attack.
"We have to defend ourselves when people threaten to kill us," Papua Police spokesperson, Commissioner Pudjo Sulistiyo said in 2015.
"It's a matter of life and death."
According to Human Rights Watch, five young protesters were killed and many more injured.
News of the killings only filtered through to Jakarta the following day.
Three weeks later, Jokowi gave an impassioned speech in Jayapura, where he expressed sympathies with the victims' families and vowed to address the historic abuses in Papua.
"I want this case to be solved immediately so it won't ever happen again in the future," he said.
Security Minister Wiranto said in October 2016 that he was setting up a non-judicial mechanism to settle historic human-rights violations.
But the excuses started almost immediately.
"Most of the violations occurred a long time ago.
Some were in the '90s and in early 2000s.
The point is we are committed to addressing these violations, but there are processes to go through," he said.
Then Wiranto backtracked when speaking to TIME in Jakarta on June 5, saying he has no plans to establish a grievance mechanism in Papua.
Instead, "All will be settled by law," he said.
Wiranto, who the U.N. has indicted for "crimes against humanity" relating to more than 1,000 deaths during East Timor's bloody 1999 independence vote, said that 11 cases of human-rights violations in Papua have already been settled, including the Paniai incident.
Families of the Paniai victims greeted such claims with grim incredulity.
"I've been interviewed four times for the past three years, but there has been no progress at all," Yohanes says.
"I'm tired."
He says that years later, he still lives in fear.
"I'm afraid," he says.
"I'm afraid of being arrested by the military, afraid to be shot."
His brother Yacobus echoed the view that people in Paniai are fearful of discussing the incident.
He says he was beaten by the military after helping to bury four of the victims.
"After burying the bodies, the military came looking for me," he says.
The shootings haven't stopped.
On Tuesday, Indonesian police shot at villagers in Paniai's neighboring Deiyai regency.
One person died and 17 others were wounded, including children, during a confrontation between villagers and the manager of a construction company who refused to help transport an unconscious man to hospital.
The man, 24-year-old Ravianus Douw who drowned while he was fishing in a nearby river, died on the way to hospital.
Incensed villagers protested in front of the company's site office.
Police said the villagers threw rocks at officers, who responded by firing warning shots.
But locals say the mobile brigade (Indonesian paramilitary police) began shooting at the crowd, killing one.
"We were so panicked, we are afraid there will be revenge," 29-year-old Dominggu Badii, who lives near the hospital and witnessed the injured being hurried in, tells TIME.
"I have been hiding in my house for two days."
The Deiyai parliament has called for the officers involved to be held to account and the police mobile brigade to be withdrawn from the area.
Paniai has always been a troublespot for the Indonesian government.
The lack of meaningful development feeds the discontent of the tribal Mee, Moni, Dani, and Damal peoples, who live sprawled across Papua's verdant central highlands.
Many joined the Free Papua Movement (OPM), the rebel army that claims to defend the rights of the Papuans by launching sporadic attacks and kidnapping raids on Indonesian soldiers.
Some of the top OPM leaders hail from Paniai, including Tadius Yogi and Daniel Yudas Kogoya.
In response, thousands of people in Paniai have been arrested and arbitrarily detained by the military in recent years, under the guise of "safeguarding national sovereignty."
Some never reappear.
Among the people of Papua, Paniai is known as "a tragic, forgotten place."
Poverty feeds the discontent.
The little rice on sale in Enarotali is too expensive for locals to buy.
Bread is just as out of reach.
People here grow everything they eat: mainly nota plus some fruit and leafy vegetables.
Farming is the job of the women, who each can maintain four or five fields of the sweet potato.
They usually keep most of the harvest for the family, with the rest sold in the local market.
Ten pieces of nota cost only 10,000 Indonesian rupiah (75 cents).
Over time, economic inequalities have grown between the native Papuans and the new migrants, who have arrived in greater numbers since the opening of a new air routes to Nabire Airport.
What few jobs exist typically go to the better-educated and wealthier migrants.
Papuans rarely have the capital or the necessary skills to run their own businesses competitively.
"The young people are not interested to stay in the village ... because there's no jobs or money here," says John Gobai, the chairman of the tribal council of Paniai.
Isolation keeps the world's eyes off Papua.
In addition, reporting restrictions for international media remain tight.
Earlier this year, French journalists Franck Escudie and Basille Longchamp were deported from Papua for a "lack of coordination with related institutions" despite having been granted rare permission to film.
According to Phelim Kine, Deputy Asia Director of Human Rights Watch, Jokowi's election campaign pledges to lift reporting restrictions to boost transparency and development have not been realized.
"There are new hazards for foreign journalists attempting to report from Indonesia's restive easternmost provinces of Papua and West Papua: visa denial and blacklisting," he said in a statement.
The lack of press scrutiny means international pressure on the Indonesian government has been largely limited to Papua's immediate neighbors.
In March, six Pacific nations - Tonga, Nauru, Palau, Tuvalu, the Marshall Islands, and the Solomon Islands - urged the U.N. Human Rights Council to investigate the "various and widespread violations" in Papua, including the Paniai shooting.
These same countries have historically backed the OPM.
Indonesian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Arrmanatha Nasir shrugged off the group's allegations, telling journalists in Jakarta, "In Indonesia, a democratic system still applies and there's free media so it's hard for the evidence of human rights cases to be covered up."
Local people want more foreign governments to take note.
When an official delegation from the Netherlands, headed by the nation's human rights ambassador Kees Van Baar, visited Jayapura on May 4, local people broke their silence, beseeching, "We want freedom," according to a source who also attended the meeting but who asked to stay anonymous.
Indonesia has another presidential election in 2019, but Papuans say they are unlikely to vote again for Jokowi.
"Jokowi is a person who has good intentions, but he is surrounded by the people who are involved in the Paniai shooting," says Gobai, the tribal council chairman.
He wants Jokowi to know that the Paniai people, aside from living under the looming threat of a rapacious military, wallow in destitution, with paltry education and health services.
Gobai says the Paniai people, like other Papuans, consider their vote to Jokowi as a "debt" he must repay.
"They don't need money, they just want justice," he says.
Despite the threats and intimidation, families of the Paniai shooting victims carried out one last symbolic act of defiance: burying one victim's body on land just opposite the police and military station.
Knowing that justice may never be served, at least they won't let those responsible forget their crimes.
"A member of our family has been killed," says Yacobus, head bowed.
"What else could we do?"
Dereck Chisora attacks Robert Helenius for cancelling their rematch: "Not even his fans want to see him fight"
Heavyweight boxers Robert Helenius and Dereck Chisora were set to fight at Hartwall Arena on 27 May.
However, the fight was cancelled for commercial reasons.
In a recent interview for IFL TV, Chisora lays all the blame on Helenius for the cancellation.
"My fight in Finland was cancelled, but I'm not the one to blame.
I don't live in Finland; I don't want to sell my tickets there.
The reason was my Finnish opponent.
He's so bad that not even his fans want to see him fight", Chisora preaches.
Helenius and Chisora had their first fight at a fully packed Hartwall Arena in December 2011.
The judges controversially declared Helenius as the winner.
Ticket sales for the rematch were slow, and promoter Nisse Sauerland told Ilta-Sanomat in May that the fight was postponed to autumn.
No news of the match was heard ever since.
However, Chisora is no longer sorry about the cancellation.
As it happens, the fight would have been cancelled anyway, as Chisora was ill.
"On Thursday, three days before the fight, I was woken by an intense pain.
My hernia was about to blow up.
At hospital, they told me that I needed surgery", Chisora says.
Chisora says that he is 45 per cent fit right now.
He does not seem to be interested in a rematch with Helenius, as he has his eyes set on Dillian Whyte.
Whyte beat Chisora in December on a split decision.
Fire engulfs Dubai's 'Torch' skyscraper for second time
A fire ripped through one of the world's tallest residential towers in Dubai on Friday, forcing hundreds of occupants to flee the 337 metre-tall, 79-storey structure.
It's the second blaze to sweep through the high-rise - which happens to be called the Torch tower - in just two years.
The building was evacuated, no injuries were reported, and there was no immediate word on the cause of the blaze.
"We were sleeping and we woke up to the fire alarm and people screaming.
We ran down the stairs and it took us about 10 minutes to reach from the 50th floor," a resident who gave his name as George told Reuters.
Dubai's civil defence authorities said firefighting squads put out the blaze at around 4.00 am local time (0000 GMT) and were cooling the building.
The government said it was working on providing shelter for those affected.
The incident may revive questions about the safety of materials used on the exteriors of tall buildings across the world.
An investigation by the management of the Torch after its 2015 fire found that most of the damage was to the cladding, exterior panelling used for decoration or insulation.
In the UK, police have said they believe the system of insulation and cladding panels on London's Grenfell Tower may have contributed to the rapid spread of a fire there in June in which some 80 people died.
Moped stolen from a parking area in Joensuu during the night
A moped was stolen from a parking area in Joensuu sometime between 9 pm on Tuesday and 5 am on Wednesday.
The moped was stolen from Tikkamäentie 2 in Niinivaara.
The red moped is a Sky Team Monkey,
and its registration number is 27-REV.
The moped was found later on Thursday.
The police would like to receive any observations of the moped or the theft via email (This email address is protected against spambots.
You need JavaScript support to see it) or by telephone (0295 415 320).
Edited at 12:40 pm on 3 August 2017: The police reported that the moped has been found.
More than 1 in 5 US travellers carry prohibited items onto aircraft, survey finds
A survey of airline passengers found that more than 20 per cent had knowingly or unknowingly smuggled prohibited items past the US Transportation Security Administration checkpoints onto the aircraft, including at least 6 per cent who boarded the plane while unintentionally carrying prohibited knives or other bladed objects.
Less than 1 per cent claimed that they discovered belatedly that they had mistakenly travelled with firearms, ammunition or explosives.
The survey of more than 1000 people - which was conducted by a jet-chartering service Stratos Jet Charters Inc. - also found that younger travellers were more likely to flout the rules.
Of the respondents who admitted knowingly trying to fly with something banned by the TSA, 19.7 per cent were millennials, compared with less than 15 per cent who were members of Generation X.
The most common items whisked past TSA agents on purpose were food and liquids.
More than 3 per cent admitted knowingly carrying bladed items past security, while 2.2 per cent of female respondents and 3.7 per cent of male respondents also acknowledged intentionally carrying prohibited drugs onto the aircraft.
The company said it surveyed travellers around the country to find out how many had accidentally brought contraband through airport security and how many had done so on purpose.
It's no surprise that the people most likely to haul contraband past security - knowingly or unknowingly - were those who fly the most.
As the company points out, however, the TSA guidelines are somewhat complicated and confusing.
People are often uncertain of what liquids they can carry or how much of them.
So it's no surprise that the largest amount of stuff seized by the TSA happens to be forbidden liquids.
For a time, people thought the TSA might be treating books as contraband.
Liquids are allowed on domestic flights, but not on international ones.
EPA Chief Pruitt Backtracks on Delaying Obama-Era Rules to Reduce Emissions
One day after getting sued by 15 states, Environmental Protection Agency chief Scott Pruitt reversed his earlier decision to delay implementation of Obama-era rules reducing emissions of smog-causing air pollutants.
Pruitt presented the change as his agency being more responsive than past administrations to the needs of state environmental regulators.
He made no mention of the legal challenge filed against his prior position in a federal appeals court.
At issue is an Oct. 1 deadline for states to begin meeting 2015 standards for ground-level ozone.
Pruitt announced in June he would delay compliance by one year to give his agency more time to study the plan and avoid "interfering with local decisions or impeding economic growth."
Pruitt, who was Oklahoma's state attorney general prior to his appointment by President Donald Trump, has long served as a reliable opponent of stricter environmental regulations.
Since arriving in Washington, Pruitt has repeatedly moved to block or delay regulations opposed by the chemical and fossil-fuel industries.
Wednesday's sudden reversal is the latest legal setback for Pruitt's regulatory rollback agenda.
Last month, a federal appeals court in Washington ruled the EPA administrator overstepped his authority in trying to delay implementation of an Obama administration rule requiring oil and gas companies to monitor and reduce methane leaks.
In a statement issued Wednesday evening, Pruitt suggested his about-face on ozone standards simply reinforced the EPA's commitment to working with states through the complex process of meeting the new standards on time.
"Under previous administrations, EPA would often fail to meet designation deadlines, and then wait to be sued by activist groups and others, agreeing in a settlement to set schedules for designation," said Pruitt, who sued EPA more than a dozen times in his prior job.
"We do not believe in regulation through litigation, and we take deadlines seriously.
We also take the statute and the authority it gives us seriously."
Still, the EPA's statement said Pruitt may at some point once again use his "delay authority and all other authority legally available" to ensure regulations "are founded on sound policy and the best available information."
Republicans in Congress are pushing for a broader rewrite of the ozone rules.
A House bill approved last month seeks to delay implementation of the 2015 rules at least eight years.
The measure has not yet been brought to a vote in the Senate.
New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, who led the coalition of states that sued the EPA this week, said the group intends to keep up the legal pressure.
"The EPA's reversal - following our lawsuits - is an important win for the health and safety of those 6.7 million New Yorkers, and the over 115 million Americans directly impacted by smog pouring into their communities," Schneiderman said.
New York was joined in the case by California, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Iowa, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Mexico, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont and Washington, and the District of Columbia.
Ground-level ozone is created when common pollutants emitted by cars, power plants, oil refineries, chemical plants and other sources react in the atmosphere to sunlight.
The resulting smog can cause serious breathing problems among sensitive groups of people, contributing to thousands of premature deaths each year.
Public health advocates and environmentalists cheered Pruitt's surprising change of course.
"It's disturbing how much pressure it took to get this commonsense step from the guy in charge of protecting the air we breathe," said Lori Ann Burd of the Center for Biological Diversity.
"We've got to keep fighting the Trump administration's ideological crusade to pander to polluters and special interests."
Supercar manufacturer to launch an SUV – "in Ferrari's style"
It will also invest in hybrid sports cars, while it aims to hold on to its exclusive position.
"It will probably happen, but it will happen in Ferrari's style", CEO Sergio Marchionne said about Ferrari's plans in a press conference on Wednesday.
Automotive News reports that the details of the new strategy will be revealed next year when the Italian supercar manufacturer presents its five-year plan.
All measles cases in eastern Savonia caused by a single virus type
The National Institute for Health and Welfare (THL) announced that the measles infection in Rantasalmi is of the same virus type as the previous cases in eastern Savonia.
The virology laboratory of THL confirmed on Thursday that the fifth measles infection in eastern Savonia was caused by the same virus as the one that caused all previous infections.
THL confirmed that the measles caught by a person in Rantasalmi on Friday 28 July is of the same virus type as all previous cases in eastern Savonia.
In the light of this information, all infections in eastern Savonia are related to the first measles infection discovered in the area in June.
"This is good news, as this means that there are no signs of any other virus types.
However, it's possible that new infections will be discovered after this fifth case until the middle of August, and the danger isn't over yet", says Mirkaleena Erkkilä, physician in charge of infectious diseases in basic healthcare services at Sosteri.
No new measles infections or suspicions of new cases have been discovered after the fifth case.
"However, it's still important that everyone ensures that they are properly vaccinated", Erkkilä says.
Read more: Three new measles infections confirmed in Pirkanmaa – "New infections or an epidemic highly unlikely"
Finland is getting ready to make legal kilju
Making moonshine legal has not even been considered,
as the process results not only in alcohol, but also methanol which is toxic.
Preparing kilju, a traditional homemade Finnish alcoholic beverage, will be legal next year, while making moonshine legal will not even be considered.
Kilju is prepared through fermentation, while moonshine is made by means of distillation.
The regulation on distillation is based on the fact that the process results not only in alcohol, but also methanol which is toxic.
"We haven't seen any political party that is ready to make moonshine legal for everyone", says Ismo Tuominen, Senior Ministerial Adviser from the Ministry of Social Affairs and Health.
When the ministry originally prepared the reform of the Alcohol Act, making the distillation of moonshine legal was not even considered.
Furthermore, it was not raised in political debate.
"We didn't talk about making distillation legal", says Member of Parliament Outi Mäkelä (National Coalition Party).
She is in the negotiation team of parliamentary groups of parties represented in the Government that discussed the reform of the Alcohol Act.
No permission can be obtained for the distillation of moonshine at home, not even with an application.
In addition, its commercial production will remain subject to a licence.
Tuominen says that there will be a simple rule to regulate the production of alcoholic beverages at home: alcohol can be made at home if it is fermented.
This means that, in addition to beer, cider and wine, it will be legal to make kilju at home.
The Government wanted to make the regulations governing alcohol simpler.
"The new act removes any requirements related to flavouring substances and permits the preparation of kilju", Mäkelä specifies.
In the preparation process, ingredients and any flavouring substances produced as a result of the fermentation process must be clearly identifiable in the beverage.
According to the new act, people can prepare as high volumes of these beverages as they want, and homemade alcohol can also be given as a gift.
However, it cannot be sold.
"Making kilju is no longer a problem related to national health in Finland", Tuominen says.
A much larger change took place in 2004 when any restrictions on importing alcohol from Estonia and other EU states were removed.
As much as 75 per cent of all alcohol consumed in Finland is imported from Estonia.
The alcohol bill is currently being examined by the Ministry of Justice.
The Alcohol Act will be discussed in Parliament when the autumn term starts.
The plenary session will be on 5 September.
The new act will enter into force from the beginning of 2018.
"The act has been prepared thoroughly.
It's like Parliament had taken a stand", Mäkelä says.
Oscar Pistorius was rushed to hospital with an escort of armed guards
Suffering from chest pain, Oscar Pistorius was rushed to a South African hospital with a suspected heart attack.
Pistorius has already been released from the hospital.
Oscar Pistorius is serving his prison sentence at the Atteridgeville prison.
The British Mirror newspaper reports that Pistorius was taken to the hospital this morning escorted by armed guards.
Pistorius was suffering from chest pain, and he was released from the hospital later in the afternoon.
The prison press officer confirmed that Pistorius was taken to the hospital for tests.
The press officer of the Pistorius family stated that the former top athlete is feeling fine.
Last summer, the Supreme Court sentenced the six-time Paralympic gold medallist to six years of imprisonment for the murder of his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp.
Pistorius shot Steenkamp in February 2013.
Trump pressured Mexico on border wall payment according to leaked phone call transcripts
Transcripts of phone calls between US President Donald Trump and leaders of Mexico and Australia have been leaked by the Washington Post.
On 27th January in a phone call to Mexican president, Enrique Pena Nieto, Trump urged him to stop publicly saying he would not pay for a proposed border wall.
The US President berated him for publicly denouncing the wall, reportedly saying to him "You cannot say that to the press."
Trump launched his presidential campaign on a promise to build a wall along the US southern border and vowed to make Mexico pay for the project.
Transcripts of his first call with Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull were also published revealing a tense exchange.
Mr Trump told Mr Turnbull a deal for the US to take on refugees headed for Australia was "ridiculous," "rotten" and "stupid," insisting the deal, brokered under the Obama administration, would make him look like "a dope" after he had proposed a ban on refugee resettlement in the US.
Mr Trump ended the call after telling Mr Turnbull "this is the most unpleasant call all day."
Moore's Ford Massacre: Activists Reenact Racist Lynching as a Call for Justice
A 1948 Ford Mercury passed through a group of onlookers in rural Monroe, Georgia, and rumbled toward the small Moore's Ford Bridge.
Before the car, which had four black passengers and a white driver, could reach the bridge, a group of white men with guns stepped forward to block its path.
The leader of the mob - a middle aged man in a pinstriped suit - took a long drag on his cigar and peered through the windshield.
Inside, the occupants reeled in fear.
"We want that n----r Roger!" the man barked.
"Get him out of the car!"
Screams ripped through the silence as a young black man was dragged from the front passenger seat.
Fortunately, this horrific scene, which played out on July 22, is just a reenactment.
But when a noose is thrown around the neck of "Roger," nearly everyone in the audience let out very real gasps.
Since 2005, civil rights activists have returned to the Moore's Ford Bridge to recreate the night two black couples - Roger and Dorothy Malcom, and George and Mae Murray Dorsey - were lynched by the Ku Klux Klan in 1946.
No one has ever been charged with the murders.
"It's mind boggling that all of these years, not a single person has been arrested - even though we see them in our communities; even though we know who they are," said Tyrone Brooks, who helps organize the reenactment.
"It's a stain on a history, but it's a burden on our souls."
Brooks is a 71-year-old former Georgia state congressman and lifelong civil rights activist.
For him, the reenactment serves as a dramatic call to action and an annual reminder to the Monroe community that an injustice has never been corrected.
"We want prosecution, we want closure, we want healing, we want reconciliation, but we have to have justice first," he said.
"We can't get to healing and reconciliation until we get justice."
A coroner places a sheet over the body of one of the victims of the Moore's Ford lynching on July 27, 1946.
According to FBI files obtained by NBC News, more than 50 men from Monroe and the surrounding counties were suspected in the lynching.
But not one was ever prosecuted.
Though the suspects have remained at large for decades, civil rights activists say the twin motivations for the lynchings were always well known throughout town: politics and sex.
In April 1946, a Supreme Court ruling enabled black citizens in Georgia to cast ballots for the first time during the primary race later that summer.
Around the same time of the election, according to the FBI, black sharecropper Roger Malcom stabbed Barnett Hester, a white landowner, during a fight - ostensibly over a woman.
Brooks said the town rumor was that Hester had been sleeping with Malcom's wife, Dorothy, and that the baby she was carrying was not her husband's.
On July 25, 1946, Loy Harrison, a prominent white landowner, paid $600 to bail Malcom out of jail, according to the FBI.
He was accompanied to the prison by Dorothy, and their cousins, Mae Murray and George Dorsey.
But, driving away from the jail, as they approached Moore's Ford Bridge, a lynch mob surrounded the car.
"As it turns out it was Harrison who set up and ordered the murders," one FBI report concludes.
"It is also apparent that there was a conspiracy among state and local law enforcement, who not only took part in the murders, disposed of evidence and concealed the identity of witnesses."
Brooks put it more succinctly.
"It was a voting rights massacre," he said.
"They were all killed to send a message to black people in this community: 'If you register and if you vote, this is what will happen to you.'"
For nearly a decade, Cassandra Greene has directed the annual reenactment of the Moore's Ford Bridge lynchings.
Her performance is graphic, gripping and grounded in a kind of deep racism that many would like to believe no longer exists in America.
It's difficult to watch, and even more difficult to look away, but Greene said that's the point.
"We don't want to talk about the lynching because it makes us face the ugliness in all of us," she said.
"But I can't build a relationship with you, if you won't hear me, or hear what I've been through."
Rehearsals for this year's production began in June, and on the first day nearly 30 actors - a dozen white and the rest black - crowded into a room and listened as Greene launched into a well-rehearsed overview of the play.
Wade Marbaugh serves as Greene's co-director.
He's played the part of the head Klansman for years, but he said the role never gets any easier.
"I feel dirty because this is not who I am," said Marbaugh.
"But I think it's very important to keep this history alive because we don't want to go back to those times."
Across the room, actors Darrius Bradshaw and Nick Rascona, who play Roger Malcom and Barnett Hester, rehearsed their lines.
The play begins with Malcom shouting and shoving Hester, livid that he's been sleeping with his wife, Dorothy.
"I said n---a, get off my property!"
Rascona fires back.
There's a beat.
And then everyone (at least all the black actors) bursts into laughter.
Greene laughs the hardest.
"What?!," Rascona asked.
He's alarmed, confused.
Did I go too hard?
"No," Greene said through chuckles.
"I just don't think white people back then said 'n---a.'"
"Yea," one of the other black cast members quipped.
"You have to hit the hard 'R.'"
And just like that the energy in the room shifts; a sense of camaraderie replaces the discomfort.
Everyone is dedicated to getting this right, not only for the sake of the play, but also for the memory of the four people killed.
The scene begins again.
This time, when Rascona says the N-word, it's sharp and emphatic.
Absolutely no one laughs.
The reenactment ends violently and quickly.
There's screams, gunfire and then, silence.
A woman dressed in funeral black, stands over the actors bodies and performs Billie Holiday's mournful eulogy, "Strange Fruit."
Her voice breaks on every other word.
A hundred yards back, a group of about four dozen spectators wipe sweat and tears away from their eyes.
The audience is almost evenly split between black and white.
One couple has traveled from Ithaca, New York, to see the performance, many are from just down the road.
They've all weathered Georgia's oppressive humidity for the nearly eight hours as Brooks lead them on a pilgrimage to the grave sites of the Malcoms and Dorseys.
Up until this point, the murders have remained an anecdote, but now, standing on the same land where the lynchings took place, the air feels haunted.
As the final notes of the song fade, Greene invites the crowd to move closer and inspect the bodies.
Children crouch by their heads, take in the fake blood and still bodies, and whisper to each other.
"They're not really dead," one little boy mutters, as if to remind himself.
After a few minutes Greene thanks the crowd, and suddenly it's over.
The actors throw off the lynching rope and wipe away tears.
Bradshaw hugs Marbaugh, the man in the suit who played the head Klansman.
Nick Rascona hugs two of his castmates, and then breaks down crying in their arms; the emotional toll of the performance finally getting to him.
"It's okay," one of the women whispers.
"We know that's not what's in your heart.
You did this for a reason."
Later, the audience sits down to dinner with the actors.
At one table, a white couple from Atlanta chats animatedly about the reenactment with a black couple they just met.
Denise Duplinski struggled to find words for how the performance made her feel.
"It's hard to hear those horrible awful words, and deeds ... come out of people that look like you and who do it because they look like you," she said.
"What this really does to me is make me think that lynchings are still going on," she added, "they're just called police shootings now."
Across the room, Tyrone Brooks holds court at his table, eating and reminiscing about civil rights.
He said he's already begun planning for next year's performance.
"The reenactment is inspirational in a way because it describes the horror of what we endured, but it also is a teaching moment," he said.
"It's like, if you don't learn from this, it can happen again.
Those who don't study their history, those who do not know their history, are doomed to repeat it."
Tearing vegetables in shops heats up feelings: This is how much you can actually save by removing "extra parts"
Can cauliflower leaves be removed before weighing?
What about the large top of a pineapple? After all, it weighs who knows how much.
People are divided: for some, this is an indication of extreme stinginess, some do not want to pay for the parts that they will not use and that they would throw away anyway.
This is an everyday phenomenon in shops.
For example, empty cardboard boxes have been placed in the vegetable section of K-Citymarket Ruoholahti in Helsinki because many, for example, remove cauliflower leaves.
When placed in these boxes, the leaves are then disposed of as biowaste.
According to news published by Taloussanomat, shopkeepers are amazed by this behaviour.
How much can you really save by removing unnecessary parts before weighing?
How effective is this really?
Me Naiset magazine tested what the price of a pineapple, artichoke, mushroom, broccoli and cauliflower is after any unnecessary parts are removed.
Cauliflower: The price of a cauliflower originally EUR 2.10 was EUR 1.80 after all the leaves were removed.
Pineapple: The price of a full pineapple of EUR 2.30 fell to EUR 1.95 after the top was removed.
Artichoke: The price dropped from EUR 2.60 to EUR 2.40 after the base was cut off.
Mushrooms: The total price of two mushrooms was EUR 0.75.
Without the base, their price was EUR 0.60.
Broccoli: A medium-sized broccoli cost EUR 1, and the price decreased to EUR 0.80 after the base was removed.
Results: If any unnecessary parts are removed, you can save a few dozen cents when buying a single vegetable.
In percentage terms, the price decreased by as much as 20 per cent.
Therefore, you could have saved EUR 1.20 from the aforementioned purchases!
Neymar bought out of Barcelona – the Brazilian star signed a five-year deal with PSG
AFP reports that Brazilian star player Neymar has signed a five-year deal with French football club Paris Saint-Germain (PSG).
Earlier in Thursday evening it was reported that Neymar's representatives had paid the release fee of EUR 222 million to FC Barcelona playing in the Spanish Primera División.
The incredible transfer fee of EUR 222 million is the highest fee ever paid in the history of football.
The earlier record was held by Manchester United which paid EUR 105 million for French Paul Pogba last summer.
The Primera División froze the transfer earlier on Thursday when it rejected the first payment attempted by Neymar's representatives.
According to the rules of the Primera División, a buying club cannot pay a fee matching the release clause directly to the seller, but the player must pay himself out of his deal. This takes place by passing the fee through the Primera División.
In practice, PSG paid the sum to Neymar and his representatives who, through the Primera División, forwarded the funds to Barcelona.
Neymar is expected to arrive in Paris on Friday.
He will possibly be presented to his new home crowd at PSG's season opener against Amiens on Saturday.
UEFA to investigate the details
In a press release, Barcelona announced that it will send information about the fee to the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) so that it can define any disciplinary actions resulting from the transfer.
For example, Javier Tebas, president of La Liga de Fútbol Profesional, the Spanish association of professional football, has suspected that PSG is in breach of the rules of UEFA's financial fair play through its spending.
UEFA has the right to impose sanctions on a club that produces losses of more than EUR 30 million over a period of three years.
According to UEFA, Neymar's transfer does not automatically violate these rules.
Neymar's transfer to PSG will have an impact on the club's finances for several years, but this impact cannot be evaluated beforehand.
UEFA stated that PSG may, for example, sell players at significant fees.
PSG is owned by Qatar Sports Investment, a state-owned company from Qatar.
The club's chairman is Nasser al-Khelaifi, a former tennis pro from Qatar.
Number ten jersey for Neymar
Austin, 21, badly burnt by lightning – flash recorded by airport security camera
Austin Dunn was performing regular maintenance on an airplane at Southwest Florida International Airport with two of his colleagues when the plane was suddenly struck by lightning.
The power of the lightning threw Dunn, who was working near the wing, to the ground.
Dunn was rushed to hospital.
He had third-degree burns all over his body.
"My father called me and said that my brother got electrocuted and is now at the hospital.
I just asked if he's still alive", Austin's sister Autumn says.
Austin spent two weeks in hospital.
In addition to burns, he suffered muscle damage and cerebral bleeding.
This was a rough experience for the whole family.
"No one can expect anything like this.
This was a traumatic experience for all of us", Autumn says.
According to a representative of the airport, the lightning warning system was on at the time of the accident, and forwarding companies can independently decide whether or not to follow it.
Pearson cuts another 3,000 jobs, slashes dividend to revive business
British education group Pearson said on Friday it would cut another 3,000 jobs and slash its interim dividend by 72 per cent as it started another restructuring programme to tackle the pressures facing its business.
The job cuts, which Chief Executive John Fallon said will mostly come late in 2018 and in early 2019, are in addition to 4,000 roles lost in its previous restructuring.
Pearson announced a plan to cut costs by another 300 million pounds ($394-million U.S.) in May in a third cost-cutting programme to try to revive a business hit by the rapid move to digital learning.
The company, which agreed to sell its stake in Penguin Random House to partner Bertelsmann last month, said its outlook for the year was unchanged after it reported a 1 per cent rise in underlying sales in the first half to 2.05 billion pounds.
Kabul convoy attack: Nato soldier killed in suicide blast
A suicide bomber has attacked a military convoy in the Afghan capital, Kabul, killing a Nato soldier and wounding several others, officials say.
Five soldiers and an interpreter were injured, a Nato statement said.
Unconfirmed local reports say three civilians also died in the incident in the city's Qarabagh district.
The bombing is the latest violence to have hit Afghanistan this month - on Tuesday more than 30 people were killed in a mosque blast in Herat.
On Monday a suicide bomber killed two people near the Iraqi embassy in Kabul.
A Nato statement said that Thursday evening's blast happened when a joint patrol with the Afghan army was attacked by a "personnel-borne improvised explosive device."
The statement said that all those injured are in a stable condition and are being treated at the US military hospital at Bagram airfield.
Correspondents say the growing strength of the Taliban and the group known as so-called Islamic State (IS) in Qarabagh is a major source of concern to Nato forces based in nearby Bagram.
According to the United Nations, Afghanistan saw at least 1,662 civilian deaths in the first half of 2017, with about 20% of those in the capital.
At the end of July, a suicide car bomb killed at least 30 people in a mainly Shia district of Kabul.
The Taliban said they had carried out that attack.
On 31 May, a huge bombing in the centre of the city killed more than 150 people, the deadliest militant attack in the country since US-led forces ousted the Taliban from power in 2001.
The violence underlines the precarious security situation in Afghanistan as US President Donald Trump weighs up whether to increase the number of US troops aiding the military and police in the country.
Correspondents say the suicide bombings in Kabul in recent weeks have also created a crisis of public confidence in the government, its policies and in particular the reputation of President Ashraf Ghani.
EPA reverses decision to delay smog rule after lawsuits
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency reversed a decision to delay an Obama-era rule requiring states to curb smog-causing emissions, one day after 15 states sued the agency over the move.
The EPA announced the decision to go ahead with the so-called "2015 Ozone Designations" late on Wednesday, saying it showed the agency's commitment to working with states.
"We believe in dialogue with, and being responsive to, our state partners," EPA Chief Scott Pruitt said in a statement.
Pruitt in June had announced the EPA's intention to delay the ozone designations - in which existing smog pollution is measured in parts of the country to determine where cuts must be made to meet tougher air quality standard - by one year to October 2018.
A group of 15 mostly Democratic states, along with the District of Columbia, filed a suit on Tuesday saying the effort was illegal.
The administration of President Donald Trump has been seeking to roll back a wide array of environmental regulations imposed by former President Barack Obama, as part of a broader agenda Trump says is aimed at sparking economic growth.
But the efforts have triggered pushback by Democratics and conservation groups who are concerned about the impact of greater emissions on public health.
The EPA's website says breathing air containing ozone "can reduce lung function and increase respiratory symptoms" like asthma.
Sydney Morning Herald reports that one of the leaders of Isis had also sent parts of a bomb to Sydney.
According to the suspects, their intention was to plant the bomb on a plane on 15 July, but their attempt failed before the security checkpoint.
The police have not disclosed any details of why the attempt failed.
Another plan of the suspected terrorists was to build a machine that spreads a colourless toxic gas and carry it to a public place full of people, such as a public transport vehicle.
Michael Phelan, a deputy commissioner of the Australian Federal Police, says that this was one of the most professional plans ever witnessed in Australia.
Due to the plans of suspected terrorists, four men were apprehended in police raids on Saturday.
One of the men has been released, but his interrogations will also be continued later.
Neste CEO: Renewable fuels did well
Oil refining company Neste's profit before taxes decreased, while still being above expectations during the second quarter.
According to CEO Matti Lievonen, the company reached good results in oil products, the sales volumes of renewable products were record high and the net sales of the Marketing & Services segment developed positively.
Last year, the comparative operating profit increased as a result of the US Blenders Tax Credit tax concession.
According to Lievonen, the operating profit of renewable products remained high this year as a result of higher sales volumes and favourable market conditions, even after the discontinuation of the tax concession.
"We are making good progress in terms of our strategy.
We will continue to focus on our customers and growth projects and complete our previously announced strategic investments in 2017", Lievonen said in a press release.
Mikey Garcia and Vasyl Lomachenko meet for the first time, discuss a possible showdown
Vasyl Lomachenko and Mikey Garcia, who should be on a collision course to stage the most compelling boxing match under 147 pounds in the near future, met each other for the first time Thursday.
They were in separate rooms at ESPN offices in Los Angeles until Garcia, the unbeaten World Boxing Council lightweight champion, walked down the hallway to greet Lomachenko, the World Boxing Organization super-featherweight champion.
After Garcia's victory by unanimous decision over former four-division world champion Adrien Broner on Saturday on Showtime, both fighters are members of the top-five pound-for-pound list.
Garcia extended his right hand and said, "How you doing, champ?
Best of luck to you."
Lomachenko defends his belt against Miguel Marriaga on Saturday night at 7 on ESPN.
As the pair posed for photos, Lomachenko manager Egis Klimas noted that a potential showdown between the fighters would be "perfect sizing."
"I'm a former featherweight," Garcia reminded.
"I moved up for Broner [at 140 pounds], but I'm not that big.
I'm small for 140.
I want to come down to lightweight.
And he's got to move up to lightweight [135 pounds] and then we have a fight.
That's what the fans are asking for.
Let's give them that."
Lomachenko agreed.
"Boxing needs this fight."
Klimas asked if it should be on pay-per-view, part of a strategy he has to have Lomachenko fight a 135-pound debut bout later this year to set up a date next summer with Garcia (37-0, 30 knockouts), who also has interest in fighting the Jorge Linares-Luke Campbell winner following their Sept. 23 lightweight title bout at the Forum.
"This fight could be on pay-per-view because all the fans have been asking about it," Garcia said, later expressing openness to fighting on whatever network offers the best financial package.
"We're the main names.
No other names can generate that kind of attention.
Whenever they're ready ... ."
Garcia said he appreciates Lomachenko as "a tremendous fighter," and may attend his Saturday bout.
But Lomachenko paused at lavish praise for Garcia, saying he thought the three-division champion from Riverside looked "very slow, sorry Mikey ... you wanted the knockout."
Garcia said the focus was to show punching strength, then box.
They both said they can feel the momentum building for their own bout.
"This is the fight to be made.
No other fight creates as much attention and buzz.
I'm more than happy to work at it," Garcia said.
Said Lomachenko: "I've waited for the top fighters, and this is Mikey.
It will be a great fight."
Average monthly salary EUR 5,300, regardless of education – the "Wild West" of investment advisors
The quality of investment advice has raised much debate.
Most recently, Helsingin Sanomat wrote about Ritva, 68, to whom an investment advisor of a banking firm talked complete nonsense when selling investment products.
Regulations governing investment advisors and the sale of various investment products will become stricter at the beginning of next year.
These are based on the new Markets in Financial Instruments Directive which will be applied starting from the beginning of next year.
Currently, the evaluation of the competence of investment advisors and employees who sell investment products is mainly based on self-regulation.
No competence requirements are defined in the legislation.
Finance Finland (FFI) recommends that individuals working in investment services complete its APV1 or AVP2 qualifications.
FFI has assigned the provision of its qualifications to APV Investment Examinations Ltd, whose qualifications team consists of experts from the Financial Supervisory Authority, universities and companies operating in the field.
The qualifications require 12–15 credits and their examinations are prepared by Aalto University Executive Education which offers development services for business management.
Its website says that both of its examinations have "fairly extensive requirements."
The study material consists of 10–15 books and a number of other guides and journals.
Markku Savikko, managing director of APV Investment Examinations Ltd, says that roughly 70 per cent of those who take the examinations pass.
"When it comes to the largest banks, nearly all of their employees who sell investment services have completed either APV1 or APV2 qualifications, as this is a mandatory requirement set out in their own rules.
Then again, there are smaller banking firms – I don't want to name any names – whose employees seem to steer clear of these qualifications", Savikko says.
According to Savikko, there are "a few" banking firms like this.
Savikko says that, since 2000, 13,000–14,000 people have completed APV1 qualifications, while roughly 3,000 people have completed the more demanding APV2 qualifications recommended for investment advisors.
Some banking firms consider the qualifications to offer an advantage.
Many other business fields are regulated by much stricter competence requirements.
Savikko says that the FFI recommendation requires that APV qualifications are completed, as they secure investment-related competence.
According to Statistics Finland, the average monthly earnings of financial and investment advisors are several thousands of euros, including fees, fringe benefits and profit-based bonuses.
The average monthly salary of regular employees is roughly EUR 5,300.
The average monthly salary of men in this line of work is more than EUR 5,900 and that of women is more than EUR 4,500.
The top ten per cent receiving the highest salary earns roughly EUR 8,100,
with men earning more than EUR 9,000 a month and women receiving EUR 6,400 or more.
Investment advice in accordance with the Act on Investment Services can only be offered by a licensed company.
So far, employees and positions have been governed by means of self-regulation.
An inspection by the Financial Supervisory Authority revealed individual cases where the professional skills and competence of investment advisors were not at a sufficient level on the basis of their actions.
"In principle, an employee can sell investment products, even if their professional skills or competence levels are low.
Basically, the situation has been unregulated.
Many other business fields are regulated by much stricter competence requirements", Savikko says.
According to Savikko, regulations will become stricter from the beginning of next year as a result of the new Markets in Financial Instruments Directive (MiFID II).
It demands every company to ensure that their employees who offer investment services have sufficient skills.
The Financial Supervisory Authority will be authorised to decide what types of skills employees need.
Marko Hovi, senior market supervisor at the Financial Supervisory Authority, says that one of the most significant changes is the requirement for the competence and experience of investment advisors and employees who sell investment products.
According to Hovi, the new requirements apply to the staff of investment service companies and their partner agents who sell products on their behalf.
Hovi says that, according to the Government proposal issued by the Ministry of Finance, the Financial Supervisory Authority will be authorised to decide on the competence and experience required.
What the exact levels are will be decided later in the autumn.
In the future, companies must see to necessary training and, if required, monitoring and continuing training.
All of this needs to be documented, and companies will be obligated to prove that this has been done.
Hovi specifies that, in practice, companies need to define the job descriptions of every employee.
It is expected that there will be different requirement levels, depending on whether an employee is an investment advisor or a seller of investment products.
According to Hovi, another addition is the requirement to work for a specific period with a more experienced employee, if a person's competence or experience is not at a sufficient level.
This means that, if a company recruits a new employee who does not meet the criteria set, that employee needs to work with a more experienced employee for a pre-defined time.
According to Hovi, these changes will make the regulations stricter and more concrete.
The legislation on the sale of investment products will become stricter from the beginning of 2018.
Photo: 787 Dreamliner drew a gigantic aeroplane over the United States
The route drawn by the airliner over the United States was shown by the Flightradar24 service.
The route was drawn on Thursday by a 787 Dreamliner which was used by Boeing to test the durability of Rolls Royce engines during a long flight.
The airliner took off from Seattle and in the journey that lasted 18 hours and 1 minute, it travelled 15,700 kilometres: longer than any regular commercial route in the world.
The airliner remained within US borders at all times,
passing through 17 states.
Tenacious outdoor swim school students in Imatra do not worry if it rains or shines – Iines Kaikkonen swam bravely assisted by a pool noodle
Taina Itkonen watched as Iines Kaikkonen moved forward at a good pace.
Outdoor swim schools are running at full speed in Liete and Lempukka in Imatra this and next week.
"The young swimmers do not care if it rains or shines", says Taina Itkonen, organiser of the swim schools.
This week's swim schools have 13 young students, and next week there will be close to ten children.
"As schools and pre-schools start next week, we will have fewer students", Itkonen says.
Outdoor swim schools in Imatra are held together by the "Liikunta yhdistää (Exercise brings people together)" project and the town of Imatra.
On Thursday, everybody was having a good time on Liete beach.
The sun was shining and the young students were training how to float with pool noodles, some even without them.
Even the youngest ones were enjoying the water.
Iines Kaikkonen, 5, first had her doubts about going deeper.
However, Taina Itkonen encouraged her to swim towards the shore.
Well done!
Iines Kaikkonen says that she has swum a lot this summer.
She thinks that the Liete beach is a good place to swim.
Vili Huhtanen, 5, also trained hard using a pool noodle.
"You should be happy with your accomplishments today," the proud swim teacher said.
Jami Kallio, 4, wanted to have a water fight.
Ilona Villberg, who watched how her daughter Anna Villberg, 6, was doing, thinks that an outdoor swim school is a good opportunity to learn how to swim.
"Rain or shine, Anna has been eager to go, every day."
It is also important to stay warm.
The students gathered on the pier.
A frog discovered from the grass kept the boys busy.
Milja Luukkonen, 3, and Anna Villberg placed their towels on the pier, had some fruit and enjoyed the sunshine.
The students were already learning new things in the water, but no one was in a hurry on the pier.
Summer, after all, is about taking it easy.
The Unknown Soldier sells toilet brushes – "There's a unifying story"
You would have to see it to believe it.
Two days ago, Sinituote, a manufacturer of cleaning products, launched the Unknown Soldier product range,
that is, dish brushes, towel racks and "a toilet brush a rim cleaner."
Here, the Unknown Soldier refers to the film which premiers in the autumn and its marketing.
Still, there is something peculiar about this combination, and the products have been targeted in social media: When can we expect the Unknown Soldier sanitary napkins?
There is nothing for it, but to call the company and ask them what this is all about.
What does Aino Määttä, vice president at Sinituote, have to say?
"We are one of the sponsors of the upcoming film.
We support this film, just like many other companies.
Our aim was to support Finnish production and a cult film", Määttä says.
According to Määttä, the products will be on special display in shops, giving visibility to the film.
Isn't there something funny about this? After all, one would think that there is something in common between Sini's products and the stories linked with them.
"There's a unifying story in that we are a Finnish company and these are Finnish products", Määttä says.
According to Määttä, the company follows the same set of fundamental Finnish values as those who have seen the original Unknown Soldier.
"What is more, cleaning is not that unusual in the army", Määttä points out.
Other sponsors of the Unknown Soldier include Valio, Hartwall, Saludo, VR and Sato.
So far, Hartwall has launched carbonated water under the names of Rokka, Hietanen and Koskela.
Kalle Kinnunen who writes a blog for Suomen Kuvalehti has already talked about products linked with the Unknown Soldier.
There are also the Unknown Soldier coffees and watches.
Kinnunen points out that there is still a long time to go before the film premiers, so we should expect more to come.
He writes that, of all the sponsors of the Unknown Soldier, Valio, Jalostaja, Neste and German retail chain Lidl are still to launch their own military-themed products.
New results of Sweden's asylum age assessment tests released
The latest results of tests on asylum seekers in Sweden subjected to a new method of medically assessing their age show that over 80 percent tested were judged to be older than 18, but not everyone has faith in their accuracy.
Sweden's national Forensic Medicine Agency (Rättsmedicinalverket) started carrying out the tests earlier year.
They are designed to make age assessment during the asylum process more accurate after the Swedish Migration Agency (Migrationsverket) was criticized for failings in assessing the correct age of some refugees claiming to be underage.
To date Migrationsverket has sent 6,880 cases to be tested, and the Forensic Medicine Agency has now released the results of a total of 2,481 tests from the period between mid March until July 31st, 2017.
Eighty percent (2002) were judged to be 18 or over, while in a further 25 cases the Forensic Medicine Agency judged that the subject was "possibly 18 or over."
In 432 cases the conclusion was that the person is "possibly under 18."
The tests are only carried out in cases where the person's age is in question.
According to Johan Göransson from the Forensic Medicine Agency, the results are consistent with previous months.
"We see no big difference in the statistics from previous months, the numbers are quite consistent," he told The Local.
The high proportion of cases judged to be over 18 does not necessarily mean that the asylum seeker lied about their age.
In May, the agency released the results of 581 tests and said that there were 442 instances that "suggest the person examined is 18 years or older."
When newspaper Svenska Dagbladet investigated the 581 results released however it found that in 243 of the cases the person had openly stated that they turn 18 this year.
The method of medical age assessment, which consists of taking X-rays of wisdom teeth and MRI scans of knee joints, then having dentists and radiologists analyse them, has also been criticised in some quarters.
One sceptic is Karolinska Institute endocrinologist Claude Marcus, whose work includes assessing the biological maturity of people to see if they went through puberty earlier or later than usual.
"I've had reason to think about this, and I don't think the type of measurement being used should be.
Judging biological age in this way is very uncertain.
If we can't say it for sure we shouldn't pretend that we can," he told newspaper Metro.
The Forensic Medicine Agency's Göransson defended the accuracy of the tests however: "In general you can say that the risk of inaccurately judging a child to be an adult is small.
The biggest risk is if the person is just under 18, in which case it's around 10 percent."
Ilonen comes down 30 places in Scotland
A five-over-par third round caused Mikko Ilonen to lose 30 places in a European Tour competition in Scotland.
Ilonen was tied for 11th before starting his round on Saturday, but ended up being tied for 41st after the round.
In difficult conditions, Ilonen scored three bogeys and one double bogey.
It was not easy for anyone.
Ian Poulter from the UK rose to tie the lead after his -1 round, even though he said that he had more than enough work to do just to hold his umbrella.
"The weather has hard, but I was able to hang on and had a good finish", Poulter said.
He ties the lead with his countryman Callum Shinkwin and Australian Andrew Dodt.
West Virginia governor announces he's switching parties
The Democratic governor of West Virginia, Jim Justice, announced Thursday night at a rally with President Trump that he's switching parties.
"Like it or not like it, the Democrats walked away from me," Gov. Justice said.
"Today I will tell you with lots of prayers and lots of thinking ... today I will tell you as West Virginians, I can't help you anymore being a Democratic governor."
The rally erupted in cheers.
"So tomorrow, I will be changing my registration to Republican," Justice added.
"As a coach, I would tell you it's time to run another play."
Mr. Trump promised earlier a big announcement at the West Virginia rally.
Mr. Trump won West Virginia by 42 points, and Justice did not endorse the Democratic nominee, Hillary Clinton.
Justice, who is the only billionaire in the state, according to Forbes, was elected in 2016.
Forbes notes that he owns coal mines in five states, having inherited a coal business from his father.
He's worth about $1.59 billion.
Meanwhile, the Republican National Committee released a statement Thursday night saying "Governor Justice's party switch is another blow to a Democratic Party that would rather obstruct than work to make our country great again."
"With only 15 governorships and control of the fewest state legislatures in history, Governor Justice's announcement is just the latest rejection of a party that is leaderless from top to bottom and unable to find a positive, unifying message," RNC chairwoman Ronna McDaniel said in a statement to CBS News.
Lightning wreaks havoc – summer's most intense thunderstorms expected for Thursday
At the end of the week, thunderstorms will also reach southern Finland.
This week, there have been frequent thunderstorms, especially in central and northern Finland, as well as in southwest Finland.
During the night between Wednesday and Thursday, strokes of lightning ignited several fires.
According to a meteorologist, this summer's most intense thunderstorms are expected for Thursday.
Thundershowers have finally found their way to Finland.
This week, there have been frequent thunderstorms, especially in central and northern Finland, as well as in southwest Finland.
In Pöytyä, lightning struck the distribution board of a terraced house, igniting a small fire.
The rescue department obtained information about the fire 15 minutes before midnight on Wednesday.
The distribution board was located in a sauna at the end of the terraced house.
Rescue personnel dismantled parts of the roof and wall in order to locate any fire pockets and extinguished the fire quickly.
Eleven apartments were left without electricity, but no-one was injured.
In Loimaa, lightning set a shed on fire in Harjulantie a little before midnight.
When the rescue personnel arrived on site, the building was in flames and the rescue personnel were only able to prevent the fire from spreading.
The shed of roughly 50 square metres burned to the ground.
In Rääkkylä near Kuopio, lightning struck a detached house.
The residents were outdoors to witness the stroke of lightning.
The rescue personnel arrived on site to investigate the situation, but this time the lightning did not cause any fire – it only burnt some fuses.
In traffic, thunderstorms caused problems on the railway line between Seinäjoki and Vaasa when a stroke of lightning damaged the traffic control system.
Information about the fault was obtained on Thursday morning between 8 and 9 am, after which scheduled traffic was replaced by buses.
The problems was only repaired a little before 5 pm,
after which railway traffic has continued normally, also in the track section damaged by lightning.
Thunderstorms have wreaked havoc in different parts of Finland.
However, there have been fairly few lightning flashes this summer.
"This summer's thunderstorms have been utterly rubbish!" says meteorologist Jari Tuovinen from the Finnish Meteorological Institute.
The intensity of the thunderstorms on Wednesday and Thursday was mainly moderate but, due to the poor lightning situation this summer, many regarded them as heavy storms.
"These could be considered to be heavy thunderstorms, and that's what they were compared with other storms this summer", Tuovinen says.
On Wednesday, there were 1,700 flashes of cloud-to-ground lightning, and this summer's most intense thunderstorms are expected for Thursday: by 4 pm, there have already been 1,790 flashes of lightning.
"If the storms extend to the evening, we can have more than 2,000 flashes", Tuovinen says.
The previous record-low lightning year was in 2015 when the flash counter showed a total of 30,000 flashes.
By Wednesday, there have been 18,386 flashes this year.
There is still some catching up to do in order not to break the "record" made two years ago.
However, more storms can be expected.
According to Tuovinen, the air mass over Finland will be warm and dry throughout the week, forming an ideal environment for thunderstorms.
By Saturday, storms are expected to head south where 2,000 flashes can be recorded both on Saturday and on Sunday.
More constant rain is expected in central parts of Finland.
According to Tuovinen, such weather rarely generates lightning.
Coe praises 'candid' Russian apology for doping scandal
Global athletics boss Sebastian Coe praised what he described as a candid apology from Russia over a doping scandal on Thursday but reiterated it was not the moment for the country to be readmitted to the sport.
Russia's athletics boss Dmitry Shylakhtin told an IAAF Congress, held on the eve of the World Athletics Championships, that his country's ban from the sport was correct and that he was determined to fight doping.
He said he was sorry to "all athletes who have had gold and silver medals snatched from them at competitions."
Despite his comments, the IAAF Congress voted in favor of maintaining the ban, imposed in November 2015 after a World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) report found evidence of state-sponsored doping in Russia.
"I thought it was a very candid response today, a very candid presentation," IAAF president Coe told reporters.
"The whole Council and the whole Congress was pleased ... that the Russian federation recognized themselves that they have been through some pretty torrid times and are doing everything possible to make sure the federation is reengineered."
Coe said he was also "pleased" that Russia accepted the criteria for its reintroduction.
"I think it was a very constructive day and I think progress is being made, but the Congress supports the recommendations of the task force that this was not the moment to reinstate Russia," said Coe.
"We need to do everything over the next few months to normalize this situation.
The guiding principle has always been that we wanted to separate the clean athletes from the tainted system," he added
Nineteen Russian athletes will be competing as neutrals at the World Athletics Championships which start in London on Friday, having met strict IAAF criteria.
The head of the IAAF's Task Force, Rune Andersen, said on Monday that Russia had yet to meet several of the criteria for reinstatement.
Drug-testing was still insufficient and banned coaches were still operating freely, he told reporters in London after a presentation to the IAAF Council.
Production company disappointed with the poor success of Tom of Finland
Yle reports that Tom of Finland was not such a successful film as its production staff expected.
"If we're being honest, I'm disappointed", admits Annika Sucksdorff, CEO of Helsinki Film, the film's production company, to Yle.
"I was afraid that Finnish audiences may be too conservative, and it seems that I was right."
The film premiered in February 2017.
By the end of June, it had only had a little more than 100,000 viewers, a very low figure compared with the film's budget of EUR 5 million.
"This was no jackpot, but it's important that investors get their money back,
which they already would've done if the film had done any better in Finland.
Now, we need to wait for small returns from abroad", Sucksdorff says.
Tom of Finland was directed by Dome Karukoski.
How soccer's financial rules impact Neymar's move to Paris
Rules aimed at preventing unfettered spending by European soccer clubs will not disrupt Neymar's world-record transfer from Spain's Barcelona to France's Paris-Saint Germain.
Any consequences will come further down the line for Paris Saint-Germain from UEFA, the governing body overseeing the European game which has the power to ban teams from the prestigious Champions League tournament.
Financial Fair Play rules launched by UEFA in 2011 mean that PSG will eventually have to show that Neymar's transfer was funded without incurring huge losses.
Barcelona has been paid 222 million euros ($262 million) just to buy the Brazilian out of his contract and Neymar will command a salary that will run to tens of millions of dollars a year.
Here are some of the financial aspects of Neymar's move to France.
PSG can certainly stump up the cash to sign Neymar and add him to a galaxy of other stars, given the team's funding from the energy-rich ruling family of Qatar.
Clubs are allowed to spend heavily on acquiring players but they have to counterbalance that with legitimate sources of income, allowing them to approach break-even on their football-related business.
FFP was conceived by Michel Platini after his election as UEFA president in 2007.
The former France player believed that clubs who ran up huge debts in their pursuit of success were effectively cheating and risking ruin if banks or owners withdrew their support.
In 2011, FFP shifted from focusing on clubs' debts to monitoring their losses instead.
The change meant that the business model Roman Abramovich initially used at Chelsea in 2003 - buy a club with potential, and then spend heavily to improve the squad and build a global brand - become a tougher proposition.
During the current three-year FFP assessment period that runs through 2018, clubs can incur losses of 30 million euros.
And despite Platini being ousted in disgrace from the presidency in 2015, his UEFA successor Aleksander Ceferin is still committed to deterring excessive spending.
"Certainly FFP is not dead and we will, for sure, reinforce the rules going forward," Andrea Traverso, who oversees FFP at UEFA, told The Associated Press last week.
Although PSG will have paid Neymar's buyout clause in one lump sum, it can spread the amount for accounting purposes over the length of his contract.
Neymar has signed a five-year deal, so the transfer fee could be shown as a 44.4 million-euro cost in the annual accounts for the next five years.
The first wave of FFP sanctions in 2014 saw PSG, along with Abu Dhabi-owned Manchester City, hit with the heaviest sanctions.
PSG was handed a fine of 60 million euros (then $82 million) - that was later reduced to 20 million euros - and ordered to limit its Champions League squads to 21 players for the 2014-15 season instead of the normal 25.
UEFA is on the lookout for clubs who might try to outwit its financial regulators by inflating their income through companies linked to a club's owners.
While a Qatari company could sponsor PSG, if the value of the sponsorship was deemed to exceed standard market rates UEFA would not allow it to count as legitimate income.
That is what happened in 2014 when UEFA ruled that the value of the Qatar Tourism Authority sponsorship of PSG was inflated.
It has been reported that part of Neymar's PSG earnings could come via payments from the 2022 World Cup organizing committee in Qatar.
But PSG and Qatar 2022 have denied that Neymar will become a World Cup ambassador and such a maneuver would be easy for UEFA's regulators to expose.
Past sanctions slapped on PSG means that UEFA will be even more watchful of any attempt to circumvent the rules.
UEFA has not been in pre-emptive discussions with PSG about Neymar's transfer, people familiar with the situation said Thursday.
They spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity as they were not authorized to discuss the PSG situation.
The last published accounts show that PSG made a profit of more than 10 million euros in 2015-16 on a turnover of 542.4 million euros.
Accounts for the last financial year are yet to be published.
PSG expects Neymar's arrival to be a boon for sponsorship deals, merchandising and jersey sales.
The club expects turnover would grow by at least 30 percent on the back of the signing.
Clearly irritated to see one of soccer's biggest players leaving, the Spanish league tried to stymie Neymar's move, claiming that PSG will be breaching FFP.
"It is a clear case of 'financial doping', with the club and the state," La Liga President Javier Tebas told Spanish newspaper AS, referring to Qatar's ultimate ownership of PSG.
Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger, whose club is owned by an American sports tycoon, shares La Liga's reservations about a state funding a club.
"It is the consequence of the ownerships and that has completely changed the whole landscape of football in the last 15 years," Wenger said Thursday.
"Once a country owns a club, everything is possible.
It becomes very difficult to respect the Financial Fair Play because you can have different ways or different interests for a country to have such a big player to represent a country."
Hurry up: Coach of Finnish World Championships athletes stuck in Helsinki
Suren Ghazaryan, coach of long jumper Arttu Pajulahti and triple jumper Kristiina Mäkelä, is stuck in Helsinki, even though he should be coaching in the IAAF World Championships in Athletics in London.
Kristiina Mäkelä may have to compete without hearing the advice of her coach.
Pajulahti will compete in the long jump qualification tomorrow and Mäkelä in the triple jump qualification on Saturday.
Their coach, Armenian Ghazaryan, has not obtained a visa for the UK.
Ghazaryan has visited the British Embassy to take care of the matter, but to no avail.
The coach has an invitation sent by the organisers of the World Championships, but it has not been enough to get a visa.
"I don't know if this is the first symptom of Brexit or what", team leader Jorma Kemppainen said.
"He has always obtained a visa with success, but this time there's a problem.
He's doing everything he can to make it to London."
Ghazaryan has worked at the Finnish Athletics Federation for years.
"It's not that important,
as long as someone makes sure that my check marks are correct at the stadium", Arttu Pajulahti commented on his coach's possible stay at home.
Medal for Finland from World Championships in London like a miracle
The IAAF World Championships in London will start this Friday, ending after a little more than a week on Sunday 13 August.
Finnish audiences are passionate about athletics, cross-country skiing and ice hockey and follow them faithfully year after year, through thick and thin.
Sports fans measure success by the number of medals won.
However, there are other indicators as well.
Less attention is paid to the wonderful stories of young athletes who gain experience by going from one competition to the next to raise their performance up to a level where they can have a true chance of winning a medal in open competitions.
This time, the not-so-big Team Finland does not have such young athletes, or any veterans for that matter.
Winning a medal would be a miracle.
Luckily, nearly anything can happen in sports.
Sports draw audiences in front of their television sets to watch different events, even though this year's finals will be held late at night due to the time difference between London and Finland.
At the previous IAAF World Championships in 2015, Finland won one bronze medal
by Tero Pitkämäki in javelin.
The most hopeful ones are expecting Pitkämäki to bring home another medal, even though the results of Pitkämäki and other throwers, as well as his elimination from the finals in European Championships last summer, say otherwise.
No matter what happens in this competition, Pitkämäki will remain in history as one of the great Finnish sports heroes.
For other Finnish athletes, reaching the finals or making a personal best would be a good result.
The success of our young athletes in international competitions, also this summer, gives us hope that Finnish athletes have a realistic chance of winning a medal in future competitions.
Growing young talents and supporting them financially is more important that maintaining a small elite group of top athletes.
Success takes years of hard work from athletes and patience from coaches and fans.
Finnish sports fans also respect international sports stars and enjoy their incredible results.
Hopefully, the World Championships in London remain in history because of Usain Bolt and Mo Farah, not because of terrorism or cowardly attacks.
Enni Rukajärvi second in big air in Copper Mountain – "It was so close"
Snowboarder Enni Rukajärvi finished second in big air in a World Cup competition in Colorado.
This second place in Copper Mountain is Rukajärvi's best result in big air in the World Cup.
The competition was won by Jamie Anderson from the USA.
Rukajärvi scored 147 points.
On her last jump, she attempted caballerial 1080 for the first time in a competition, and very nearly made it.
"I'm feeling good right now, but I'm also a little annoyed because the last jump was so close.
But I will try it again in other competitions", Rukajärvi said.
In big air, competitors perform tricks after launching off very large jumps.
Viking Line's new fast ship stuck in port in Helsinki
Viking Line's new fast ship FSTR is badly behind schedule.
The ship was set to depart from Helsinki to Tallinn at 6 pm.
The ship was still being loaded at 8 pm.
It arrived in Helsinki behind schedule.
"I've been waiting for at least an hour and a half to get on board.
Now, the line of cars is moving slowly", said Johannes Rebane from Estonia waiting for embarkation at the Port of Helsinki at 7:30 pm.
Rebane suspected that the new ship suffered from a technical fault.
Rebane said that employees of the shipping company had provided those waiting for embarkation in their cars with water bottles.
Christa Grönlund, press manager of Viking Line, said to IS that the ship had a technical fault.
However, it was repaired at the Port of Helsinki.
The ship will depart from Helsinki a few hours behind schedule.
Grönlund said that the ship will also be a few hours late when returning from Tallinn.
The ship was set to return from Tallinn to Helsinki at 8:15 pm.
A 42-metre oversize transport disturbs traffic on main road 6 on Thursday evening
A 42-metre oversize transport will move from Muukko to the Port of Mustola on Thursday evening.
The transport will set off at 9 pm and should arrive at the port by 11 pm.
Police officers will direct traffic on main road 6, and traffic may be stopped occasionally.
From Mälkiä, the transport will head to the Port of Mustola along road 13.
Nostalgia Goes Niche in "Wet Hot American Summer" and "Comrade Detective"
So this iteration of the story is simultaneously nostalgic for the characters' '80s glory days; for the '90s grunge era (around when the masterminds David Wain and Michael Showalter made the sketch comedy "The State" for MTV); and for itself - that is, for 2001, before its stars, like Elizabeth Banks, Amy Poehler and Paul Rudd, went on to bigger things.
As a cultural artifact, it's both a sendup and embodiment of our Facebook-enabled era of permanent reminiscence.
But as a franchise, it feels like it's running out of time.
"First Day of Camp" worked surprisingly well, not just because of its absurdist humor (it included an origin story for a talking can of vegetables, voiced by H. Jon Benjamin).
By doubling down on the core gag - middle-age actors playing horny kids coming of age - it made the impossibility of recapturing the past part of the joke.
"Ten Years Later," with its adults now playing adults, is less emotionally rooted and its parody more scattershot, including a riff on '90s stalker flicks like "The Hand That Rocks the Cradle."
At one point a character rummages through an Apple Powerbook, some in-line skates and "a bunch of other things from 1991."
Many of the core stories are the same.
Sweet-hearted Coop (Mr. Showalter), now a novelist, still hasn't gotten over Katie (Marguerite Moreau).
Victor (Ken Marino) still hasn't lost his virginity.
And there's another battily villainous plot involving Ronald Reagan (also Mr. Showalter), now abetted by George H. W. Bush (a well-inhabited impression by Michael Ian Black).
As always, the best part of the franchise is the digressions.
It's especially fun to see the forever-young Mr. Rudd, sporting Matt Dillon's soul patch from "Singles," whose former big-man-on-camp Andy now feels like a geezer.
It's the moments of random lunacy that might power this franchise on, like a kind of recursive "Seven Up!" series, until it reaches what I assume will be its logical conclusion: "Wet Hot American Summer: Twenty Years Later," whose last scene will have the gang going to see the movie premiere of "Wet Hot American Summer."
"Comrade Detective" on Amazon, meanwhile, appeals to a different brand of nostalgia: the Cold War revivalism of "The Americans," the film "Atomic Blonde" and even "GLOW," with its East versus West wrestling iconography.
The comedy, created by Brian Gatewood and Alessandro Tanaka, with Rhys Thomas directing, purports to be found TV: a Romanian 1980s buddy-cop drama about two Bucharest officers fighting for truth, atheism and the Marxist-Leninist way.
The lead roles - hard-boiled Gregor and idealistic Iosef - are played by Florin Piersic Jr. and Corneliu Ulici, their dialogue dubbed in English by Channing Tatum (also an executive producer) and Joseph Gordon-Levitt.
It's a brilliant idea.
But it's not much more than an idea.
There are some fine sight gags (the police pass the time watching chess on TV as Americans might football).
And the roster of famous voice-over actors - among them Jenny Slate, Nick Offerman, Mahershala Ali and Chloë Sevigny - makes for a decent game of spot-the-voice.
But "Comrade Detective" is so committed to the verisimilitude of a hamfisted propaganda drama - a killer wearing a Reagan mask is involved - that it often plays like one.
At six long episodes, it drags, and the comedy isn't fast or frequent enough.
Edited to a tighter length, "Comrade Detective" might deliver better on its agitprop satire, as when Gregor and Iosef repeatedly visit the American Embassy, whose lobby is always occupied by two fat men wolfing down a pile of hamburgers.
The message, for the imagined communist audience, is that Western culture can turn anything into fodder to binge.
The fictional Romanian creators were not wrong: We even do it with our own recent history, and theirs.
Toni Tauru from Kouvola is ready to fight in Macau on Saturday – against a former UFC fighter
Toni Tauru wants to keep the fight going.
Toni Tauru will face a tough opponent in Macao, as Leandro Issa from Brazil fought in the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) last year.
The Brazilian also has a black belt in jiu-jitsu and he has won the World Jiu-Jitsu Championships.
"For once, I'm fighting an opponent who is older than me,
and that'll be fun", says Tauru, 32.
Originally, the fight was to be held in Indonesia last Saturday.
However, the event was cancelled due to logistical problems, but three fights were quickly moved to Macau.
Tauru has never experienced anything like this before.
"This was the first time my fight was cancelled.
It was annoying, as it took a lot of time training and preparation."
However, the fighter was happy to see that the fight was rescheduled.
One week of waiting does not cause many changes in preparations.
"This move doesn't change my physical condition, as it can't be much improved in a week.
However, it can get worse if I train too hard."
In some of his previous fights, Tauru has faced opponents whose strengths were in stand-up fighting.
This time it is a different story.
Tauru describes Issa as a typical Brazilian fighter.
"He's fairly aggressive.
My guess is that he'll come at me hard in the first round, trying to knock me down.
He knows how to wrestle. After all, he has won the World Jiu-Jitsu Championships."
Tauru's last fight did not go according to plan.
Kevin Belingon from the Philippines landed a nasty blow in the corner of Tauru's eye and claimed the win.
"It was my best fight, especially standing up: he didn't land a single punch.
When I tried to take him down, he hit me in the eye.
I felt bad about it for a long time."
New motivation
Some fighters have a few matches a year, while some fight more frequently.
For example, Issa's last fight was in September,
while Tauru had three fights last year.
This will be the second fight of the year.
The pace has felt heavy at times.
"In recent years, I've trained and been fit all the time.
However, I've only fought for the sake of fighting."
When the 32-year-old heard about the upcoming face-off, he felt that he needed a change of scenery.
"I was training in Espoo and started to enjoy all of this again.
The intensity of training was really high, as there was also one fighter from Sweden."
A good physical condition will be needed on Saturday when Tauru must be ready for a tough match.
"I've sparred against opponents of the same size and trained stand-up fighting."
The 32-year-old intends to stay standing.
"I need to be smart when I strike.
If an opportunity presents itself, I must be ready to take it.
I can't let him take me to the ground without a fight, as it consumes the most energy."
Macau is an attractive location for Tauru who has also fought in China before.
"I've heard that it's the Las Vegas of China.
I'm certain that it'll be a great night."
Bank of England to keep interest rates at 0.25%
The Bank of England is expected to announce later that interest rates will remain unchanged after lacklustre economic growth and easing inflation dampened speculation over a hike.
The Bank of England has warned economic growth will remain "sluggish" as it kept interest rates on hold amid a tightening squeeze on family incomes.
Policymakers on the Bank's Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) voted 6-2 to keep rates at 0.25%, with fewer members this month calling for a rise as lacklustre economic growth has weakened support for a hike.
In its quarterly inflation report, the Bank cut its forecasts for growth to 1.7% in 2017 and 1.6% in 2018 and cautioned the squeeze on household incomes would continue, with inflation still expected to surge close to 3% in the autumn.
But it signalled rate hikes will be needed over the next few years to rein in Brexit-fuelled inflation and said borrowing costs may need to rise by more than expected in financial markets.
Members also voted to withdraw part of the mammoth economy-boosting package unleashed a year ago in the aftermath of Brexit.
It will call time on the Term Funding Scheme to offer cheap-finance to banks from next February, although it said it was now expected to offer £15 billion more under the scheme - at £115 billion.
In minutes of the rates decision, the Bank said: "In the MPC's central forecast, gross domestic product (GDP) remains sluggish in the near-term as the squeeze on households' real incomes continues to weigh on consumption."
On rates, it reiterated that "some tightening of monetary policy" would be needed to cool inflation and by a "somewhat greater" extent than markets expect.
Markets are currently forecasting the first rise in the third quarter of next year and another in 2020.
But the Bank stressed that any hikes would be "gradual" and "limited."
The Bank's downgraded growth forecasts for this year and next compare with the 1.9% and 1.7% predicted in May.
It maintained its forecast for growth of 1.8% in 2018.
Sterling fell against the dollar and the euro following the news.
The pound was 0.5% down at 1.31 US dollars and fell 0.4% to 1.11 euros.
The no-change decision comes after recent disappointing growth figures have dampened mounting expectations of a hike, with GDP edging up to 0.3% in the second quarter from 0.2% in the previous three months.
Growth is likely to remain at 0.3% in the third quarter, although it will start to pick up slightly at the end of the year, according to the Bank.
Its latest inflation report offered little cheer for households being hit by soaring inflation and paltry pay rises as it said the squeeze will get worse before it gets better.
It added that monetary policy "cannot prevent" the hit to incomes over the next few years, but expects wages will recover "significantly" towards the end of its three-year forecast.
The economy is also set for a boost from surging demand for British goods thanks to the weak pound, which will offset some of the lower consumer spending.
The decision comes a year after rates were cut to 0.25% last August following the shock EU referendum vote, which sent the pound slumping.
The Bank estimates it will likely take four years to fully feed through to prices and the economy.
Prior to the Bank's latest rates verdict, there had been growing clamour for a rate rise as inflation ramped up pressure on hard-pressed households, with three policymakers calling for an increase to 0.5% in July.
Inflation eased back to 2.6% last month from 2.9% in June, although the Bank said this was expected and will pick up once again over the coming months.
The Bank said the overshoot relative to its 2% target was "entirely" down to the weak pound.
Andrew Montlake, director at Coreco Mortgage Brokers, said: "Given the recent fall in swap rates, the mortgage market looks set to become ever more competitive once more as lenders clamour for business and look to end the year in positive fashion.
The market looks particularly good for those who may be coming to the end of their existing deals as re-mortgages, many with fee-free options as well as low rates, become ever more popular."
NHS to prescribe controversial HIV drug to 10,000
Patients will be able to access a 'transformative' HIV prevention treatment from September following a High Court battle over funding the drug on the NHS.
NHS England announced that pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP), a pill taken before sex which has been shown to reduce the risk of infection in high-risk individuals by around 86 per cent, will now be provided by the health service through an initial three-year trial to an estimated 10,000 people.
It agreed to fund the trial after the Court of Appeal upheld a High Court ruling last year, which said the NHS had the power to pay for PrEP despite its claims that local authorities should fund it.
The move announced on Thursday was hailed as a 'major new intervention' by NHS England chief executive Simon Stevens while the National Aids Trust (NAT) described it as a 'pivotal moment'.
Sexual health clinics in London, Brighton, Manchester, Liverpool and Sheffield will be among the first to start enrolling people, with more clinics joining in October before full implementation across England by April 2018.
Pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) is a course of HIV drugs taken before sex to reduce the risk of getting HIV.
Trials have shown PrEP significantly reduces HIV transmission among those at-risk of infection.
Taking PrEP before sex means there is just enough of certain drugs in a person's body to prevent an HIV infection taking hold.
Such drugs can be taken every day or as soon as two hours before having sex.
Those eligible for the treatment include gay or bisexual men, transgender people and those with HIV-positive partners who are not successfully receiving treatment.
Clinics will identify eligible participants who consent to the trial, including men, women, transgender people, and individuals who have a partner whose HIV status is not known to be controlled by anti-retroviral treatment.
People living and registered with a GP in England will also be able to enrol for potential participation at their local participating sexual health clinic.
The programme will cost £10 million and NHS England signed a contract to source the drugs this week following an international competitive procurement.
The trial is designed to assess the full potential of PrEP by gathering clinical evidence on how it is targeted, taken up, and implemented on a large scale.
Mr Stevens said: 'This major new intervention should complement and supercharge the wide-ranging and increasingly successful effort to prevent HIV.
It's another milestone in more than three decades' worth of progress in tackling one of humanity's major health challenges.'
Deborah Gold, chief executive at NAT (National Aids Trust), said: 'This is a pivotal moment in the fight against HIV.
PrEP, if targeted properly at those in need and at risk, offers the possibility of transforming the English HIV epidemic.
From September, people at high risk of HIV will have access via this NHS-funded trial in England to an empowering new tool that is truly individually controlled and not subject to negotiation with a partner, leading to the improvement of many, many lives.
We warmly welcome this announcement.'
Ian Green, chief executive of the Terrence Higgins Trust, said: 'The priority must now be to make sure that the trial is rolled out speedily across the country, and that no-one at risk of HIV is left behind.
Now that the PrEP trial drug has been procured, we're well on the way to protecting over 10,000 people at risk of HIV.'
Shadow public health minister Sharon Hodgson said: 'The start of the PrEP trial is welcome and long overdue after months of delays and heel-dragging by the Government.
The evidence shows just how transformative this drug can be as part of our approach to HIV prevention and ending the transmission of this life-changing infection.
This trial will take us one step closer to fully understanding the benefits of PrEP.
Now it is important that this trial is rolled out as quickly as possible across the country to protect individuals who are exposed to HIV and help take us one step closer to ending the spread of HIV in society.'
Living the high life: mezzanine floor and clever design tricks have transformed this small Earls Court flat into a spacious home
Joanne Leigh, a former banker with a passion for doing up property, downsized from a large home in Knightsbridge to an Earls Court apartment in 2014.
It is on the first floor of a smart Queen Anne terrace - and it is a testament to the new design that Joanne hasn't packed her bags and sold on.
"Before this, I was living with my ex in Knightsbridge in a much bigger space," Joanne says.
"I was looking for something that was comparable for my price.
I was shown this apartment in Earls Court and it had the same high ceilings.
I fell in love with it and put an offer in that day."
Since the first viewing, the 1,000sq ft flat has had a complete overhaul.
Originally a one-bedroom property with a convoluted layout - you had to walk through the kitchen to get to the bedroom - Joanne wanted to add storage space and a mezzanine to make the most of the generous ceiling height.
"I wanted high ceilings, big windows, lots of light.
That was my requirement," she says.
To this end, she employed Erfan Azadi of Notting Hill-based architecture and design studio Duck & Shed to exploit the 12.5ft ceilings and create a home that wasn't only a development but a place for Joanne to live.
The ceiling wasn't quite tall enough to add two spaces on top of each other so the architectural challenge was to create a mezzanine that you could stand up in.
Erfan had to think creatively to resolve the brief.
"The steelwork is quite complicated," he explains.
"We had to arrange the spaces so that they stacked on top of each other without needing to hunch down.
It wasn't just building a simple platform, but cranking the steels so that they were at the right height for the function above or below."
This arrangement allowed Erfan to get two full-height rooms on top of each other in the space - with lots of added drama.
For the mezzanine, a vintage copper light window from Retrouvius looks down over the glamorous living area below.
Mirrored gold furniture, silver accents and vintage Serge Mouille lighting all set the style for the scheme.
The use of mirrors plays a part in adding theatre, space and light.
A short corridor is mirrored at both ends to make it appear longer.
In the kitchen, the mirrored splashback feels like a window to another room.
At the entrance, mirrored units provide storage for all Joanne's cutlery and glassware.
Giving the perception of a more glamorous space, the beauty of the living room is being able to close off the kitchen when it's not in use.
Foldaway kitchens are nothing new.
What's unique about this one is that it's a garage-style lift-up door.
"A bit of engineering went into that," explains Erfan of the steel-reinforced, veneered MDF door.
"It's counter-weighted so that when you push the door up, it glides really easily."
Thanks to clever use of space and storage, Joanne gained an additional 16sq m, an extra bedroom and an improved layout.
"At the end of the day, floor space is what you are going to sell - or how your property is valued," Erfan says.
"In a rudimentary form, a real estate agent will walk in and do a calculation based on floor size."
Here they have managed to increase the floor space while using quality materials that give the space its luxurious edge.
"The materials are the things that you touch and therefore help to create an emotional bond in a home," says Erfan.
"You don't fall in love with the electrical feeds in the walls.
These are important but they don't pull the heart strings."
It goes to show that through good design and increased square metreage, a flat can turn from something standard into something quite amazing.
In fact, like Joanne, you may choose not to leave.
Pregnant Princess Sofia was radiant in her summer look
Princess Sofia choice of dress was spot on.
Princess Sofia made her last public appearance in Båstad, Sweden, before giving birth.
The Princess had chosen a beautiful light blue dress for the dinner of A Sustainable Tomorrow event.
Sofia was full of smiles.
This week, Princess Sofia of Sweden made a visit to Båstad, Sweden.
On Wednesday, Sofia made an appearance at A Sustainable Tomorrow seminar wearing a stunning close-fitting blue dress that looked amazing on the soon-to-give-birth Princess.
Sofia arrived at the event wearing a dark blue dress.
This is her last official appearance before giving birth.
Her due date is in September.
For dinner, Sofia had chosen a beautiful light blue dress that fit her perfectly.
Large earrings and a stylish handbag crowned her style.
The light blue dress looked wonderful on the Princess.
This week, Sofia made an official visit to Båstad, Sweden.
Sofia complemented her look with a small handbag.
Sofia looked radiant in her fresh summer look.
Sofia even entered into a conversation with photographers.
"I'm just holding my tummy", Sofia said laughing in reference to her approaching due date.
She teaches us with sweet chilli
In summer 1996, a booth was set up in the Lahti market square selling Thai food.
Those living in Lahti didn't have the courage to have a taste, they simply walked by.
The booth was set up by Panya Suamsri-Penttilä, or Panja to those who knows her.
She barely spoke Finnish, and the Thai language wasn't widely spoken in Finland at the time.
Because people didn't have the courage to go and eat, Panja offered free bites.
And so she taught everyone living in Lahti how to eat Thai food, one spring roll at a time.
"Go on, taste it, taste it", she said.
I was immediately hooked.
I used to go more often, eventually every day.
In summer 1997, Panja opened a Thai restaurant in the Lahti market hall.
It consisted of two small tables, with room for no more than 20 customers.
Not only did she teach us to eat Thai food, but also to sit next to strangers.
When you're hungry and not many seats are available, you can't leave an empty seat between yourself and a stranger.
Slowly, we got to know each other better and became friends.
Finally, I sat there eating, reading a dictionary and trying to learn the Thai language.
The restaurant operated in the market hall for two years, after which it had to move because it was said that the aromas from Panja's homemade curry pastes were too intense.
A new spot became available at the end of the market hall,
with more space.
Now we can be grumpy at our own tables. Only during the busiest hours do we need to timidly ask strangers whether the seat next to them is available.
Panja knows her customers.
We tell her how we are doing, where we have been and who we have seen.
She knows what each of us eats.
She has seen how her customers pass from one situation on to the next and how their dinner companions change.
She remembers the name of the man with whom I had my first spring rolls.
She remembers when I was skinny and when I was fat, and she knows what I was like when I was younger.
It's nice to have lunch after everyone else, take a seat in my own place next to the kitchen door and talk this and that with Panja who is leaning on the bar.
Food isn't the most important thing she has given us.
She has taught us tolerance and given us a world view, served with sweet chilli.
In addition to our sense of taste, she has opened up our hearts and minds.
Now, many speak to her in Thai – thanks to more extensive travel opportunities.
I admire Panja.
She's always friendly, even though she too has faced tough times.
She works hard.
In addition to her days in the restaurant, she enjoys picking mushrooms and bilberries.
Last week, we quietly celebrated the 20th anniversary of the restaurant.
Panja served us customers strawberry cake for dessert.
There was no fuss or big noise to mark the event; it was just another day at work.
Discovered underground base revealed 173 Isis terrorists ready to strike in Europe
Earlier this year, security authorities got their hands on a significant list considering the battle against terrorism.
The list contains information about more than 170 Isis terrorists who are ready to attack in Europe.
According to German Die Welt, there are 173 listed persons in total, and the list includes personal details and photos of each individual.
Of the listed persons, 130 come from Iraq, but there are also six Europeans
from Belgium, the Netherlands, France and Germany.
Others are from Tunisia, Morocco, Jordan, Tajikistan and Saudi Arabia.
Ilta-Sanomat reported the discovery of the list two weeks ago.
Now, the location where the list was found and the information it contains have been specified.
According to Die Welt, special forces of the Iraqi army found the list, containing personal details and photos of terrorists, as they were going through an underground base of Isis in Mosul.
US intelligence authorities examined the authenticity of the documents and forwarded them to Interpol.
Interpol distributed the list to the security authorities of all European countries in May.
There were fears that terrorists were planning something large and serious in the west, as Isis was taken down in the Middle East.
According to Die Welt, the list contains the names and photos of all listed persons, as well as their dates of birth, aliases and information about their home country.
The list also specifies the specialty of each terrorist.
For example, the alias of Sami J., a 27-year-old from Germany, is Abu Assid al-Almani, or the German.
The list says that he left Germany in 2012, going first to Egypt, followed by Libya and Turkey, before he went to Syria to join Isis.
Next to his photo, suicide bomber is written as his specialty.
It is not known what has happened to him.
Roughly 6,000 fighters, whose destiny is unknown, have left Europe to join Isis.
Man went under water in Tokoinranta, Helsinki
On the basis of interviewed rescue workers, the man wanted to show that he had the strength to swim.
Even a bucket can save the life of a drowning person.
A drowning man was rescued in Tokoinranta, Helsinki, on Thursday.
According to Ville Estlander, on-call fire and rescue officer from the Helsinki rescue department, the situation was quickly over.
"The man was found under water by a diver of the rescue department some 15 minutes
after receiving an emergency call", Estlander says.
The rescue department was alerted after 3:30 pm.
The man was treated by paramedics.
Estlander says that the man was close to 50 years of age.
On the basis of interviews, the man wanted to show that he had the strength to swim.
The situation in Tokoinranta is already over.
Estlander would like to thank their collaboration with the Border Guard and the police department.
This was a mission led by the Border Guard.
Those present also gave excellent advice to divers.
The situation was over in 15 minutes.
The man was rescued from the water together with the Border Guard and the police department.
Two cars collided in Eura – nine people in the two cars, three seriously injured
The on-call fire and rescue officer says that there were a total of nine people in the two cars, the rest of whom suffered more minor injuries.
There were both men and women among the injured.
The accident took place at an intersection of three roads at 4 pm.
The fire and rescue officer says that the accident happened when one of the two cars turned in front of the other car from behind a yield sign.
According to the rescue department, there is an 80 km/h speed limit in the area.
Brothers fight over $500 million property empire
Two brothers are at war over one of Victoria's biggest real estate empires, worth more than $500 million, four decades after their Italian family founded the dynasty.
Former Carlton Football Club director and developer Colin De Lutis lives in a Toorak mansion three doors from younger brother Paul, who has taken him to the Supreme Court over how their property and business assets will be sliced up.
Paul has wanted out of the family business since 2014 but an acrimonious argument is playing out in the Supreme Court over the break-up.
Together with their mother Anna the brothers own 38 properties worth more than half a billion dollars, amassed since the family bought a Smith Street, Collingwood, shop in 1973.
There, the family founded Westco Jeans and grew it into a chain of 160 retail outlets.
It sold in 1999 for $85 million.
That money was sunk into property and the De Lutis portfolio now includes city offices, Brunswick and Sorrento development sites, Gold Coast and Mt Buller apartments, and suburban shopping centres.
Under an agreement with their late father, Colin - described by Paul as "the major driving force and the dominant personality" in the De Lutis family - owns about two-thirds of the company assets and Paul about one-third.
A court filing says this translates to Colin owning property worth $316 million and Paul $176 million.
Dividing the properties and cash has proved the sticking point for Paul.
"The splits proposed by Colin left him with what I considered to be the best properties," he wrote in an initial court affidavit in 2015.
Last Friday, after several failed mediations, the first Supreme Court hearing was held.
The brothers are also now fighting over who controls the existing business - which Paul alleges Colin has locked him out of.
Colin argues this is not true, but accuses Paul of incompetently managing some properties.
In an early affidavit filed by Colin, he says he hopes to resolve the dispute.
"My Italian heritage dictates that family is the most important priority," he wrote.
Costs are mounting in the case, with hundreds of pages of affidavits, emails and reports by companies including Deloitte, Pitcher Partners and Charter Keck Cramer filed and top barristers including Allan Myers, QC, and senior solicitors retained by both sides.
Ms De Lutis and her late husband Luigi were Italian immigrants who ran milk bars and delicatessens from the late 1950s and in the early 1970s bought a shop in Brunswick.
They used the collateral to buy the Collingwood property where Colin opened the family's first jeans store.
Colin says he started Westco there when he was "in my final years of high school, when Paul was a young child (around 10 years old)."
Anna De Lutis says she and Luigi, who died in 2012, hoped to pass down their properties to their sons amicably.
"Luigi often said to me that he never wanted the brothers to end up in court," she wrote.
Two other brothers, Mark and Luke, are no longer part of the De Lutis group of companies, with Colin saying that Mark was paid $10 million when he left the business, and Luke $26 million.
Both Luke and Mark had become, Paul says, "bitter about the terms of their financial separation."
Colin has kept a low profile despite being a former AFL club board member and, according to a 2015 biography of Eddie McGuire, the television star's best friend.
Fairfax Media contacted Colin and Paul De Lutis on Friday, and their lawyers.
Only Colin replied, by text message, to say that because the case was before the courts "I really cannot say much."
"It's very, very sad that my brother Paul has chosen to sue me and drag our family name through the courts," he wrote.
In mid-2016, Colin wrote in one court filing that he had tried to accommodate his brother's requests.
"Our father would not have wanted to see Paul and I end up in our current dispute," he said, adding that he was "still hopeful of resolution."
On Friday, that hope appeared gone.
"Our matter will be resolved by the courts in the near future," Colin wrote.
Trump's new chief of staff plans to restrict the president's media diet.
Others have tried and failed.
Maybe John F. Kelly can actually do it.
If so, he will be the first.
Politico reports that the new White House chief of staff plans to restrict the flow of information to President Trump - including news media reports - in the hope of keeping the boss on a more even keel.
Here's a bit from reporter Josh Dawsey:
"When new White House Chief of Staff John F. Kelly huddled with senior staff on his first day at work, he outlined a key problem in President Donald Trump's White House that he planned to fix: bad information getting into the president's hands.
Kelly told the staff that information needed to flow through him - whether on paper or in briefings - because the president would make better decisions if given good information."
Kelly's diagnosis makes perfect sense, but others have tried and failed to tame Trump by monitoring his media diet.
President Trump's relationship with television goes back decades - and now that he's in the White House, his TV-watching habit is still going strong.
"If candidate Trump was upset about unfair coverage, it was productive to show him that he was getting fair coverage from outlets that were persuadable," Sam Nunberg, a former campaign adviser, told Politico in February.
Politico's Tara Palmeri wrote at the time that "the key to keeping Trump's Twitter habit under control, according to six former campaign officials, is to ensure that his personal media consumption includes a steady stream of praise."
Okay.
But the idea that Trump's Twitter habit has ever been "under control" is laughable.
Maybe these campaign officials know something the rest of us don't - that Trump's tweets would have been even more inflammatory if not for their interventions.
We'll probably never know about tweets that Trump didn't send.
If his staffers managed to him out of trouble even a few times, then their efforts were worthwhile.
But no one has been able to consistently prevent Trump from stirring up controversy.
Part of the problem is that in a White House composed of competing factions, people invariably try to advance their agendas by presenting Trump with material - which may or may not be reliable - that promotes their worldviews.
Politico - all over this story - reported in May on advisers' penchants for strategically feeding dubious information to the president.
This was one example, described by reporter Shane Goldmacher:
"Current and former Trump officials say Trump can react volcanically to negative press clips, especially those with damaging leaks, becoming engrossed in finding out where they originated.
That is what happened in late February when someone mischievously gave the president a printed copy of an article from GotNews.com, the website of Internet provocateur Charles C. Johnson, which accused deputy chief of staff Katie Walsh of being 'the source behind a bunch of leaks' in the White House.
No matter that Johnson had been permanently banned from Twitter for harassment or that he offered no concrete evidence or that he had lobbed false accusations in the past and recanted them.
Trump read the article and began asking staff about Walsh."
Goldmacher added that then-chief of staff Reince Priebus and White House staff secretary Rob Porter "have tried to implement a system to manage and document the paperwork Trump receives."
How'd that work out?
Kelly is trying to do the same thing, three months later.
Perhaps he will prove a more effective manager than Priebus, but Trump is still his impulsive self, and his aides are still vying for influence.
Those immutable factors will make Kelly's mission very difficult.
Neymar signs five-year agreement with PSG
AFP reports that Brazilian star player Neymar has signed a five-year deal with French football club Paris Saint-Germain (PSG).
Earlier on Thursday evening it was reported that Neymar's representatives had paid the release fee of EUR 222 million to FC Barcelona playing in the Spanish Primera División.
As a result, Neymar got out of his agreement with Barcelona and was free to transfer to PSG.
The incredible transfer fee of EUR 222 million is the highest fee ever paid in the history of football.
The earlier record was held by Manchester United which paid EUR 105 million for French Paul Pogba last summer.
PSG is owned by Qatar Sports Investment, a state-owned company from Qatar.
The club's chairman is Nasser al-Khelaifi, a former tennis pro from Qatar.
Neymar is expected to arrive in Paris on Friday.
Bestselling author Raija Oranen beat alcoholism and fear of flying through hypnosis: "I've never felt better"
Bestselling author Raija Oranen, famous for Finnish TV series Ruusun aika and Puhtaat valkeat lakanat, recently celebrated her 69th birthday.
Hypnosis helped Raija Oranen.
Her five grandchildren, together with writing, keep the grandmother so busy that Raija and her husband Jyrki decided to give up the Spanish sun and their apartment in Fuengirola after 18 winters.
First, they sold their house, and this spring they terminated their lease agreement.
Originally, Raija was driven to the light and sun by her depression and alcoholism which she has subsequently beaten.
She is also 20 kilograms lighter.
"My weight started to drop when I stopped eating serotonin for my depression.
I got help for my alcoholism from hypnosis which also helped me to beat my fear of flying.
I haven't had a drink in 15 years.
Alcohol starts to control you", the radiant author says openly.
Raija and Jyrki Oranen have been together for more than 45 years.
"I've never felt better."
Raija and Jyrki Oranen, who has also worked in the travel industry, have already been together for more than 40 years.
"I proposed, and we got married in two weeks", Raija says laughing.
"She's always been such a drama queen, ending her life every now and then", Jyrki says.
Having had a notable career as an author, Raija Oranen has nothing but good memories of the 44-episode Puhtaat valkeat lakanat series which touched and moved Finnish viewers during the recession of the 1990s.
"I finally decided that the Raikas family works in the clothing industry when I read Liisa Seppälä's 50th birthday interview on an aeroplane.
I was the daughter of a dressmaker. My mother also had her own shop, and I used to work as a model for her", Oranen remembers.
According to Oranen, the series changed what Finnish people think about business life.
"Anita Savelainen's study and dissertation proved it", Oranen says.
Raija Oranen is busy writing – she is working on many scripts, and hundreds of ideas.
Travellers negotiate trench, return to 'Millionaire's row'
Some of the West Midlands' wealthiest homeowners are again at loggerheads with determined travellers who have negotiated a council-dug trench to reclaim a field outside their mansions.
The travellers have parked their 20 caravans in a field outside a prosperous street of Solihull dubbed 'millionaire's row'.
Bringing horses, babies and an army of vans, they have returned after being kicked out only in May, undeterred by a moat dug by the council to prevent their incursions.
The tactful group found a gap in the defences, squeezing their vehicles though a section left unbarricaded to accommodate a pathway.
Furious residents have savaged Solihull Council saying it was 'useless at dealing with the problem'.
One anonymous resident said: 'They moved there on Monday night after being moved on from Bentley Heath where they were throwing rocks at passers by.
The council needs to be shamed into action as they are useless at dealing with the problem.
The travellers were there in May, were moved on and now they are back again.
More arrived last night, probably even more today.'
She added: 'Birmingham council knows how to deal with this by getting long injunctions to protect their parks.
I live on Streetsbrook road and I'm not happy to continue paying my council tax when the council can't even stop this.'
One local resident who did not wish to be named said: 'It is ridiculous, we have only just seen the last round of these travellers leaving, only to be blighted by another round.
The numbers have increased this time and a horse has even been seen grazing on the parkland.'
A spokeswoman for Solihull Council said: 'We are aware of an unauthorised encampment on land off Streetsbrook Road and working alongside Solihull Police, we are undertaking the necessary legal actions to move them on as quickly as possible.
To support our evidence gathering it is very important that as many local residents as possible report any anti-social or criminal behaviour to the police by calling 101.
This helps build a picture of the situation for the court to consider when we present our case to them.'
Enraged people surrounded crashed plane in Portugal
Men who made emergency landing on a packed beach in Portugal were heard at court today.
As a result of the crash landing, two people died yesterday.
The two men who piloted the plane may be indicted for negligent homicide.
In Portugal, the most severe punishment for negligent homicide is 16 years of imprisonment.
A technical fault forced the light plane piloted by the two men to crash land on the Sao Joao da Caparica beach near Lisbon.
At the time of the crash, the beach was full of people, some of whom escaped the crashing plane by running in the water.
When landing, the plane hit a 56-year-old man and an 8-year-old girl who died immediately.
The plane first hit the man who had his back turned towards the plane.
Filipe Janeira who was at the beach told Jornal de Noticias that immediately afterwards the plane ascended and, when it descended again, it hit the child in the head.
The deceased girl was at the beach with her parents
who were not injured.
Immediately after the crash, enraged people surrounded the crashed plane.
Celia Rocha who witnessed the incident told Correio de Manha that the girl's father and other people ran to the plane and started banging on its rear.
The man called the pilot a criminal – he was desperate.
It is a wonder that no more people were killed.
The two men who piloted the plane were not injured.
Finnish star who tragically lost his leg won another gold medal in World Championships: "Without the accident, I wouldn't be the World Champion"
Early on Wednesday morning, Matti Suur-Hamari won the gold medal in the banked slalom event in the World Championships held in Big White, Canada.
Earlier, Suur-Hamari had also won the cross event.
Altogether, he now has three gold medals in World Championships.
"These World Championships have been pretty amazing!
We've won two gold medals and are really pumped up", said Suur-Hamari who was contacted by telephone.
The 30-year-old rider thanked his coach and his excellent preparations in Finland.
According to Suur-Hamari, the number of challengers is constantly increasing.
"Para-snowboarding has grown and evolved notably.
Gaps between racers are becoming smaller, and there are a number of new riders.
I always think that there is someone new ready to beat me.
Every competition seems to have a different winner."
Suur-Hamari lost one of his legs in a motorcycle accident in 2009.
He has always been an enthusiastic snowboarder ever since his childhood and the accident could not keep him off the slopes.
"Every now and then I can't help but wonder what my life would've been like without the accident.
But, I've always thought that there's no going back.
You play the hand you're dealt", Suur-Hamari stresses.
It would be cruel to say that the serious accident and losing a leg were a stroke of luck, and Suur-Hamari does not.
However, he was able to turn his difficulty into an advantage.
"I'd say that everything turned for the better.
I wouldn't be a three-time World Champion without the accident."
Before the accident, 23-year-old Suur-Hamari was losing interest in snowboarding.
"I really started working to reach the top after the accident.
When I was younger, I trained with my friends, and we were always watching the X-Games.
They were only distant dreams that nearly died as time moved on.
After the accident, I somehow found myself racing at the X-Games.
I couldn't have imagined it.
I was 23 and I thought that this will be a long life if I stay here feeling bitter and feeling sorry for myself.
I decided to roll up my sleeves and start working.
I'd say that I've succeeded quite well."
The rider was elated when wheelchair racer Leo-Pekka Tähti was selected the Athlete of the Year in Finland.
The four-time Olympic gold medallist received the award at the Sports Gala held in May.
According to Suur-Hamari, this recognition is an important signal for parasports.
"It was huge, and Tähti absolutely earned it.
This will undoubtedly turn eyes towards parasports."
When will be the time to launch the campaign for selecting two-time World Champion Matti Suur-Hamari the Athlete of the Year?
"We'll see.
I'm doing my best to succeed."
So far, Suur-Hamari has not conquered all the peaks he wants.
He has set a major goal for next year
when the Paralympic Games will be held in South Korea.
"My goal is to win a medal!"
Majority of young Syrian refugees do not expect to return to their homeland, unless the war ends and Isis is driven out
A Voice for Young Syrian Refugees survey identified the opinions and attitudes of young Syrian refugees living in Jordan and Lebanon.
Syrian refugees baking bread at a refugee camp in Jordan.
The majority of young Syrian refugees do not expect to make a permanent return to their homeland.
They believe that the Syrian civil war would have to end and Isis would have to be driven out of the country in order for them to return.
The Trump administration is not expected to bring about a change to the Syrian conflict.
Burson-Marsteller, a global public relations and communications firm, conducted an international survey to identify the opinions and attitudes of young Syrian refugees.
Burson-Marsteller has studied the opinions and attitudes of young people in Arab countries during nine years.
This year's A Voice for Young Syrian Refugees survey identified the opinions and attitudes of young Syrian refugees living in Jordan and Lebanon.
In February and March 2017, a total of 400 young Syrians aged 18–24 responded to the survey. Half of these were women and half were men.
Half of the interviews were conducted in Jordan and half in Lebanon.
According to the survey, more than half of all young Syrian refugees do not expect to make a permanent return to their homeland.
Of all respondents, 42 per cent thought that they might return to their homeland and four per cent did not know whether or not a return is possible.
According to the survey, key factors among young Syrians are the war in Syria and the presence of Isis in the country.
Nearly half (47 per cent) of all respondents thought that the end of the war is the most significant factor affecting their return home, while one quarter considered that driving Isis out of the country is the key factor.
Less than ten per cent mentioned an improved financial situation or the exit of Bashar al-Assad from Syria as the most critical factor.
Military actions alone cannot resolve the conflict
Young Syrians were asked to name the most important factor to end the conflict.
The majority of all respondents considered that ending the war is more important Bashar al-Assad renouncing power.
A little more than 25 per cent thought that the presidency of al-Assad is an obstacle to a peace treaty.
Nearly half of all respondents felt that both political and military solutions are needed to end the ongoing conflict in Syria.
Only a little more than 25 per cent considered that military action alone can resolve the conflict.
The majority of young Syrian refugees saw that Isis has lost power over the past year, whereas 20 per cent felt that its power has increased.
According to the respondents, what is important in the fight against Isis is that the media would convey information to people, saying that Isis has nothing to do with Islam.
Nearly as many respondents mentioned military actions and an educational reform as primary means.
A little more than ten per cent thought that the most important factor would be to create better paying jobs for young people.
When asked about the impact of the Trump administration on the Syrian conflict, 66 per cent of all respondents said that the conflict will not change during Trump's tenure.
Nearly 25 per cent believed that the Syrian conflict will get worse during Trump's presidency.
Whether the involvement of Russia and Iran has improved or worsened the conflict split the respondents into two groups.
Monty Widenius spends half his time coding in Kauniainen to keep the internet in perfect order – his database is used by Wikipedia and Google
MariaDB, a company based in Espoo, is developing "the world's fastest growing" open source database.
The main product of MariaDB, established by coder and entrepreneur Michael "Monty" Widenius, is free of charge for its users, and it can be developed by any skilled programmer through the Internet.
For example, Google and Wikipedia use the Finnish database, but they may not be any paying customers.
With databases, huge volumes of data can be kept in order and quickly available.
If you use, for example, LinkedIn, Twitter or Booking.com, you are using the database of MariaDB or MySQL.
"All information that is not in image format, comes from a database, and that is where images are also linked", Widenius says.
Widenius, who works as the CTO of MariaDB, spends half of his time coding.
Working remotely from Kauniainen, Widenius makes sure that the Internet works as it should.
Widenius, together with David Axmark from Sweden, is the developer of MySQL, the world's most popular open source database.
In 2008, technology company Sun bought MySQL at a price of one billion dollars and, a year later, software giant Oracle acquired Sun at 7.4 billion dollars.
When the Oracle deal landed, the majority of MySQL developers announced their intention to leave.
"They didn't want to work for Oracle which didn't give a definite promise of the future of MySQL", Widenius says.
At this stage, he had already established a company to develop MariaDB.
He did not want to see his life's work die.
"I hired the twenty best developers from Sun and made sure that the code stays safe in the hands of the same people who created it in the first place."
Because MySQL is an open source database, MariaDB was able to develop a new branch from it.
Only the name had to be changed.
A foundation was set up to supervise that the code of MariaDB can be developed freely.
"We didn't use similar safeguards when developing MySQL", says Widenius.
Even though many have heard of Widenius and the billion dollar MySQL deal, not many in Finland know anything about MariaDB.
"In recent years, we've ground by about 50 per cent a year", says Kenneth Paqvalén, CFO at MariaDB.
At this point, MariaDB focuses on growth, not on profit, and Paqvalén has little to say about the company's key figures.
He does reveal that MariaDB expects to obtain new orders worth 20 million euros during this financial period.
Because the database is free of charge, the company has developed auxiliary services for which corporate customers are ready to pay.
MariaDB also helps to exchange databases, which may take more than a year if a customer has used a closed database.
A switch from MySQL to MariaDB is quick and easy, as the two are different versions of each other.
For example, Telefónica, a Spanish telecom operator, and DBS, the largest bank in Southeast Asia, are paying customers of MariaDB.
The most popular cloud services, such as Amazon AWS, Microsoft Azure and Alibaba Cloud, offer MariaDB to their customers.
At the same time, MariaDB spreads automatically to new users through Linux operating system packages in which MariaDB has largely replaced MySQL.
Even though we are a small company, we are connected to major players.
"Our customers include the world's largest telecom operators, game developers, banks and even a few central banks", Paqvalén says.
The database market is still dominated by giants, such as Oracle, Microsoft, IBM and SAP, with their closed databases.
For Oracle, MySQL means a modest secondary business opportunity compared with its traditional closed database.
Even though the largest database companies have lost their market shares according to research company Gartner, players such as MariaDB are small and insignificant firms, albeit quickly growing ones, measured by net sales.
In the database market of roughly 50 million dollars, open source databases cannot even reach the threshold of one billion.
However, the significance of open source software cannot be measured in money alone, as the majority of users do not pay anything for its use.
Gartner estimates that, in 2018, companies will develop more than 70 per cent of their internal applications using open source databases.
In addition, more than half of older databases will be replaced by open source databases, or at least this transition will have been initiated.
"Major corporations do not obtain new customers, as most users select open source software.
This means that the licence fees of commercial databases are sky high.
Companies want to make as much money as they used to do, with fewer customers", Widenius says.
Because it takes a lot of work to replace a closed database, most customer companies have quietly accepted the increased prices.
"We have many customers for which it's really difficult to make this transition, because their applications and other solutions are tied to a closed database", says Widenius.
He still believes that customers will soon have had enough.
As licence fees go higher year after year, customers will eventually switch to an open source database.
The price is 10 to 20 per cent of what it was and service is better, as customers can easily change to another database.
Besides, many companies are facing major system changes when they transfer their functions to cloud services.
At the same time, many want to change their database software.
Last spring, MariaDB acquired a loan of 25 million euros from the European Investment Bank (EIB).
This was the largest growth loan ever given by the EIB in the Nordic countries.
The company has 115 employees around the world, and it intends to hire more.
One reason for obtaining funding from the EIB was the impact MariaDB has on public IT procurement.
The company has public sector customers in the UK and Germany, among others.
In Europe, the public sector is paying billions of euros a year for databases.
"Many countries want to adopt open source solutions and, therefore, use tax revenue more effectively", Paqvalén says.
Widenius is not happy about how Finland is spending money on, say, closed healthcare systems, while open source systems are cheaper and do not tie the client to a single software company.
Some say that open source is an ideology, but I believe that it is a better way of coding.
A community helps and creates something you cannot invent or do.
Alongside another Finn, Linus Torvalds, the developer of Linux, Widenius, 55, is one of the best known contributors to open source software.
Widenius helps other companies to develop functional business models on top of open source.
I still give four to five speeches on open source in different parts of the world.
Italy toughens tone on NGO migrant rescue boats
Italy has warned NGOs operating migrant rescue boats in the Mediterranean they will not be allowed to continue if they do not sign up to new rules governing their operations.
"If NGOs do not sign up to a new code of conduct, it is difficult to see how they can continue operating," Interior Minister Marco Minniti said in an interview with Turin daily La Stampa.
Minniti's warning came a day after Italian authorities impounded a boat operated by German aid organisatiion Jugend Rettet on suspicion its crew effectively collaborated with people traffickers in a way that facilitated illegal immigration.
The aid organisation, which has only been operational for a year, declined to comment on the substance of detailed allegations made against it by Italian prosecutor Ambrogio Cartosio.
"For us the rescue of human life is and will be our top priority, so we are very sorry we will not be able to operate in the search and rescue zone at the moment," the organisation said in a statement on social media.
"We can only assess all the accusations currently being made after we have gathered all the information and can assess the situation."
Italian authorities had been monitoring Jugend Rettet's boat, the Iuventa, since October.
Its crew is suspected to taking on board dinghy loads of migrants delivered directly to them by people traffickers and allowing the smugglers to make off with the vessels to be used again.
At least one such meeting allegedly took place only 1.3 miles off the Libyan coast, according to the prosecutor's file, the contents of which were published by Italian media.
The crew are suspected of having flouted the authority of the Italian coastguard, which oversees rescue operations in the zone, out of humanitarian zeal rather than for any other motives.
Under the code of conduct, boats like the Iuventa would notably have to have an Italian police officer on board monitoring their activities.
Only three of the nine NGOs involved in search and rescue operations have so far agreed to abide by the code: Save The Children, Malta-based MOAS and Spain's Pro-Activa Open Arms.
The latter said on Thursday it regarded the new rules as unnecessary but acceptable as they would not involve any "significant change or impediment" to its rescue operations.
Among those who have refused to sign is the Nobel Prize-winning organisation Doctors Without Borders (MSF).
Minniti meanwhile said a sharp fall over recent weeks in the number of migrants arriving in Italy following rescues was an indication that efforts to beef up the Libyan coastguard and cooperation with local mayors was bearing fruit.
"In recent days we have begun to see light at the end of the tunnel," the minister said.
He revealed plans for further talks this month with Libyan mayors on economic development initiatives and with Chad, Niger and Mali on measures to reduce the number of migrants leaving those countries in the hope of reaching Europe.
Seasonal worker suspected of murdering his spouse in Enontekiö, suspect found in open country – case forwarded to the prosecutor
The suspected crime took place in Kuttanen, Enontekiö, last December.
According to the police, a 36-year-old Czech man is suspected of murdering his 26-year-old Scottish spouse.
It was reported earlier that both were seasonal workers.
Similarly, the police reported that the suspect had afterwards tried to escape in the open country with his two dogs.
The man was found in the cold, and he did not resist when being apprehended.
An indictment must be issued in less than a week.
The case may be handled in the District Court of Lapland as early as in August.
Harry Potter and All Creatures Great and Small actor Robert Hardy has died
British actor Robert Hardy has died at the age of 91.
His death was reported by his family on Thursday.
Born in 1925, Hardy started acting in theatres at the age of 24.
During his long career, he also acted in films and on television.
Hardy is remembered for his role as Cornelius Fudge, the Minister of Magic, in Harry Potter films and his performance as a vet in All Creatures Great and Small based on the book of James Herriot.
The popular BBC series aired seven seasons altogether.
Michelle Carter sentenced for texts urging suicide of Conrad Roy
A Massachusetts woman has been sentenced to two and a half years for encouraging her boyfriend to commit suicide through texts and phone calls.
Michelle Carter, now 20, will serve 15 months of her term behind bars and five years of probation.
Carter was convicted in June of the involuntary manslaughter of Conrad Roy, who took his own life on 13 July 2014.
Mr Roy's father told Thursday's hearing: "My family is heartbroken.
My son was my best friend."
Carter was allowed to remain free pending an appeal.
She had faced a maximum sentence of 20 years, but her legal team argued that both she and Mr Roy suffered from mental illness.
Dressed in red trousers and a cream blouse, Carter stood tearfully with hands clasped and eyes cast down as she was sentenced.
"Her actions killed Conrad Roy," the prosecutor told the court.
"She ended his life to better her own.
She has not accepted responsibility," she said.
"She has shown no remorse."
But Carter's lawyer said it was a "horrible circumstance that she completely regrets."
However, Judge Lawrence Moniz said he did not find that her "age or level of maturity or even her mental illness have any significant impact on her actions."
A prosecutor read a statement from Mr Roy's mother, Lynn Roy, saying there was "not one day I do not mourn the loss of my beloved son.
I want him to be proud of me and how I am handling everything - I am trying to be there for his sisters in all of my pain we will carry with us for eternity," it said.
Mr Roy's sister, Camdyn Roy, testified that she was "haunted" by the realisation that she would never attend her brother's wedding or be an aunt to his children.
"Not having that one person I've been with every day since birth is a pain I'll always keep with me for the rest of my life," she said.
The case appears to set a legal precedent, as there is no Massachusetts law that criminalises telling a person to commit suicide.
Carter was 17 when Mr Roy was found dead of carbon monoxide poisoning in a vehicle in 2014.
The case drew national attention after Carter's text messages revealed she had encouraged him to end his life.
"Hang yourself, jump off a building, stab yourself I don't know there's a lot of ways," she said in several messages sent in the two weeks before his death while he was on holiday with his family.
In the moments before his suicide, she wrote: "You need to do it, Conrad" and "All you have to do is turn the generator on and you will be free and happy."
Judge Moniz said Carter sought attention through Mr Roy's death, ordering that she not be allowed to profit from the case through any press.
The case has divided legal opinion.
Among the few to defend Carter was Amanda Knox, who was convicted of murdering her British roommate in Italy in 2007 before she was cleared two years ago.
Ms Knox, 30, published an op-ed in the Los Angeles Times saying: "Michelle Carter deserves sympathy and help, not prison."
NATO Secretary General: Worst relations with Russia since the Cold War
Jens Stoltenberg, NATO Secretary General, commented on Thursday that relations between NATO and Russia have become significantly colder.
Stoltenberg blamed Russia and its position in the conflict in Ukraine.
"I think it is correct to say that NATO’s relationship with Russia is more difficult than it has been any time since the end of the Cold War", Stoltenberg told CNN.
"At the end of the Cold War, we hoped to develop a close partnership with Russia.
But particularly after the illegal annexation of Crimea in 2014 and the continued Russian destabilisation of eastern Ukraine, the relationship between NATO and Russia has deteriorated considerably."
According to Stoltenberg, NATO is still committed to avoiding a further spike in tensions.
"As long as we are strong, as long as we are predictable, we can also engage in political dialogue with Russia to try to avoid escalation and avoid a new Cold War."
Stoltenberg’s remarks came as Donald Trump stated that the relationship between the USA and Russia is at an all-time and very dangerous low.
Trump blamed the US Congress for the poor relationship, as it approved new sanctions on Russia last week.
Audi to Modify Up to 850,000 Diesel Vehicles as Carmakers Face Backlash
A day before Audi's announcement, BMW said it would offer to upgrade the software in more than 350,000 vehicles.
The BMW chairman said the company believed "there are more intelligent options than driving restrictions," referring to the European cities - including Munich, where BMW is based - that have considered banning or restricting diesel vehicles.
Daimler announced on Tuesday that it would modify three million Mercedes vehicles in Europe to reduce their diesel emissions.
None of the companies described the moves as recalls.
European carmakers have heavily promoted the use of diesel vehicles in Europe and the United States to help meet rules on carbon dioxide emissions.
But the nitrogen oxides that diesel engines emit are considered carcinogens, and can cause asthma.
The cost to automotive companies of installing equipment to neutralize the fumes emitted by diesel vehicles is also increasing, making it difficult to keep the price of the cars competitive.
As German automakers face scrutiny, the government of Chancellor Angela Merkel has also been accused of coddling the powerful car companies and of ignoring signs of the problem.
The companies are trying to avoid repeating the mistakes of Volkswagen, which covered up its use of so-called defeat devices that could adjust emissions to comply with regulations when a car was being tested, but ease back in normal driving conditions.
Several Volkswagen executives have been charged in the United States, and others are under investigation on both sides of the Atlantic.
Last month, the former head of thermodynamics at Audi's engine development department was arrested in Germany.
The former manager, Zaccheo Giovanni Pamio, is Italian, and therefore is not protected from extradition and could face trial in the United States.
Early this year, Audi was swept up into a German criminal investigation involving Volkswagen after the authorities accused Audi of installing a system to evade emissions rules in Europe, broadening an inquiry that had focused on the United States.
The inclusion of Audi in the investigation could weigh heavily on Volkswagen: The luxury carmaker accounts for a disproportionate share of Volkswagen's profit.
Elections in Venezuela investigated as rigged, large-scale protests expected
According to the company, the number of voters reported by Venezuelan officials is higher than the number of actual voters by at least one million.
Tibisay Lucenan, chair of the national election committee told reporters that this is an unprecedented opinion from a company which has no role in the election results.
Maduro states that the crisis will end.
On Sunday, delegates were elected in Venezuela after controversial elections to change the constitution.
The opposition has already strongly criticised the elections and organised protests.
Maduro's opposition has postponed its protests until the appointments.
According to El Pais, national security forces started to take hold of the parliament building in Wednesday evening, local time.
Their purpose is to ensure that the appointment event stays safe.
Provence lavender under threat from climate change
It has become a symbol of Provence in southern France, but there is a warning that it's under threat from climate change.
Lavender is in decline because of drought-like conditions and disease-carrying insects, causing a major headache for scientists and farmers attempting to find solutions.
Eric Chaisse, an expert at the Provence-based agricultural research institute CRIEPPAM, said: "Lavender in Provence is effectively endangered, because in recent years the plant has been subjected to the effects of climate change that brought a lot less rain in the spring and mostly in the autumn.
This affects the lifespan of lavender.
There's also a small cicada, a micro-bacteria transmitting leaf hopper, and in very dry weather there are lots of them."
And a lot is at stake.
As well as attracting holidaymakers, lavender oil is highly sought after for perfume and cosmetics.
Eric Chaisse said: "Instead of having very long plant ears with a number of large flowers, we have smaller ones, underdeveloped and either missing or weakened.
So we have fewer parts with essential oil."
Solutions being looked at include better water distribution and slowing down evaporation from the soil, but also spraying the plants with a protective mix of clay and water and developing varieties more resistant to dry conditions.
A journalist's murder underscores growing threat in Mexico
The staff of the weekly newspaper Riodoce normally meets on Wednesdays to review their plans for coverage of the most recent mayhem wrought in Sinaloa state by organized crime, corrupt officials and ceaseless drug wars.
But on this day, in the shadow of their own tragedy, they've come together to talk about security.
It's important to change their routines, they are told.
Two senior journalists discuss what feels safer: to take their children with them to the office, which was the target of a grenade attack in 2009, or to leave them at home.
Security experts have written three words on a blackboard at the front of the room: adversaries, neutrals, allies.
They ask the reporters to suggest names for each column - no proof is needed, perceptions and gut feelings are enough.
There are drug-traffickers, politicians, businesspeople, journalists suspected of being on the payroll of the government or the cartels, a catalog of villains who make the job of covering Mexico's chaos perilous.
There is no respite from the violence, and as bodies pile up across the country, more and more of them are journalists: at least 25 since President Enrique Pena Nieto took office in December 2012, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists; 589 under federal protection after attacks and threats; and so far this year, at least seven dead in seven states.
Among the latest is their editor and inspiration, Riodoce co-founder Javier Valdez Cardenas.
"The greatest error is to live in Mexico and to be a journalist," Valdez wrote in one of his many books on narco-violence.
His absence is felt deeply, although his presence is everywhere - a large photo of Valdez displaying his middle finger, with the word "Justice," hangs on the facade of the Riodoce building; two reporters on their 30s, Aaron Ibarra and Miriam Ramirez, wear T-shirts that display his smiling, bespectacled face or his trademark Panama hat.
The workshop takes place less than two months after his death; the reporters discuss their shared trauma, their nightmares, insomnia, paranoia.
Although a special federal prosecutor's office was established in 2010 to handle the journalists' cases, it has only prosecuted two, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists.
As with most of the thousands of murders tied to drug trafficking and organized crime each year, the killers of journalists are rarely brought to justice.
At Riodoce, they persist in covering the violence of Sinaloa, though they are heartbroken, though the terrain is more treacherous now.
Without information on the killers, without justice, the meeting to discuss security, says Ibarra, is of little use.
"It's very foolish to waste my time in this workshop," he says.
"As long as we don't know why, you distrust everyone."
On the morning of May 15, Valdez left the Riodoce office in the state capital of Culiacan.
He managed to drive just a couple blocks before his red Toyota Corolla was stopped by two men; he was forced out of his car and shot 12 times, presumably for the name of the paper - which translates as Twelfth River.
The gunman drove away in his car and crashed it nearby.
Valdez was 50 years old.
He left a wife and two adult children.
Rumors tend to fly freely in Culiacan.
But on the subject of Valdez, there's practically nothing but silence.
Since Guzman's arrest last year and extradition to the United States in January, Sinaloa has been one of the country's bloodiest battlegrounds as rival factions fight to fill the vacuum.
Never mind that someone or several people are shot dead in the street every day in Sinaloa, or that the cemetery is filled with ornate, two-story mausoleums for drug kings, larger than many homes for the living.
Forget for a minute that a state of "calm" is when just one cartel is in control of the coastal state with its valuable ports and drug-trafficking routes to the United States.
Despite that, and the fact that Valdez was intimately aware of the perils of his work, Ismail Bojorquez, 60, a co-founder and director of Riodoce, is wracked with guilt for failing to protect his friend.
He believes two errors contributed to the killing.
First there was the publication in February of an interview with Damaso Lopez, a leader of one of the rival cartel factions at war with Guzman's sons.
The piece may have angered the sons; suspected gang members bought up every copy of the edition as soon as they were delivered to newsstands.
The second mistake was not forcing Valdez to leave the country for his own safety after the seizure of another newspaper that carried the same story.
Valdez was a legend in Mexico and abroad, and his killing is seen as a milestone in Mexican violence against journalists.
He'd survived for so long, his friends and colleagues assumed he'd always be there.
He was a veteran reporter for Noroeste in 2003 when he joined five colleagues in creating Riodoce, selling $50 shares.
In Sinaloa, "it was impossible to do journalism without touching the narco issue," said Bojorquez.
Over time the paper earned a reputation for brave and honest coverage, and sales and advertising increased.
Reporters loved being able to publish hard-hitting investigations without fear of censorship, and readers were fascinated by a publication where they could read stories nobody else dared to cover.
Eight years after Riodoce was founded, it won the prestigious Maria Moors Cabot award for coverage in Latin America.
That same year, Valdez won the International Press Freedom Award of the Committee to Protect Journalists for his courage in pursuing the Mexican drug story wherever it led.
He freely acknowledged that he was frightened.
"I want to carry on living," he said at the time of the CPJ award.
Drug trafficking in Sinaloa "is a way of life," he said last October, in an interview with Rompeviento TV.
"You have to assume the task that falls to you as a journalist - either that or you play dumb.
I don't want to be asked, 'What were you doing in the face of so much death ... why didn't you say what was going on?'"
The Riodoce staff misses Valdez, the jokester who swore like a longshoreman, the friend generous with hugs and advice, a teacher who knew how to survive.
They relied on his routine.
He would always wear his hat.
He would go to El Guayabo, the bar across from the office, and would always sit at the same table.
Now, they ask: Was his love of routine his downfall?
His death also has forced them to question their own assumptions about how best to do their jobs and stay alive.
"They don't like it if you mess with their women, their children, their clean businesses, their clandestine airstrips" used to move drugs.
"Those things were off-limits," said Bojorquez.
The result is, even in the best of times, a high-level of self-censorship and self-preservation.
Trusting one's instincts.
If it smells wrong, stay away.
The trouble, said Riodoce editor Andres Villarreal, is that "smell is a sense that can be fooled ... and then the thing with Javier happened."
The old rules, he and others say, no longer apply in Sinaloa - just as they don't in Tamaulipas, Veracruz, Guerrero and other states that are home to a toxic mix of lucrative smuggling routes, weak institutions and corrupt government officials.
The landscape constantly shifts.
In the room where Riodoce staff met for security training, suddenly no cellphones were allowed; days before, it was revealed that spyware sold exclusively to governments had been used to monitor journalists and activists in Mexico.
Outside, two police officers sought relief from the 104-degree (40 Celsius) heat in the shade of a tree.
They were assigned by the state government to guard Riodoce's offices, housed in a four-story building in a middle-class neighborhood of Culiacan.
Half-jokingly, some of the reporters wondered whether these officers are among the 50 percent of cops whom the governor himself has said are not trustworthy.
It has been months since the reporters have gone into the mountainous countryside, where the drug gangs are in de facto control.
For this week's edition Riodoce was looking at three main stories.
There was the killing of former boxing great Julio Cesar Chavez's brother in Sinaloa.
They also had an expose on government spending concentrated in the governor's hometown.
And there was a group kidnapping in one of Culiacan's most expensive restaurants, a block from the prosecutor's office.
There was no official word on who was abducted or how it happened, so caution set in when it came time to write what everyone in the city knows: that the restaurant is a favorite of both drug traffickers and authorities.
A reporter learned from public records that the restaurant was registered under the name of a politician belonging to the ruling Institutional Revolution Party, or PRI, which dominated all levels of politics for nearly all of the last century.
Recently several PRI governors have been accused of corruption in high-profile cases.
Villarreal asked the reporter to write about prior incidents in that locale, including one in which a son of "El Chapo" Guzman escaped a military raid.
Just months before, readers would have looked to Valdez's column for the best-sourced information about the kidnapping.
"Before, we would have already known what happened," said Villarreal, 46, nicknamed "El Flaco" for his slender build.
"Now all channels of communication with our sources have been broken."
Valdez's office has been repurposed as a storage room for signs and stickers protesting journalist killings, as staff have become something they never expected to be: activists on behalf of the press.
Reporter Miriam Ramirez grabbed a few of the signs and headed out the next morning for a demonstration at the local prosecutor's office over yet another journalist.
Salvador Adame disappeared in the western state of Michoacan three days after Valdez was killed.
A burned body has been discovered and officials say it is his, based on DNA tests.
Nationwide, journalists have become more vocal, scrawling "SOS Press" on sidewalks and buildings in organized protests.
On this day, the director Bojorquez is away in Washington, trying to rally international support for justice in the Valdez case.
At a meeting with the governor of Sinaloa the day after Valdez was killed, Ramirez accused authorities of spying on journalists and having them killed for telling the truth.
She has since asked to be reassigned from covering the government, concerned that her anger has hurt her objectivity.
Valdez had repeatedly said that journalists in Mexico are "surrounded" by organized crime, complicit government officials and an indifferent society.
In his last book, "Narco-journalism," he wrote that reporters are being killed not just by drug gangs but on the order of politicians and security forces in cahoots with organized crime.
The media watchdog group Articulo 19 attributed more than half of attacks on journalists last year to police and public officials.
"In Mexico you die because they want to shut you up," Ramirez said.
Clearly, the murders have a chilling effect.
No one forgets the death six years ago of blogger Maria Elizabeth Macias in the northern border state of Tamaulipas.
Her body was found along with a note purportedly signed by the Zetas cartel: "Here I am because of my reports."
A computer keyboard and headphones lay next to her severed head.
Some outlets have opted to close, such as the newspaper El Norte, in the northern border state of Chihuahua, after the killing of correspondent Miroslava Breach in March.
Others keep going, as El Manana of Nuevo Laredo did following the killing of its director in 2004.
In 2010, Diario de Ciudad Juarez addressed the drug cartels publicly with a front-page editorial titled, "What do you want from us?"
Some journalists have fled their home states or even the country.
It's a wrenching decision.
It's hard to find work in exile, and they still scan the streets, looking for danger.
And sometimes, they are hunted down, as apparently was photographer Ruben Espinosa, who was murdered in 2015 along with four women in a Mexico City apartment three months after fleeing Veracruz.
For those who stay behind and continue the work, it's a daily dance of high-risk decisions.
Ibarra - who once wanted to be a poet - admits that covering the drug trade scares him.
"Mexico is going to hell, and that's why I became a reporter," he said.
At midnight on a recent Friday, with the latest issue already put to bed, Riodoce editors sat on the sidewalk outside the office, drinking beer, when all at once, their phones began to buzz.
A series of shootouts involving gang rivals and security forces near the beach resort city of Mazatlan had left 19 confirmed dead.
The war continued to escalate, as was promised by a series of cartel messages discovered in the area.
From the curb, via cellphone, they put the news up on Riodoce's website.
The front page would have to be changed the next day.
Sirens wailed nearby - another shootout in the area.
Bojorquez glanced over at the police officers standing guard to see if they were alert.
If they were at all afraid, they didn't show it.
Beneath the massive portrait of their newspaper's fallen founder, his middle finger displayed for all of Sinaloa to see, the staff of Riodoce was following in his footsteps.
"How can you even think of closing," Bojorquez said, "when the same day Javier was killed the intern asked me to send her out to report on the street?"
Hannu Manninen's Olympic project starts with a huge setback – "It's tough"
Hannu Manninen turned 39 in April, but did not celebrate long, as the professional pilot started to prepare for the Olympic season.
However, the training period had a catastrophic start when Manninen caught the flu.
This turned into a long period of illnesses, stretching to five weeks.
In practice, Manninen was ill throughout May.
"First I had the flu and finally an ear infection, for which I had to take antibiotics.
I was able to complete some ten per cent of the planned training sessions.
I don't remember the last time I was that sick.
It was tough – I was hungry for training, but I just wasn't able to do anything", Manninen says to Ilta-Sanomat.
Test results came down
The gold medallist in 2007 World Championships was only allowed to train during the second week of June. This was reflected in the results of the treadmill test conducted by KIHU – the Research Institute for Olympic Sports – on 12 June.
In the test, an athlete uses roller skis to ski on a treadmill, the speed of which increases every three minutes.
After every three-minute period, the treadmill is stopped for ten seconds, and the tester takes a sample of lactic acid from the athlete's fingertip.
"Last autumn, I was able to keep going for 32 minutes, but now I had to stop after 28 minutes.
I hit the wall", Manninen says.
Heading in a better direction
After initial difficulties, Manninen says that he has stayed healthy.
"I've carried out slow aerobic exercises to return my metabolism back to normal.
The last five weeks have been really good.
During Midsummer, I also had a break of a week and a half from flying.
I was able to spend some time with my family at our holiday home."
Last season, Manninen only raced in four World Cup competitions before the World Championships in Lahti.
Manninen reached his best position in the opening competition when he climbed up to 18th place after an excellent skiing performance.
Goals have been set
Manninen and Petter Kukkonen, head coach of the national team, have prepared a training and racing plan up to February.
"We are looking for a different training rhythm compared with last season.
The season opener is followed by a weekend of three World Cup starts in Ruka.
In December, the plan is to take part in at least one World Cup weekend, possibly in Ramsau.
Then, the plan is to race in Seefeld at the end of January.
After that, I hope that my name is on the list of the Olympic team", Manninen says.
The Olympics in PyeongChang would be the sixth Winter Games for Manninen.
"The important thing is to stay healthy", emphasises Nummela-based Manninen who won the gold medal in the team event in Salt Lake City in 2002.
Dinosaur used camouflage to evade its enemies
At first glance, it looks like a statue albeit a terrifying one.
Now researchers have revealed the first findings from the incredible rhino-sized creature found by a Canadian miner were so well preserved experts have described it as 'the Mona Lisa of dinosaurs'.
It was so well preserved, they were even able to determine the colour of its scaly skin was a reddish brown - and say it had something of a 'troubled past'.
The report in the journal Current Biology described it as 'the best-preserved armored dinosaur ever found, and one of the best dinosaur specimens in the world.'
The fossil is a newfound species of nodosaur, which lived midway through the Cretaceous period, between 110 million and 112 million years ago.
It's incredible well preserved state has stunned researchers, who describe it as 'truly remarkable'
The armoured plant-eater is the best preserved fossil of its kind ever found, according to reports in National Geographic.
It was found by Shawn Funk, when he was digging at the Suncor Millenium Mine near Fort McMurray in northern Alberta, Canada, on March 21, 2011.
He hit something which seemed out of place from the surrounding rock, and decided to take a closer look.
The fossil he uncovered was sent to the Royal Tyrrell Museum of Paleontology.
They spent the next six years working on uncovering the beast within the 2,500-pound (1,100 kg) lump of earth.
After all that hard work, the finished result is now ready to be unveiled.
'If you just squint your eyes a bit, you could almost believe it was sleeping,' said lead author Caleb Brown, a scientist at the Royal Tyrrell Museum where the creature is on display.
'It will go down in science history as one of the most beautiful and best preserved dinosaur specimens - the Mona Lisa of dinosaurs.'
By studying its skin, researchers found that this plant-eater, though covered in armor and resembling a walking tank, likely faced a significant threat from meat-eating dinosaurs.
The heavily armoured dinosaur used red and white camouflage to hide from predators, and employed a shielding technique known as counter-shading, which is also used by many modern-day animals.
This would have allowed it to better blend into its surroundings and evade its enemies, experts say, suggesting it was preyed on by larger dinosaurs.
The 110-million-year-old creature, part of the nodosaur family, first hit headlines in May and is now on view at the Royal Tyrrell Museum of Palaeontology.
Researchers have now studied and named the beast Borealopelta markmitchelli after museum technician Mark Mitchell, one of a team who spent more than 7,000 hours painstakingly uncovering it.
The amazing preservation of the specimen made it possible for Dr Mitchell and an international team of scientists to document the pattern and shape of scales and armour across its body.
They discovered countershading, a common method of defence in the animal kingdom, which means the top of the creature was darker than its underside.
Although countershading is common, the findings come as surprise because Borealopelta's size far exceeds that of countershaded animals alive today.
It suggests the dinosaur was hunted by enough pressure meat-eating dinosaurs that evolution favoured concealment over confrontation as a means of survival.
But most contemporary animals that have countershading -- think deer, zebras or armadillos -- are much smaller and more vulnerable as prey, signaling that this nodosaur faced a real struggle to survive.
'Strong predation on a massive, heavily-armored dinosaur illustrates just how dangerous the dinosaur predators of the Cretaceous must have been,' said Brown.
Chemical analysis of organic compounds in its scales also reveal that the dinosaur's skin would have been reddish brown.
Scientists are continuing to study the animal for clues about its life, including its preserved gut contents to find out what it ate for its last meal.
They believe that when the dinosaur died, it fell into a river and was swept out to sea, where it sank on its back to the ocean floor.
At that time, Alberta was as warm as south Florida is today, and rivers and oceans likely spread far further inland than they do now.
'This nodosaur is truly remarkable in that it is completely covered in preserved scaly skin, yet is also preserved in three dimensions, retaining the original shape of the animal,' said Brown.
'The result is that the animal looks almost the same today as it did back in the Early Cretaceous.
You don't need to use much imagination to reconstruct it; if you just squint your eyes a bit, you could almost believe it was sleeping.'
The Cretaceous was a time when giant theropods, meat-eating dinosaurs that stood on two legs, roamed the Earth.
Although the king of them all, Tyrannosaurus rex, lived millions of years after Borealopelta, the armoured dinosaur may have been hunted by some of its formidable ancestors.
They include Acrocanthosaurus, a 38ft (11.5m) long monster weighing six tonnes.
The scientists, whose latest findings appear in the journal Current Biology, believe Borealopelta was washed out to sea after it died and mummified in mud.
The creature was found by Shawn Funk, when he was digging at the Millenium Mine near Fort McMurray in northern Alberta, Canada, on March 21, 2011.
According to the museum, it is the best preserved armoured dinosaur in the world, including skin and armour, and is complete from the snout to hips.
The creatures were around 18 feet (five metres) long on average, and weighted up to 3,000 pounds (1,300 kg).
It featured two 20-inch-long spikes which protruded from its shoulders.
The researchers believe that the this armored plant-eater lumbered through what is now western Canada, until a flooded river swept it into open sea.
But the dinosaur's undersea burial preserved its armor in exquisite detail.
The fossilised remains of this particular specimen are so well preserved that remnants of skin still cover bumpy armour plates along the dinosaur's skull.
As Michael Greshko wrote for National Geographic, such level of preservation 'is a rare as winning the lottery.
The more I look at it, the more mind-boggling it becomes.
Fossilized remnants of skin still cover the bumpy armor plates dotting the animal's skull.
Its right forefoot lies by its side, its five digits splayed upward.
I can count the scales on its sole.'
How one activist came to learn the answer to the question: 'Whose Streets?'
On Aug. 9, 2014, Brittany Ferrell was shaken to her core.
Just a day after arriving in New York City on a trip, the St. Louis native sat on the bed of an Airbnb she was renting, scrolling through Facebook on her phone.
She stumbled upon a post from someone from high school.
"The police just killed an 18 year old kid and he's still laying in the street," it read.
Confused, noticing no one else on her feed had posted the information, she closed Facebook and opened Twitter.
A user with the handle @TheePharoah was being constantly retweeted onto her timeline.
The St. Louis-area rapper was live-tweeting the death of Michael Brown, an unarmed black 18-year-old killed by a white police officer in Ferguson, Mo.
He posted a picture of Brown's lifeless body stretched out in the street, where it would stay for four hours.
"This is wild," Ferrell thought to herself.
But death was nothing new for her and her community.
She put down her phone only to return later that evening to tweets about people gathering on Canfield Drive.
There were photos of police tape and people yelling, and of a guy claiming to be Brown's father holding a sign that read, "Ferguson police just killed my unarmed son!"
She watched a live feed where a police officer stood in front of a group of protesters with a barking dog.
In another video, a different cop, she said, cocked his rifle and screamed, "I'll kill all you ... animals."
"'This is not usual,'" Ferrell recalled saying.
"'This isn't the type of murder that we've become used to and can call typical.'
In that moment I felt chills.
I was angry and crying."
She booked a return flight and went home the next day.
After landing at 11 p.m., she picked up her 6-year-old daughter from her dad's house and decided the two of them would head to Ferguson the next morning.
What happened, to Ferrell and to Ferguson in the following almost three years is the subject of a new documentary, "Whose Streets?," in theaters Aug. 11.
It's a tale of survival and protest, love and loss, strength and resilience from the vantage point of the people who live in the community and packed the streets demanding answers.
As Ferrell drove to Ferguson with her daughter, who was wearing a floral dress and matching crown, the two revisited a conversation they'd had countless times before that morning "about the black experience and black condition."
"You remember how I taught you about when black people had to fight for what they believed in?" she recalled saying.
"We're going to Ferguson right now because the police killed an 18-year-old boy and it wasn't right.
I couldn't not take her," Ferrell said later.
"This happening today is a culmination of ... that has happened in the past.
She needs to know it and see it and be raised in it.
She needs to be well developed in the area of not just activism and organizing but knowing the different layers of the black experience and the black condition and what we must do to get free, to free ourselves.
Even if I'm fortunate enough to provide her an experience where she doesn't personally experience blatant racism, she is no different than the next black woman-child.
I feel like I would be doing her a disservice to shield her from that."
The first stop when they arrived in Ferguson was on South Florissant Road, a site across from the police department that became a campground of sorts as the activists awaited word of Officer Darren Wilson's eventual non-indictment.
There Ferrell and her daughter linked up with a local business owner who was making sack lunches.
They prepared bags and helped pass them out to protesters.
Slowly, a new type of activism began to take shape for Ferrell.
"My activism completely transformed after Aug. 9," she said, noting that while an undergrad at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, she was president of the Minority Student Nurses Assn. and focused on food justice and health disparities in black communities.
"I had no experience in organizing.
It all just came."
Weeks later, Ferrell met Sabaah Folayan, one of the film's co-directors, during an evening demonstration.
Folayan said she and her director of photography Lucas Alvarado-Farrar "just wanted to document" what was happening.
A question came to Ferrell's mind: "Do you want to document or are you trying to find a story that you can exploit?"
That skepticism was informed by countless instances of people - often white - coming into a community to profit off its pain and resilience.
As Folayan explained in a recent interview, "We had heard that people who are born and raised in Ferguson were not having their voices centered, and we wanted to do it differently."
Folayan had already linked up with co-director Damon Davis, an area artist known for his activism around death row inmates.
His involvement endeared Ferrell to the project, along with six other locals the "Whose Streets?" team followed in the years after Brown's shooting.
"This documentary is not somebody speaking for us or speaking to us, it's us speaking," Davis said.
"That was the main thing for me, how these people will be represented, because that's how I will be represented."
While the goal wasn't to focus on Ferrell's experience - in an effort to show that the movement is "not about a messiah leader but a community coming together," Folayan said - she proved to be the most open of the film's participants.
As a result, "Whose Streets?" documents surprisingly personal aspects of Ferrell's life, like falling in love and marrying her wife.
"I felt like I was naked," said Ferrell, laughing about the first time she saw the finished product.
"But I understood that with doing this work and humanizing black folks, there has to be a level of vulnerability."
Moreover, Ferrell's story reiterates and re-centers the role of black queer women in the broader Black Lives Matter movement.
Two of the movement's three founders - who coined #BlackLivesMatter on social media in the aftermath of the 2012 killing of black teen Trayvon Martin - identify as queer.
"Black queer women in leadership has sustained the movement overall," said Ferrell, "and that's because we're constantly at battle on multiple fronts.
Black queer women have to bear the brunt of it all."
Folayan agreed noting that "the movement is really upheld by black women and a lot of queer black women."
She insists, however, that "this is not some affirmative action type of thing" where Ferrell was chosen as the film's heart because of her identities.
"She was the person who was galvanizing this energy," she said.
"It's not a coincidence though she was on the front lines, because living life at those intersections as a black queer woman, you have so much on the line.
You can feel her energy through the screen."
Meanwhile, back in Ferguson, the news cameras are long gone but fraught racial ties between the community and police persist.
Ferrell is on probation for 2½ more years for blocking a highway during a demonstration.
She describes the socio-political atmosphere of the area she calls home simply: "A mess."
Still, she clings to a chant she's committed to memory since taking to Ferguson's streets a full three years ago.
"It is our duty to fight for our freedom.
It is our duty to win.
We must love and support each other.
We have nothing to lose but our chains."
A Becoming Resemblance: artist creates portraits using Chelsea Manning's DNA
In the center of the room at New York's Fridman Gallery are multiple faces - white, black and brown, each bearing an almost imperceptible resemblance to one another - suspended on wires from the ceiling.
The 30 portraits were created by the artist Heather Dewey-Hagborg from cheek swabs and hair clippings sent to her by Chelsea Manning.
Manning sent the clippings from the Fort Leavenworth prison, where the former intelligence analyst was serving a 35-year sentence after famously leaking classified diplomatic cables through the website WikiLeaks.
The new exhibition, which opened on 2 August, is titled A Becoming Resemblance.
It's the product of two years of correspondence between Dewey-Hagborg, whose discipline combines her expertise in technology, computer science and art, and Manning, a trans woman and pioneering dissident whose sentence was commuted by Barack Obama when he had just three days left in office.
By algorithmically analyzing DNA extracted from Manning and using it to create 30 portraits of what someone with that genomic data might look like, Dewey-Hagborg has created a trenchant, if somewhat cerebral, commentary on not only the malleability of DNA data - the many ways it can be interpreted, and the inherent determinism of those interpretations - but also identity.
Manning, who was born Bradley Edward but has spoken openly about identifying as a woman as early as adolescence, was convicted in 2013 on 20 charges, including six Espionage Act violations, computer fraud and theft.
From prison, her image was repressed, so much so that there was just one photo - a granular, black-and-white selfie in which Manning, visibly uneasy, sits in a driver's seat wearing a platinum blonde wig - with which she became associated.
In 2015, Dewey-Hagborg was coming off the massive success of her 2012 project, Stranger Visions.
In it, the artist produced portraits of strangers from forensic artifacts like cigarette butts and chewing gum, extracting DNA from the detritus to conjure an image of what these folks might look like.
That was when she received an email from Paper Magazine.
"They were conducting an interview with Chelsea Manning while she was in prison and they wanted some kind of portrait to accompany that article," Dewey-Hagborg explained at a press preview of the new exhibition.
And she couldn't be visited and she couldn't be photographed at that time, so they reached out to Chelsea and asked if she'd be interested in having a DNA portrait made.
The artist and her incarcerated muse became unlikely pen pals, exchanging several letters over the course of two years.
They even created a comic book, Suppressed Images, illustrated by Shoili Kanungo, that envisioned a future where the president would commute Chelsea's sentence and she'd be able to see the exhibition in person.
That Obama would indeed call for Manning's release just days after the book went public was a welcome sort of serendipity after seven brutal years at a military prison in Kansas.
There's also something profound and powerful about the exhibition opening now, as Donald Trump wages war on government leakers and transgender troops while finding new, tweetable ways to further inflame the stark divisions he's been called on to mend.
When asked about the peculiar timing of it all, Dewey-Hagborg said that "things happen for a reason."
In an artist statement written on the gallery's wall, Manning's super-sized signature below it (the "i" in her last name dotted with a heart), called for an end to the "automatic factionalism that gender, race, sexuality, and culture have been the basis of."
On the opposite wall is her mitochondrial DNA sequence - a centipede of Cs and Gs and As, written in pencil.
By including the 200 letters (or nucleotides, per the artist's sophisticated scientific lexicon), Dewey-Hagborg hoped to illustrate how astoundingly similar, at least in biological makeup, we all are.
"What I'm hoping that people will take away from this is that our genome doesn't care about who we are, and how open genetic data is to interpretation, how subjective it is," said Dewey-Hagborg, whose 2007 video work, Spurious Memories, is also on display.
"DNA data can tell so many different stories, so this is 30 of those stories."
The final piece in the exhibition, which is contained in a single room, is one page from the aforementioned graphic novella.
It shows Manning, emerging, King Kong-esque, from the United States Disiplinary Barracks with a speakerphone in hand.
"When they chill your speech, then they've won," it reads.
"So never shut up."
"It came directly from a letter that she wrote to me," the artist, who hails from Philadelphia, said.
"I get goosebumps still talking about it."
Manning hasn't seen the exhibition in-person yet - as was so presciently imagined in the comic book - but when she does, she'll be greeted in the center of the room by the masks, her own genomic simulacra congregated like hordes of protesters.
That was purposeful, too, as is everything in the exhibition, down to the height (5"2, Manning's stature) at which her genetic haplogroups were written in pencil.
"In the past, I've had them on the wall but I wanted them to feel like a crowd," Dewey-Hagborg said of the portraits.
"I wanted it to feel like a mass movement that was forming with Chelsea, like the movement that was behind freeing her as well."
Northwestern Professor and Oxford University Employee Wanted for Homicide
A nationwide manhunt is underway for a Northwestern University professor and an Oxford University employee who are wanted as suspects after a man was found fatally stabbed inside a luxury Chicago apartment, police said.
On Monday, first-degree murder warrants without bail were issued for Wyndham Lathem, 42, and Andrew Warren, 56, for their alleged involvement in the death of Trenton H. James Cornell-Duranleau, Cook County court records show.
The documents say Cornell-Duranleau, 26, died after being stabbed multiple times.
A community alert released by the Chicago Police Department says the body was discovered on July 27.
Officers received a call and arrived at the Grand Plaza Apartments and found the victim with several lacerations on his body.
Cornell-Duranleau was pronounced dead on the scene and detectives are investigating the stabbing as a homicide while police actively search for the two suspects, officials said.
Lathem has been an associate professor of microbiology and immunology at Northwestern University since 2007.
Alan K. Cubbage, the vice president for university relations, said in an emailed statement that Lathem is now on administrative leave and has been banned from entering Northwestern University campuses.
"This is now a criminal matter under investigation by the appropriate authorities, and Northwestern University is cooperating in that investigation," Cubbage said.
Warren is a senior treasury assistant at Oxford University.
A spokesperson for the university and Somerville College said in an emailed statement that, "We have been in contact with the police in the UK and are ready to help the US investigating authorities in any way they need."
The statement added that Warren's colleagues were shocked and want him to turn himself in.
Chief Communications Officer of the Chicago Police Department Anthony Guglielmi said he strongly encourages the suspects to surrender to authorities.
"Police have an idea of their whereabouts but our efforts to locate that are intensifying," Guglielmi said.
Guglielmi said local, regional and national authorities are helping find the suspects.
Guglielmi said police received a call from the Grand Plaza building manager who had just received a cryptic tip that said something had occurred in apartment 1008.
Police described the scene as very gruesome.
Guglielmi said it is unclear if the incident also occurred on July 27.
Lathem and Warren were confirmed to be at the building by security cameras, he said.
"We believe Professor Latham and the victim had a relationship," Guglielmi said.
The management team at Grand Plaza released a statement to residents saying, "Police are currently working on the timeline and background of the victim and are exploring a variety of motives, including a possible domestic incident."
Man threatened to blow up an Islamic bookshop and "kill all the Muslims" in London
"I'm not anti-Muslim, I'm Catholic", the sentenced man told the police.
Moffatt was sentenced to 100 hours of unpaid community service.
A 39-year-old man was sentenced for his threats to blow up an Islamic bookshop and "kill all the Muslims" in London.
The Independent reported that David Moffatt was sentenced, for example, for aggravated intentional harassment.
According to the police, the staff of the bookshop called the police on 23 May,
as the man had threatened to "blow up the bookshop and kill all the Muslims."
The suspect left the shop after making his threats.
Moffatt was apprehended when he called the police to report a threat.
The threat did not have anything to do with the events in the bookshop.
"The authorities noticed that Moffatt was wearing similar clothes to the person suspected of the events in the bookshop", stated the police press officer.
"I'm not anti-Muslim, I'm Catholic", Moffatt told the police during interrogations.
Moffatt was sentenced to 100 hours of unpaid community service and to pay legal expenses of GBP 620, or EUR 690, and compensation of GBP 85, or EUR 95, to the victims.
According to a Scotland Yard press officer, hate crimes are often left unreported.
"We'll complete WADA roadmap in near future" - Russian Deputy PM Mutko
Russian Deputy Prime Minister Vitaly Mutko has said it will not take long to implement the remaining World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) criteria for the reinstatement of the Russian Anti-Doping Agency (RUSADA).
"A certain stage of fulfilling the road map criteria has been carried out, RUSADA obtained the right to plan and test in cooperation with UKAD (UK Anti-Doping).
The WADA roadmap was updated in this regard," Mutko stated on Thursday.
The PM was commenting on the second part of WADA's Roadmap to Code Compliance, which describes the criteria for the reinstatement of RUSADA and which recently published on the organization's website.
According to Mutko, it does not contain anything that could cause concern for Russia.
"Everything has been announced, everything will be implemented.
And the results will be presented to the International Olympic Committee [IOC] and WADA in the near future," he added.
One of the criteria mentioned in the list, however, states that Russian anti-doping authorities must publically accept the reported outcomes of the WADA-sanctioned investigation by Canadian lawyer Richard McLaren on alleged state-sponsored doping in Russian sport.
Referring to the matter, Mutko said: "We are conducting the investigation, as our anti-doping system admitted a failure.
All measures have been implemented.
But there were no state programs, and we will not admit something that didn't exist."
Mutko's words echoed those of Vitaly Smirnov, the head of Russia's Independent Public Anti-Doping Commission.
Talking to Russian outlet RSport earlier in the day, Smirnov admitted past problems in Russian anti-doping bodies, but added: "We have said on numerous occasions, that the report contains controversial positions and regulations.
No one plans to accept this report unconditionally," Smirnov added.
RUSADA was suspended from carrying out doping controls within Russia by WADA in November 2015 in the wake of the doping scandal.
It was, however, permitted to plan and coordinate testing under the supervision of international experts and UK Anti-Doping (UKAD) this June.
Following a visit to the organization's headquarters in Moscow in July, WADA Director General Olivier Niggli stated that RUSADA is "moving in the right direction" to be reinstated.
British organisation sceptical about beloved Finnish innovation: "no evidence" of health benefits of maternity package
A British organisation doubts the benefits of Finnish maternity packages.
BBC and Guardian, among others, report that Lullaby Trust, a charitable organisation aiming to prevent unexpected deaths in infancy, forbids the use of its brochures in maternity packages handed over in the UK.
Distributing maternity packages to all pregnant women will start this month in Scotland.
Packages will also be distributed in some parts of England.
According to Lullaby Trust, there is no evidence that the maternity package reduced the risk of sudden infant death,
a medical condition where a baby dies suddenly for no obvious reason.
Lullaby Trust acts as an expert for health authorities in the UK in terms of a safe night's sleep for children.
"We no longer permit our official brochures to be included in maternity packages, as this would mean that we are in favour of this product", the organisation announced.
Finland has one of the lowest child mortality rates in the world, only two deaths per 1,000 births.
According to Lullaby Trust, this low rate results from many reasons, such as the low number of teen rapes.
"Handing out one package for each family may be a factor.
However, this cannot be said for certain", says Francine Bates, Chief Executive of Lullaby Trust.
"We are concerned that maternity packages are marketed as products that reduce child mortality and sudden infant deaths."
The maternity package is a Finnish innovation, and it has been distributed to all Finnish mothers free of charge for 80 years.
The package contains various products, such as baby clothes.
This year's package contains 53 different products.
The package itself is a cardboard box in which babies can sleep.
According to the Scottish Government, the boxes distributed in Scotland fulfil all safety standards.
Lullaby Trust says that there is no safety standard set for cardboard boxes acting as beds.
According to Lullaby Trust, the package may be the best option for a place to sleep if no bassinet or crib is available.
The organisation only recommends the package for naps and advises that its use should be stopped when the baby is able to turn to their side.
In addition, the organisation recommends that pets be kept away from the package and that it is not allowed to get dirty or wet.
Fleet-footed tortoise escaped again from a Japanese zoo
Staff at a Japanese zoo looking for an escaped tortoise.
The quickness of the giant tortoise has taken the staff by surprise, as the tortoise made its second escape in two weeks.
The tortoise escaped from the Shibukawa zoo located in Okayama in western Japan on Tuesday morning.
The security footage shows that the tortoise escaped through the main entrance.
"It won't die quickly because it'll eat grass around the zoo, but we are very concerned", says Yoshimi Yamane, a zoo employee.
The escaped 35-year-old tortoise is female, weighs 55 kg and is about 1 m in length.
Yamane says that the fugitive has a quiet and kind nature.
During opening hours, the tortoise is allowed to move around freely in the zoo.
The zoo has not received any eyewitness accounts of the tortoise.
The tortoise made its previous escape two weeks ago.
Yamane discovered it walking on a road some 150 m from the zoo.
"I saw it on my way to the zoo.
I stopped my car and asked my colleagues to help me", Yamane said.
"It can walk faster than we could ever imagine."
The start-ups that will help your company avoid becoming the next Uber
Amy Errett wanted to gauge employee happiness at her e-commerce start-up, but surveys weren't working.
Responses were often vague, unhelpful or, worse, deceitful.
And even if she promised anonymity, some workers didn't trust the process.
"It just never had consistency and objectivity," said Errett, who runs the 75-person San Francisco e-commerce hair care company Madison Reed.
So she called in outsiders for help.
A new breed of human resources start-ups is cropping up to help companies figure out how their employees feel.
By building and licensing software that has the specific purpose of measuring employee engagement, they allow companies to do snap polls, target specific teams and demographic groups, offer employees anonymity and complaint hotlines, and in some cases allow whistle-blowers to bypass C-suite executives and go straight to the board of directors.
"You've now got tools such as Strava and Fitbit for tracking your health, but where's the Fitbit for your company?" said Jim Barnett, co-founder and chief executive of Redwood City start-up Glint, whose software analytics tools are used by companies to measure employee engagement.
Errett said she gained more insight into what her employees were thinking and feeling in three years using Glint.
In addition to the snap surveys and polls of specific teams, it offers a heat map of the company showing at a glance which units have the most complaints and which managers have low approval scores - allowing her to drill down on why.
Companies are coming to realize they must stay on top of their workplace culture, lest they become the next Uber, which has been enmeshed in scandal since a former employee published a blog post describing an environment of harassment where those who spoke out were punished.
For start-ups such as Glint, this desire for oversight is a lucrative business opportunity.
The global governance, regulation and compliance industry could be worth more than $118.7 billion by 2020, according to finance tech insights website Let's Talk Payments.
Denver, Colo., start-up Convercent, which helps companies prevent and detect bad behavior, saw an uptick in interest and activity earlier this year amid Uber's fall into disrepute.
Convercent has nearly 600 clients, including Airbnb, Microsoft, and Tesla.
Uber recently signed up as a client.
Like Glint, Convercent lets companies send customized "pulse" surveys, gather confidential responses in real time, and view heat maps of its problem areas.
It also offers an anonymous texting hotline that lets employees report bad behavior.
And if the chief executive is implicated, complaints go straight to the board of directors.
"The court of public opinion has usurped regulators," said Patrick Quinlan, the founder and chief executive of Convercent.
If a company is found to treat its employees poorly or behave unethically, even if regulators don't step in, it can face costly consequences from consumer boycotts, employee attrition and lawsuits, Quinlan said.
Ruby Tuesday, the restaurant chain with more than 25,000 employees across 500 locations, has used Convercent for more than a year to ensure employees are aware of policies and procedures and offer an easy way to reach its corporate headquarters.
Previously, if an employee wanted to report a problem, he or she had to find a phone number or email for corporate headquarters, lodge a formal complaint, and hope it was taken seriously.
It was often an intimidating and uncomfortable experience, said James Vitrano, Ruby Tuesday's general counsel, who said there was no good way of tracking employee complaints.
Now that the company is using Convercent, though, problems that were previously hidden from executives who sat in offices cities or states away - such as discrimination, harassment or unfair wage practices - can be more quickly identified and addressed.
"I can get closer to that holistic, 360-degree view into the employment experience," said Vitrano, who oversees Ruby Tuesday's risk management group.
"And we're protecting our shareholders from employment litigation."
Companies started taking ethics, values and employee engagement more seriously in 2002 after accounting firm Arthur Andersen collapsed because of ethical violations from the Enron scandal, Quinlan said.
But it wasn't until "social media came into its own" that companies realized they couldn't stop their dirty laundry from going viral online.
"Prior to using technology to monitor ethics, people used hope as a strategy," he said.
Both Glint and Convercent offer their software as a service, charging companies recurring fees to use their products.
It's a business model and opportunity that has the approval of venture capital investors, who have propped up both start-ups.
Convercent raised $10 million in funding in February from firms such as Sapphire Ventures and Tola Capital, bringing its total capital raised to $47 million.
Glint secured $10 million in November from Bessemer Venture Partners, bringing its total funding to $60 million.
These investments hardly come as a surprise, given the interconnected nature of companies, culture and venture capital.
There's a growing body of research showing today's employees expect more from their workplaces than before.
In competitive markets such as Silicon Valley, high salaries and interesting projects are merely table stakes.
Employees want to feel that they're accepted and valued and that they're giving their time to a company with a positive mission.
"When people are happy to be at a company, feel their voices are heard, and that the work they are doing is rewarding, they are more committed to making that company successful," said Nina McQueen, vice president of global benefits and employee experience at LinkedIn, which uses both Convercent and Glint.
Investors achieve returns when their portfolio companies do well; companies do well when employees are committed and engaged.
If third-party analytics tools promise to increase employee commitment and engagement, it's no wonder they're finding backing.
Having data on employee engagement is important, according to workplace culture experts.
But the data are useless unless a company's custodians take action.
In fact, if a company asks employees for their feedback, it can set an expectation that change is on the way.
And if change doesn't come fast enough, or at all, it can breed disappointment and make employees disengaged.
"If you're going to ask for 4,000 suggestions, you need to be prepared to have 4,000 conversations," said Russell Raath, president of consulting at business management firm Kotter International, who has seen companies make the mistake of relying too much on data collection.
"Because if you don't follow through, employees will wonder, 'Did you really hear me?
Do you care?
And if you don't care, why should I care?' "
Madison Reed, which now does monthly employee surveys, has been able to take action the same day a problem is reported on Glint, according to Errett.
And, after gathering feedback from employees frustrated by the speed of decision-making and the quality of communication, she was able to reorganize several teams within the company and add communication training to address the issues.
Over at Ruby Tuesday, the company is getting new insight on its employees, and it's hoping that in the long run, this will convert to better retention of workers in an industry known for high turnover.
"If you're not committed to creating a culture of transparency, you're going to lose people," Vitrano said.
"And if you lose people, you're going to lose customers.
And when you lose customers, you're going to lose companies."
TT news agency reports that a 20-year-old man is suspected of taking videos of his naked neighbour without her consent in Sweden.
The woman living in Gothenburg had gotten out of the shower at her home when she noticed a mobile phone suspended from a cord outside her window.
She said that the phone was recording a video of her apartment.
The startled woman ran into another room to put some clothes on.
When she returned to check the situation, the mobile phone was first pulled up but quickly lowered down again.
The 20-year-old suspect admitted that he took a video of the woman.
However, he claimed that he was only shooting her face.
The video was deleted and the police was unable to recover it as evidence.
During interrogations, the man admitted to shooting the video, but denied being guilty of any crime.
When asked why he took the video, the man said that he's "crazy" in love with his neighbour.
According to TT, the man will be indicted.
Teachers demand more money during autumn negotiations
Olli Luukkainen, president of the Trade Union of Education (OAJ), said on Thursday that the development of salaries cannot be lower than, for example, in the exports industry.
He points out that temporary cuts in holiday pay in the public sector emphasise this difference.
"We are not able to make deals in which these holiday pay cuts were not included in one way or another."
In the municipal sector, agreements are only possible after similar agreements have been signed in the private sector and any increases in them are known.
Luukkainen estimates that OAJ will reach an agreement on employment terms in January.
He is still to reveal his targeted increase rates.
Luukkainen is also the president of the Negotiation Organisation for Public Sector Professionals (JUKO).
Luukkainen: Holiday pay cuts increase differences in income development
According to OAJ, statistics and estimates indicate that the purchasing power of public sector employees will decrease, while that of private sector employees will increase.
Luukkainen says that temporary holiday pay cuts increase these differences further.
Finland should define how many students a single teacher can have
OAJ also points out that equality must be ensured in basic education, as differences between the best and worst students are continuously increasing.
According to OAJ, learning results are decreasing and differences between individuals and regions are increasing.
The NCAA's elimination of two-a-day practices makes for a long day for the Bruins
It's pushing 11 p.m. as a throng of UCLA football players linger to chat on one side of the team's new on-campus practice fields.
Some have peeled off their jersey tops, revealing backs slick with sweat from the toil of the first day of training camp.
For a good chunk of the team, these idle minutes constitute a midday break.
Players enrolled in summer classes will head back to their dorms after the three-hour practice to study for final exams before returning to the Wasserman Football Center for meetings at 6:30 the following morning.
"This is a grind for these guys the next three days," Bruins coach Jim Mora said not long before Monday turned into Tuesday.
The NCAA's elimination of two-a-day practices, designed to lighten the load on players, has actually lengthened their days - at least until finals end Friday.
That's why UCLA's first three practices were scheduled to begin at 7:15 p.m. to accommodate players' already crammed schedules.
The trade-off from no two-a-days is more one-a-days, the Bruins pushing up the start of camp nearly a week from last season and holding practices during summer school for the first time during Mora's six seasons in Westwood.
They are scheduled to hold 18 practices through Aug. 20 before beginning formal game preparations for their opener against Texas A&M on Sept.
Mora said he supported the NCAA's rule change even if it did add another item to players' busy itineraries.
"We're putting this enormous load on them for three or four days and it's very challenging," Mora said.
"And they've just pushed through it; they grind, they're great kids.
I think once we get to Saturday and we'll have more time, it will really be great."
UCLA will close its practices once camp is finished, no easy task given the clear sight lines of its fields from an adjacent parking lot and the adjoining Luskin Center, an upscale hotel that has already been pelted with footballs that cleared a protective net behind a goalpost.
Bruins players are scheduled to occupy the hotel beginning this weekend, but Mora acknowledged that there could be an issue once those rooms are vacant during the season.
"We will have security," Mora said.
"That is a real concern and it's not far-fetched to think that people can rent a room and sit up there and videotape a practice.
If you have videotape of a practice, it's a pretty good deal.
But we'll have security there and we'll have security up in Parking Lot 8.
We'll do the best we can with what we got.
I'm not going to worry too much about it.
We have a plan in place."
Freedom in Rwanda
A presidential election will be held in Rwanda in central Africa on Friday with little doubt over the winner.
Paul Kagame is officially aiming for his third term but, in practice, he has had his say in leading the country since 1994.
That was when the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) stopped the genocide organised by Hutu extremists.
The RPF was led by Kagame.
Kagame has been criticised, for example, for crushing the opposition and limiting freedom of speech.
He has also been accused of distorting poverty statistics.
Kagame is able to run for his third term because the constitution, limiting the presidency to two terms, was amended.
However, Kagame is a truly liked leader in Rwanda.
During his presidency, social reforms have been made and international investments have flown into the country.
What is more, Kagame has played an important part in unifying the country divided by the genocide.
The success of Rwanda has made many Africans doubt whether a liberal multi-party democracy is the right way for African states.
However, Kagame has promised more freedom for Rwandans once the country is back on its feet.
Now would be a good time to start.
Facebook to step up fact-checking in fight against fake news
Facebook is to send more potential hoax articles to third-party fact checkers and show their findings below the original post, the world's largest online social network said on Thursday as it tries to fight so-called fake news.
The company said in a statement on its website it will start using updated machine learning to detect possible hoaxes and send them to fact checkers, potentially showing fact-checking results under the original article.
Facebook has been criticized as being one of the main distribution points for so-called fake news, which many think influenced the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
The issue has also become a big political topic in Europe, with French voters deluged with false stories ahead of the presidential election in May and Germany backing a plan to fine social media networks if they fail to remove hateful postings promptly, ahead of elections there in September.
On Thursday Facebook said in a separate statement in German that a test of the new fact-checking feature was being launched in the United States, France, the Netherlands and Germany.
"In addition to seeing which stories are disputed by third-party fact checkers, people want more context to make informed decisions about what they read and share," said Sara Su, Facebook news feed product manager, in a blog.
She added that Facebook would keep testing its "related article" feature and work on other changes to its news feed to cut down on false news.
Building a graphic novel: A Castle in England's story
In its recent past, the diminutive Scotney Castle has featured in a Squeeze music video and been a bolthole for Margaret Thatcher during the 1970s and 1980s.
But Scotney has witnessed 700 years of tumultuous history from its cosy seat in Bewl River valley in Kent, now inspiration for a graphic novel written by Jamie Rhodes, a mop-haired Yorkshireman with a penchant for historical documents.
"I find it so beautiful to look at the handwriting of someone who has been dead for 300 years," he says wistfully.
"What a personal connection, to hold that letter in my hand."
Spanning the middle ages to the Edwardian era, A Castle in England documents the families that lived in Scotney, with each story illustrated by a different, upcoming UK artist - Isaac Lenkiewicz, Briony May Smith, William Exley, Becky Palmer and Isabel Greenberg.
It is not Rhodes's first book based on an archive: he also wrote 2014's Dead Men's Teeth and Other Stories, a collection inspired by documents in the British Library - a project he found unexpectedly emotional.
"I welled up at just the thumbprint on the side of a letter, written by a double agent in the 1700s who was working for the Jacobites," he says.
"That's his thumbprint!
And letters always smell like smoke because, back then, you lit a fire for light.
To someone 300 years in the future, the smell makes it feel like they're there, too.
Ah, I love archives!"
For someone so smitten with old papers, getting support from the National Trust and Arts Council England and living in a castle for almost four months ("I overstayed my welcome a little bit, to be honest") seems too good to be true.
Rhodes spent his days exploring the Victorian "new" castle, going through the archives and studying the manor's many treasures and curios, such as the mounted hyena heads on the walls and bottles that had spent centuries in the moat.
He wandered the grounds and the ruins of the old castle, talking to rangers, gardeners and sometimes the artists at work on his book's illustrations.
Then at night, he'd "drink whiskey and get writing."
The intimate history of Scotney is relatively unknown, as the National Trust had only gained full access in 2006 when the final heir, Elizabeth Hussey, died.
When Rhodes arrived a decade later, staff were only starting to tackle the archive, which he describes as "hundreds of years of aristocrats going: 'Oh, stick it in the loft'."
Diaries, letters from the days of the English empire, maps outlining who owned what: "You'd think land disputes would be boring," says Rhodes, "but there was this one birch tree two families were fighting over.
Just let it go, guys!"
Some of the stories in the collection use the castle as a jumping-off point to delve more broadly into English history, including The Labourer, which follows a man who leaves the newly built castle to join the 1381 Peasants' Revolt.
"There is a record of a riot happening at the castle in 1380, in this book called the Knightly Families of Kent and Sussex," says Rhodes.
"The Peasants' Revolt started in that area and I thought, a riot is a good place to start.
Maybe the two are connected?"
Other stories are rooted firmly in the history of the castle - such as The Priest, which tells the tale of the Jesuit priest whom the Darrell family hid for seven years during the English Reformation.
Or The Smuggler, which features 18th-century contrabander Arthur Darrell, who is thought to have staged his own funeral by filling a coffin with rocks (a discovery made years later when his coffin was unearthed).
The Darrells are Rhodes's favourite Scotney family: "The gentlemen seemed to be quite roguish, always getting into debt and spending money on things they couldn't afford.
Different generations of Darrell men solved their debt crises by marrying rich old women - I imagine them as a bunch of handsome guys, with a knack for wooing heiresses."
With his assignment in the castle over, Rhodes is on the hunt for other singular writing experiences.
He has completed a two-week stint in the Finnish wilderness for a graphic novel about Elämänmäki, the site of an early 20th-century sanatorium that has since been reclaimed by nature.
But Scotney holds a special place for him.
"I was sad to leave," he says.
"It was like: 'Ah, I've got to go deal with fucking real life now.'"
Worst relations with Russia since the Cold War
Jens Stoltenberg, NATO Secretary General, commented on Thursday that relations between NATO and Russia have become significantly colder.
Stoltenberg blamed Russia and its position in the conflict in Ukraine.
"I think it is correct to say that NATO’s relationship with Russia is more difficult than it has been any time since the end of the Cold War", Stoltenberg told CNN.
"At the end of the Cold War, we hoped to develop a close partnership with Russia.
But especially after the illegal annexation of Crimea in 2014 and the continued Russian destabilisation of eastern Ukraine, the relationship between NATO and Russia has deteriorated considerably."
According to Stoltenberg, NATO is still committed to avoiding a further spike in tensions.
"As long as we are strong, as long as we are predictable, we can also engage in political dialogue with Russia to try to avoid escalation and avoid a new Cold War."
Stoltenberg’s remarks came as Donald Trump stated that the relationship between the USA and Russia is at an all-time and very dangerous low.
Trump blamed the US Congress for the poor relationship, as it approved new sanctions on Russia last week.
Wladimir Klitschko retires – no rematch against Anthony Joshua
Long-time heavyweight champion in professional boxing Wladimir Klitschko retires.
Ukrainian Klitschko, 41, announced his retirement on Thursday morning.
Gold medallist at the Olympic Games in Atlanta in 1996, Klitschko had 69 fights as a professional, winning 64 times.
He held different titles in 2000–2002 and in 2006–2015.
Klitschko lost the two last fights of his career.
Tyson Fury beat him by the unanimous decision of the judges in November 2015.
In April this year, Klitschko faced Anthony Joshua at Wembley Stadium and lost the fierce fight via technical knockout in the 11th round.
Joshua and Klitschko were expected to have a rematch in Las Vegas in November.
However, Klitschko was unable to find motivation for the fight.
"I deliberately took a few weeks to make my decision, to make sure I had enough distance from the fight at Wembley Stadium", Klitschko told in his press release.
"As an amateur and a professional boxer, I have achieved everything I dreamed of, and now I want to start my second career after sports.
I would have never imagined that I would have such a long and incredibly successful boxing career.
I'm very thankful for this."
Watch a video of Klitschko's retirement announcement.
Klitschko's manager Bernd Bönte told that the decision to retire was a difficult one.
"But he has always emphasised that he wanted to retire if he didn’t have enough motivation anymore.
Therefore this is definitively the right decision", Bönte said.
Since 2009, Klitschko has been with American actress Hayden Panettiere.
They have one child, Kaya, born in 2014.
Klitschko's older brother Vitali is also a former heavyweight champion.
In 2008–2012, the two brothers dominated international boxing by holding the titles of different boxing federations at the same time.
Finnish weather grump is down with the conditions: "It spoils the mood"
Pole vaulter Minna Nikkanen has suffered from the weather conditions during this summer season.
Minna Nikkanen has had problems with the weather conditions.
The wind and cold weather have got Nikkanen down.
Unstable conditions are also expected for the World Championships in London.
Minna Nikkanen is talking about the weather.
This summer, weather conditions have been against pole vaulter Minna Nikkanen.
"I wouldn't like to blame the track, but it's inconceivable that I couldn't even get my shorter poles working properly", Nikkanen said after her competition in Innsbruck.
"I've competed and trained here who knows how many times, and I've never seen such changing winds before", Nikkanen said during Paavo Nurmi Games.
"This season, it's been very hard to jump steadily, as the winds have been so erratic, even during practice", Nikkanen said at Kalevan Kisat.
The weather was also a hot topic in London on Thursday.
"It's been a challenge to keep my technique intact. I don't know if it's the cold weather or what.
It's been cold and windy, and it has really spoilt the mood.
There's no point in consuming energy in bad conditions."
She reached the World Championships thanks to jumping 455 indoors.
Outdoors, she has reached 445.
The conditions are not the same for everyone in London.
It is important to stay patient and wait for better winds.
Nikkanen's goal is to jump 460 on Friday and make it to the finals.
Why won't you train abroad?
"That's not necessary.
Early last season, I trained in Italy and Germany.
I got my technique together and stable.
This year, I probably should have done the same.
Normally, I've been able to train indoors, but now the facility has been closed."
What would be ideal weather conditions to compete in?
"The temperature should be 25 degrees.
I don't mind low winds, as long as they stay the same."
Experienced former government official criticised politicians for Yle: "We have nothing to distribute, now or in many years to come"
Erkki Virtanen, an experienced government official who prepared budgets in the Ministry of Finance for decades warns that, despite the positive economic atmosphere, the Government of Prime Minister Juha Sipilä must keep its cool and be careful not to increase the state budget with borrowed money.
He says that there is nothing to distribute.
Yle interviewed Virtanen, who retired in 2015, in Ykkösaamu on Wednesday.
The preparation of next year's state budget is about to begin.
Virtanen regards the recent proposals of politicians for increasing the standard pension, decreasing car taxes and supporting electric bikes as election rhetoric.
They mainly indicate that elections are approaching. After all, as ten per cent of the state budget is funded by borrowing more money, there is nothing to distribute, now or in many years to come.
Virtanen told Yle that it is nearly a deception to talk about distributable funds when they are borrowed.
He emphasised that all money borrowed is something our children have to pay back.
Virtanen has a long history in preparing state budgets: he started working in the Ministry of Finance in 1978 as a budget secretary, and worked since as a deputy manager of the budget department and as a budget manager.
Before his retirement, he worked as the permanent secretary of the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Employment.
In the Yle interview, Virtanen pointed out that the estimated economic growth of three per cent will probably be temporary.
All economists estimate that his is only a spike, followed by a downward trend next year, and Finland must expect growth of one per cent for decades.
Washington Changes the Green Card Rules
There is going to be new US immigration plan to modify Green Card rules, President Donald Trump said, quoted by the media.
It envisages reducing legal immigrants to 50,000 per year, stricter rules for obtaining temporary work visas and restrictions on family-oriented visas.
The new rules are proposed by the Republicans and are supported by the president.
The draft law is due to be discussed in the two chambers of Congress.
"This law will reduce poverty, raise wages and save billions of dollars for taxpayers, and will do this by changing the way the US issues Green Cards to citizens from other countries.
The law will reduce chain migration and replace the current scheme.
This new application process will benefit candidates who speak English, have financial resources to support themselves and show skills that will benefit our economy," said Trump, quoted by the American media.
Spouse of the Queen of Denmark does not want to be buried in the same place as the Queen
Prince Henrik does not want to be buried with Queen Margrethe.
Prince Henrik and Queen Margrethe photographed in April.
The Danish Royal Court said that Queen Margrethe of Denmark, 77, and her spouse Prince Henrik, 83, will not be buried next to each other.
Traditionally, the ruling couples of Denmark have been buried in a single location.
In its press release issued on Thursday, the Royal Court announced that Prince Henrik does not want to be buried in the Roskilde Cathedral.
According to BT newspaper, Prince Henrik is not satisfied with his role in the royal family.
"It's no secret that the Prince has been unhappy with his role and title in the Danish monarchy", Lene Belleby, press secretary of the Danish Royal Court commented in the newspaper.
The Prince's decision not to be buried next to the Queen is a natural consequence of him feeling that he is not treated as an equal to his spouse.
According to the Royal Court, the Queen has for long been aware of her spouse's wish regarding his place of burial and understands his decision.
A moment of horror on the road: Nearly hit by a car on the highway
Tommi was driving with his spouse and their two small children.
Luckily, they did not get hurt in the accident, but they will not receive any insurance compensation, unless the counterparty can be reached.
The incident took place near Keimolanportti in Vantaa.
Archive photo from Ring Road III roadwork site.
Tommi from Vantaa says it was a miracle that their family survived the car accident on Tuesday.
Tommi, his spouse Riina and their two small children were driving on the highway near Keimolanportti in Vantaa towards Hämeenlinna.
Tommi says that a white car was speeding up on the Ring Road III junction about to enter the highway when it nearly hit the side of their car.
According to Tommi, the white car would have hit them if Tommi had not been able to swerve to the left.
"I hit the brakes and swerved to the left at the same time – and then I lost control of the car", Tommi says.
The family's car hit the median barrier at high speed.
The parents and their two children sitting in the back seat did not get hurt.
One of the children is almost three years old, and the other is under 12 months of age.
"We were really lucky not to get hurt.
There were no cars heading our way, even though the place is usually very busy."
The accident took place at 5:20 pm.
According to Tommi, no car stopped to help them, and the family called 112.
They were able to get out of the car without help.
An ambulance and rescue personnel arrived on site to check the condition of the family members.
The car was damaged beyond repair.
Tommi says that he and her spouse have a low income and their respective families chipped in to help them buy the car.
According to Tommi, they will not receive any insurance compensation, unless they obtain the details of the other car.
This is why the family hopes that anyone who witnessed the accident come forth and report any information about the other car.
"We need a car every single day.
We can't take our children to the day-care centre or go to work without it", Tommi says.
Tommi saw that the other car was white and a little older,
probably from the late 1990s or early 2000s.
He thinks that the registration number started with SIG.
"If the counterparty cannot be apprehended, I don't know how we can survive financially – we are already in a situation where we need to count every penny."
Tommi hopes that anyone who witnessed the accident or knows something about it contacts the police.
Persons contacted from the Itä-Uusimaa police department and the Keski-Uusimaa rescue department confirm that they were at the accident site on Tuesday evening.
The headline and article were revised at 9:15 pm: Unlike originally reported, the other car did not drive the other way, but nearly hit the family's car when entering the highway from a junction.
Show directed by Lotta Jäppinen deals with relationships by means of comedy – Itsensäpaljastelija will be performed at Mikä? Theatre on Friday and Saturday
Lotta Jäppinen from Kouvola brings her first theatre production as a director to the Mikä? Theatre.
Itsensäpaljastelija (Exhibitionist) is a musical theatre show about relationships gone bad and insufficiency.
Director Lotta Jäppinen says that it will still make audiences feel good.
"The themes are dealt with by means of comedy.
We will not wallow in sad emotions", Jäppinen says.
According to Jäppinen, the touring summer theatre show has been produced with a small budget, but with a big young heart.
The name of the show challenges its audiences to think what we expose of ourselves when we meet new people.
Do we play a certain role or do we approach others openly?
The plotless show is a mix of fact and fiction.
Jäppinen has both directed the show and adapted it for the stage.
She is also in charge of lighting.
The show consists of texts written by the working group, and there is no plot.
The director believes that, even though the show gets its inspiration from young people's thoughts, it speaks to people of all ages.
Jäppinen emphasises that Itensäpaljastelija does not express her own relationships or those of the working group.
"It's a mix of fact and fiction.
I'm sure my values come through from the show.
I'm not thinking that human relations are bad, but I don't think either that a relationship, especially an intimate relationship, is the only key to happiness."
Many learn from their divorced parents
Jäppinen thinks that Itsensäpaljastelija draws a topical picture of young adults living in 100-year-old Finland.
She says that many have learned about relationships from their parents, many of whom are divorced –
at least that it is important to listen to yourself.
There is no need to stay in a relationship that does not work.
The show is performed by Minea Lång, Niklas Rautén and Otto Rokka.
Costumier Ella Snellman is also part of the working group.
Music has been arranged by Jäppinen and Rokka.
Love for the theatre ignited in Kouvola
Lotta Jäppinen, 26, from Kouvola is studying at the Arts Academy of Turku University of Applied Sciences to become a director of theatrical performance.
After two years, she has reached the halfway point of her studies.
Jäppinen fell in love with the theatre during her years in Kouvola.
Specialising in music during her school years, she has worked as an assistant at Kouvola Theatre and acted, for example, at Ylioppilasteatteri student theatre in Helsinki and, most recently, at Linnateatteri theatre in Turku.
Her interest in directing has increased steadily.
Itsensäpaljastelija premiered last week at Narrin näyttämö in Helsinki.
The 45-minute show will most likely be also performed in Turku where Jäppinen is studying.
Itsensäpaljastelija at Mikä? Theatre in Kouvola on 4 August at 7 pm and on 5 August at 2 pm and 7 pm.
Finnish Olympic winner took one year to recover from a terrible motocross accident – cervical spine fractured
Not many Finnish athletes are the unstoppable force of nature that is Janne Lahtela.
The star mogul skier travelled around the world hundreds of days for twenty years and chased his dream of winning the Olympic gold medal.
The dream came true in 2002, but Lahtela kept going.
He was not only tireless in training, but also eager to try new sports.
There are not many sports above ground Kemijärvi-based Lahtela has not tried at least once.
"It has helped me not to stop.
There's always something new", Lahtela says.
In the end, one sport nearly stopped Lahtela for good.
In 2014, he was in a motocross accident,
where he suffered a cervical fracture and broke both of his arms.
"I couldn't work anywhere.
I licked my wounds at home for a year", Lahtela says.
There was also bad luck involved.
Lahtela also admits that his age might have had something to do with the accident.
"Riding a motocross bike may seem wild.
But I wasn't trying to find any limits.
It's just such a tough sport that it's too much for a forty year old like me!"
After the accident, Lahtela was in an unusual situation.
His active life came to a full stop.
He had recently returned from a long stint as the head coach of the national freestyle team of Japan.
Lahtela started in this position immediately after his career ended in 2006.
"I had to stay still for the first time since I turned 15.
I didn't really do anything", says Lahtela.
When he worked as a coach, Lahtela often challenged his athletes in the slopes and physical condition tests.
"Surprisingly, having to stop was a positive experience.
I was so tired, both mentally and physically, that even my own thoughts didn't seem rational,
not even those related to the sport.
It felt good to just stop.
I actually enjoyed that I didn't have to do anything."
The forced break inspired Lahtela to start as the head coach of Team Finland.
If he had not had to stop, he might have burnt out.
"It's easier to find parts of my body that have been broken than those that have remained intact!
Without the accident, I wouldn't have realised that I needed so much rest."
Lahtela started as the head coach of the national freestyle team of Finland a year ago.
At the same time, he found a safer hobby to replace high-speed sports.
"I replaced motocross with disc golf!
It all got out of hand right away.
At worst, I spent seven hours a day throwing."
Even though Lahtela has always worked hard, he does not demand similar commitment from his athletes.
"I don't want to force everyone to be the same.
In our culture, there is room to be yourself and there are many ways to become the best in the world.
As indicated by its name, freestyle has always been about a free style and mentality," Lahtela says.
The rise of sex robots is real, and we should be concerned
Just when you thought 2017 couldn't get any weirder along comes a new report on the technological developments in the sex robot sector.
Yep.
Sex robots are a big deal right now.
Recently, the Foundation for Responsible Robotics (FRR) released a report looking at the development of sex robots over the next five to 10 years.
According to Noel Sharkey, emeritus professor of robotics and artificial intelligence at the University of Sheffield and co-founder of the FRR, we need to start taking their rise seriously.
Customers can choose the robot's eye colour, nipple shape and fingernail type.
"People snigger about them, but the companies are actually shipping quite a lot and we are going to see them a lot more," Mr Sharkey said at the launch of the new report.
Modern sex dolls have evolved out of their blow-up counterparts into robots with a silicon skin that is warm to the touch - with deliberately human-like responses achieved by artificial intelligence.
The user can also "customise" their robot to suit their persuasions, choosing everything from the robot's eye colour, nipple shape to fingernail type or colour.
But it gets even more disturbing, with many of the robots possessing "personalities" that would make a Stepford Wife look progressive.
Modern sex dolls have evolved into robots with a silicon skin.
The RealBotix robot, for example, allows users to customise their robots according to the traits they find appealing, such as shyness.
Then there are the Roxxxy Gold sex robots, developed by True Companion, which come with pre-programmed personalities, including "Frigid Farrah" that gives the impression of shyness and "Wild Wendy" with an "adventurous" personality.
"Roxxxy Gold has a personality which is matched as much as possible to your personality," the True Companion website enthuses.
So she likes what you like, dislikes what you dislike, etc.
She also has moods during the day just like real people!
She can be sleepy, conversational or she can 'be in the mood'!"
There are many disturbing aspects to the rise of sex robots - not least of which is the replacement of real, human relationships - but the subservient female traits, the rapey connotations of making a move on Frigid (read: resistant) Farrah, are the most concerning.
On its website, True Companion likened Roxxxy to a vibrator, but for men.
"If woman (sic) can have a vibrator, why can't men have a Roxxxy?" the website states.
However, these sex robots are not a mere fetish or just another sex toy.
Their emergence and increasing sophistication points to something darker and deeper within our culture, a retreat from the ideal of gender equality toward a desire for sex with subjugation as an optional add-on.
Most men, naturally, are not going to keep sex robots, and while the FRR noted their increasing popularity, they remain, for now, on the outskirts of consumer culture.
But what seeps in from the fringes can be highly instructive as to the tenor of the era we're living in.
And many people aren't weird or offensive until the free market gives them the permission to be so.
There is little coincidence that these sophisticated sex robots have emerged at a time when women's rights are under threat across the globe, when there is a president in the White House who has bragged about sexually assaulting women.
The most chilling aspect of the TV series The Handmaid's Tale isn't the graphic imagery, the noosed bodies and gouged eyes, but just how realistic that vision feels.
The Republic of Gilead is a leap, but, right now, it doesn't feel like a large one.
The aim behind these sex robots is to create as much of a physical likeness to actual women (albeit with porn star proportions) as technologically possible.
Their creators want them to feel human to the touch, for them to mimic the movement of a real body.
But, pointedly, when it comes to their "personalities" the robots do not represent real women.
They cannot break up with their companion, or walk out.
They have no agency or back-story, nothing to suggest independence or anything that may disrupt the fantasy of total servitude.
They are pleasant slaves, in other words.
Or to put it into 2017 parlance: handmaidens.
Police suspects: Two terrorist acts were planned in Australia by group led by Isis leader
A leader of the terrorist organisation Isis led a group of Australian men who are suspected of planning to take a bomb on board an Etihad Airways plane.
Sydney Morning Herald reports that one of the leaders of Isis had also sent parts of a bomb to Sydney.
According to the suspects, their intention was to plant the bomb on the plane on 15 July, but their attempt failed before the security checkpoint.
The police have not disclosed any details of why the attempt failed.
Another plan of the suspected terrorists was to build a machine that spreads a colourless toxic gas which they would set off in a place full of people, such as a public transport vehicle.
Michael Phelan, a deputy commissioner of the Australian Federal Police, says that this was one of the most professional plans ever witnessed in Australia.
Due to the plans of suspected terrorists, four men were apprehended in police raids on Saturday.
One of the men has been released, but his interrogations will also be continued later.
Trump's great feat?
Making Mitt Romney seem the epitome of common sense
It has become a truism of the Trump era that the political divisions that have polarised the US electorate have, on a micro-scale, torn families apart.
Around Christmas and Thanksgiving, newspapers in the US abounded with advice columns on how to deal with the horror of Trump-voting relatives.
We are all supposedly straining to burst our filter bubbles.
Less remarked on is the power of Trump to bring families together.
I mention this because my cousin, a left-leaning poet who lives in Chicago and who's long been at loggerheads with Republicans in our family, has been visiting me in New York this week.
She reminded me that unity against a common enemy can have a powerful effect.
With Trump in the White House, everyone she knows, including the Republican sibling she had been bickering with about politics for decades, is suddenly and peculiarly on the same side.
Around the dinner table this is surely a good thing; but it strikes me that, in a broader context, it carries significant risks.
The left has been invigorated by Trump, but the warping effect of his presidency has the power to push us all rightwards.
When we talk about "normalisation" and Trump, we are referring to the scary possibility that his antics may one day cease to appal.
There is an even scarier long-range scenario, however, in which what Trump "normalises" are rightwing Republicans who, held up against his standards, suddenly seem the epitome of reasonable.
I find myself actively nostalgic these days for Mitt Romney's quaint version of crazy - the dog on the car roof, the 14% income tax (but at least we knew what his tax return looked like) - both of which, compared to Trump, seem very mild offences indeed.
When Trump goes, the next Republican candidate will merely have to be sane to qualify as an immeasurable improvement.
While my cousin was in town, we took our kids to the carousel in Central Park, the biggest of the carousels run by the New York parks department, and the best three bucks you can spend in the city if you don't require caffeine.
The horses are thunderously huge, the fibre-glass designs on the central cylinder - all gurning clowns and animals twisting to look over their own shoulders in terror - utterly sinister, and the tinkling music oddly transporting.
So many of the cliches of a city disappoint: views from tall buildings get old, skylines grow too familiar to offer much of a thrill, and the reality of the city doesn't live up to the dream.
Thirty-five years later and I'm still not entirely over the day I discovered Swiss Cottage is not, in fact, a Swiss cottage - the theme pub, Ye Olde Swiss Cottage, doesn't count - but a large roundabout in north London.
The Central Park carousel, however, is still a weirdly magical experience, to the extent that two two-year-olds, an 11-year-old and two women in their 40s can go on it and all have a great time.
If I could have rated the carousel I would have given it full marks, but thankfully nobody asked.
In a department store this week, on the other hand, I was required, before swiping my credit card, to rate my transactional "experience" on a scale of one to five stars.
In the coffee shop at the corner of my street it's the same thing, plus the option to match the rating with a 15% tip - this for buying something over the counter.
The effect of this is not only to slow down what should be a neutral exchange, but to put pressure on the server to inject personality into a situation where none is required.
The poor woman in the department store stood grinning apologetically while, wearily, I gave the experience of handing her my credit card five stars.
Shefki Kuqi sacked by Inter – "No trust among directors"
Today, FC Inter released head coach Shefki Kuqi.
Kuqi will be replaced by his former assistant Fabrizio Piccareta.
Other members of the coaching staff will continue in their current positions.
Italian Piccareta has previously worked as an assistant coach, for example, in Sunderland in the UK.
Piccareta, 51, who joined Inter's coaching staff in January, completed the UEFA Pro licence last year.
Stefan Håkans, chairman of the Board of Directors of FC Inter, feels sorry about the situation.
"Changing the head coach is never easy.
However, Shefki Kuqi didn't enjoy the trust of the club's directors, and there was no other choice", Håkans commented in the club's press release.
Piccareta's agreement extends until the end of the season.
He will take charge, together with the other coaching staff, at tomorrow's home game against HIFK.
According to sources of Ilta-Sanomat, tensions have been high within the team throughout Thursday.
On Thursday morning, Kuqi told the players that his assistants Piccareta and John Allen have been moved aside.
Kuqi and Piccareta had an altercation when Inter faced PS Kemi last Saturday.
Linda Lampenius published a photo from the 1980s – Can you recognise the serious violin student?
Violinist Linda Lampenius posted a photo from her youth on Instagram.
It was posted with various hashtags, indicating that it shows a 16-year-old student at the Sibelius Academy.
Lampenius is also amazed by the young woman looking seriously at the camera.
"A long time ago, being serious", she says in her post.
If you cannot see the photo, click here.
Lampenius has previously posted photos from her past and also talked about difficult subjects.
A little more than a year ago, she posted two photos of herself on Instagram.
One of the photos shows her 20 years ago, in the other she poses now, as a mother of two.
In the text, Lampenius thinks about how she has grown as a person and makes a reference to eating disorders she suffered from when she was younger.
"Exactly 20 years ago and today...
I still look the same as that 26-year-old girl, but the difference is that I've learned to like myself and the way I look", Lampenius wrote.
This text was followed by hashtags life, eating disorder, insecure, self-confidence, self-esteem, love yourself, 1996, 2016, aging, girl, woman, getting older is cool.
Lampenius has talked openly about her earlier eating disorders.
At the age of 14, she has hospitalised for anorexia and orthorexia.
A little later, she suffered from bulimia which was only revealed in 2006.
She slowly started to feel better.
In addition to therapy and peer support, Lampenius was helped by her new love.
Oscar Pistorius taken from jail to hospital with chest pains
This is the second time Pistorius has left jail for a hospital visit.
Last year he was taken to the hospital for treatment to cuts on his wrists, which prison authorities said he sustained after falling in his cell.
Pistorius was convicted of murder after an appeal by prosecutors against an initial manslaughter verdict.
He killed Steenkamp in the early hours of Valentine's Day 2013 by shooting her multiple times through a toilet cubicle door at his Pretoria home.
Pistorius claimed he mistook his girlfriend for a nighttime intruder hiding in the cubicle.
Prosecutors have announced their intention to appeal again, this time against Pistorius' six-year sentence, which they say is too lenient.
The National Prosecuting Authority said it will appeal to South Africa's Supreme Court, and the appeal could be heard this year.
Pistorius faces having his sentence increased to 15 years if prosecutors are successful.
There is no death penalty in South Africa.
Two Bulgarians Were Detained For Illegal Camping in Greece
Two Bulgarians were detained for illegal camping in Greece, the Foreign Affairs Ministry announced, quoted by bTV.
A group of illegally camping people, including the two Bulgarians, was detained by the police in Sithonia in the morning of August 1.
The same day they were released, while an investigation is currently underway.
The ministry of foreign affairs reported bTV that Bulgarians were later released.
The Greek authorities have tightened control over free camping and are already imposing serious fines on anyone who is caught resting in a place not intended for the purpose.
Checks will continue throughout the season.
The ministry said that the court may impose a fine.
Neste's share price sinking – already down by 7.7 per cent
Oil refining company Neste's share price had fallen by 7.7 per cent by 11 am.
Its profit before taxes decreased, while still being above the estimate of Inquiry Financial.
Today, trading started slightly on the negative side, both in Finland and in the rest of Europe.
Shortly after stock exchanges opened, STOXX Europe 600, a European general index, decreased by 0.2 per cent.
OMXH, the general index of the Helsinki stock exchange, had fallen by 0.3 per cent to 9,509.48 after 30 minutes of trading and OMXH25, the general index of the 25 most-traded stock classes, had decreased similarly by 0.3 per cent.
Total trading in the stock exchange stood at EUR 41 million, of which Neste, which released news of its results this morning, made up EUR 9 million.
Red meat, dairy, and chocolate could help relieve IBD
Red meat and chocolate may sound like a nightmare for your digestive system.
But a new study claims quite the opposite: a diet rich in meat-based protein and dairy treats could help relieve symptoms of sufferers of inflammatory bowel disease.
The incurable condition, which affects around 1.3 million in the US and 300,000 in the UK, causes stomach cramps and bloating, recurring or bloody diarrhea, weight loss and extreme tiredness.
While sufferers are usually advised to dodge meat and dairy to soothe their symptoms, researchers at Washington University found protein's essential amino acid tryptophan helps develop immune cells that foster a tolerant gut.
Lead investigator Dr Marco Colonna explained immune cells patrol the gut to ensure that harmful microbes hidden in the food don't sneak into the body.
Cells that are capable of triggering inflammation are balanced by cells that promote tolerance, protecting the body without damaging sensitive tissues.
When the balance tilts too far toward inflammation, inflammatory bowel disease can result.
In experiments it was found a kind of tolerance-promoting immune cell appears in mice that carry a specific bacterium in their guts.
And the bacterium needs tryptophan - one of the building blocks of proteins - to trigger the cells' appearance.
Professor Colonna said: 'We established a link between one bacterial species - Lactobacillus reuteri - that is a normal part of the gut microbiome, and the development of a population of cells that promote tolerance.
The more tryptophan the mice had in their diet, the more of these immune cells they had.'
He suggested if the same works in humans, a combination of L. reuteri and a tryptophan-rich diet may foster a more tolerant, less inflammatory gut environment.
Postdoctoral researcher Dr Luisa Cervantes-Barraganwas studying a kind of immune cell that promotes tolerance when she discovered that one group of study mice had such cells but another group of the same strain but housed separately did not.
She suspected the difference had to do with the mice's gut microbiomes - the community of bacteria, viruses and fungi that normally live within the gastrointestinal tract.
The guts of the mice were DNA sequenced and it was found six bacterial species present in the mice with the immune cells but absent from the mice without them.
Mice reared in a sterile environment so they lacked a gut microbiome and do not develop this kind of immune cell were given L. reuteri and the immune cells arose.
To understand how the bacteria affected the immune system, the researchers grew L. reuteri in liquid and then transferred small amounts of the liquid - without bacteria - to immature immune cells isolated from mice.
The immune cells developed into the tolerance-promoting cells.
When the active component was purified from the liquid, it turned out to be a byproduct of tryptophan metabolism known as indole-3-lactic acid.
When the researchers doubled the amount of tryptophan in the mice's feed, the number of such cells rose by about 50 percent but when tryptophan levels were halved, the number of cells dropped by half.
Dr Cervantes-Barragan explained people have the same tolerance-promoting cells as mice, and most of us shelter L. reuteri in our gastrointestinal tracts.
It is not known whether tryptophan byproducts from L. reuteri induce the cells to develop in people as they do in mice, but defects in genes related to tryptophan have been found in people with inflammatory bowel disease.
She said: 'The development of these cells is probably something we want to encourage since these cells control inflammation on the inner surface of the intestines.
Potentially, high levels of tryptophan in the presence of L. reuteri may induce expansion of this population.'
Jose Mourinho thinks Manchester United have signed a 'genius' in Nemanja Matic
Manchester United have signed a "genius" in Nemanja Matic, believes Jose Mourinho, after the midfielder made his debut against Sampdoria on Wednesday evening.
The £40m signing from Chelsea started the 2-1 win in Dublin, United's final preseason game before the Uefa Super Cup against Real Madrid on Tuesday, and impressed in the holding role as the likes of Paul Pogba and Andreas Pereira marauded forward at will.
However, having been left out of the Blues' preseason tour of Asia, Matic was severely lacking match fitness and only managed 45 minutes, something Mourinho admitted needed to be improved before the start of the Premier League season.
"He needs time but his experience, intelligence, a genius in the way he thinks - he thinks football," Mourinho said.
"We will help him to be ready sooner rather than later."
As well as Matic, fellow new signings Victor Lindelof and Romelu Lukaku also started the game at the Aviva Stadium as Mourinho started to shape his starting XI for the start of the season.
The Independent revealed this week that Mourinho still wanted another three signings but he insisted that the club had already done a "fantastic job" of delivering three of his four priority signings.
"To get three out of four I thank the club for that," he added.
"I will be happier if they get me four of four but they did a great effort for me."
Women's volleyball team on a par with Germany for two sets
The Finland women's national volleyball team lost its fourth match in a World Championships qualifying tournament to Germany in straight sets 0–3 (23–25, 23–25, 14–25).
"The German's play at an excellent level.
They are good in every part of the game", Tapio Kangasniemi, head coach of Team Finland, told in a press release.
In the first two sets, Finland was able to challenge its opponent, but Germany was much stronger in the third set.
Germany tops the qualifying group.
"When we stayed patient and were aggressive when we had a chance, we were able to stay close", Kangasniemi said.
Finland's top scorer was Piia Korhonen with 14 points.
Finland has lost three matches out of four and faces Slovenia on Sunday.
Reuters: A grand jury has already issued indictments related to Trump Jr.'s meeting in Russia
In the United States, a grand jury has issued indictments with regard to the meeting between Donald Trump Jr. and Natalia Veselnitskaya, a Russian legal counsel.
The grand jury, summoned by special counsel Robert Mueller, has already issued indictments relating to the meeting between Donald Trump Jr. and Natalia Veselnitskaya, a Russian legal counsel famous for her Kremlin connections.
This was reported by Reuters which also confirms the information revealed by Wall Street Journal earlier on Thursday about summoning a grand jury.
According to Reuters, the grand jury has issued indictments relating to the meeting between Trump Jr. and Veselnitskaya, known for her Kremlin connections, organised during the US presidential elections in June 2016.
Others present at the meeting were Paul Manafort, the then campaign manager of Donald Trump, and Jared Kushner, the current senior advisor to his father-in-law, Donald Trump.
According to Reuters sources, the summoning of the grand jury by special counsel Robert Mueller in Washington signifies that the Russia investigation is picking up the pace.
The sources also state that Mueller wanted to summon the grand jury for this investigation to identify whether Russia was involved in the US presidential election and whether Trump's campaign or his inner circle collaborated with Russia.
The grand jury expands Mueller's rights to collect evidence, issue indictments and force people to testify under oath.
A grand jury consists of regular people who work behind closed doors.
A grand jury examines evidence investigated by a prosecutor and decides whether an indictment should be issued.
British inventor microchips himself to get into house and car with a wave of hand
A British inventor has become the first in the country to be fitted with a microchip so he can open his front door, access his office and even start his car with just a wave of his hand.
Steven Northam, 33, had the tiny chip implanted between his thumb and finger and is now offering the service to businesses and individuals who want to simplify their life with technology through his company BioTeq.
He has teamed up with Dr Geoff Watson, a consultant anesthetist at the Royal Hampshire County Hospital in Winchester, Hants, to ensure the implant procedure is carried out to a medical standard.
The technology is similar to a microchip implanted for cats and dogs, and takes just 30 seconds.
Mr Northam's company will also alter locks on houses and cars so they are compatible with the chip, for a cost of £300 each lock.
The married father of one now has technology fitted to both his home and his BMW Z4, which starts when his hand is on the wheel.
White House Prop Cost Taxpayers Thousands
The White House's decision to fly a Marine helicopter to the South Lawn for an event highlighting American manufacturing last month cost taxpayers as much as $24,000, according to military records released to TIME.
The green-and-white Sikorsky VH-3D, known as Marine One when the President is aboard, was the centerpiece of the July 17 event at the White House showcasing American construction programs.
President Donald Trump, Vice President Mike Pence and senior White House officials toured manufacturing products from all 50 states.
The Connecticut-made helicopter was displayed alongside a yacht from Maine, a fire truck from Wisconsin, and a forklift from Mississippi.
The White House Military Office requested the helicopter's presence in a fragmentary order, or FRAGO, barely 36 hours before the helicopter landed on the South Lawn for the "unusual" event, according to the records of Marine Helicopter Squadron One (HMX-1), the unit responsible for operating the helicopter.
"I just wanted you to make sure you were aware because it's such an unusual high visibility event," the commander of HMX-1 emailed his superior, the Marine Deputy Commandant for Aviation, the day before the event.
The message indicated the helicopter would arrive on the South Lawn at approximately 7 a.m. on July 17 for the 3 p.m. event, and remain until the lawn was cleared between 6 p.m. and 9 p.m. that evening.
The note adds that should the departure from the White House be delayed, a second aircrew would be needed for the return flight due to duty-hour restrictions.
The original flight crew was with the helicopter during the event, while unit security personnel remained with the aircraft while it was the ground.
It was not clear from records provided to TIME whether a second flight crew was ultimately required.
The Hatch Act prohibits federal employees from using government property for political purposes.
Records indicate that HMX-1 inquired about whether the event might violate the provision.
"One question we asked was if it was a violation of the Hatch Act and were informed it was not," the commander wrote.
"Sounds like you are locked," the Deputy Commandant replied.
The "Made in America" event was designated an official event by the White House, and would not have been covered by the Hatch Act.
But even official events have political overtones.
At the event, the President made a push for healthcare reform efforts then underway in the Senate and touted efforts to rein in government regulations.
Using the aircraft known as Marine One or Air Force One for politically advantageous purposes is hardly a new phenomenon.
Presidents are required to use them for travel.
But requisitioning their use solely for a photo-op is unusual.
Trump drew scrutiny in February when the presidential airplane taxied to the backdrop of his first campaign rally in Melbourne, Fla., and his Twitter account is flush with messages complaining about his predecessor's use of the presidential aircraft.
"The White House is thrilled with the 'Made In America' showcase that featured products from all 50 states that are made by American workers with American materials," said White House deputy press secretary Lindsay Walters.
HMX-1 crews frequently perform training flights around the Washington area and at the South Lawn to practice depositing the President of the United States at the White House with inches of precision.
When Trump was at the G-20 summit in Germany in early July, HMX-1 conducted 58 practice landings at the White House.
The flight for the Made in America event counted toward the aircrew's training requirement for the month, an official said.
Unit helicopters also flew an additional 11 hours that day for "non-presidential support missions."
The White House said taxpayers did not pick up the burden for any of the other props featured at the event.
A spokesperson for Sikorsky said the company was not involved in arranging for the helicopter to be displayed on the South Lawn.
HMX-1 doesn't maintain budgetary records for presidential flights, and determining the precise cost incurred by the event is difficult.
But according to Department of Defense hourly rates for fiscal year 2017, the DoD reimbursement rate for the VH-3D is $24,380 per flight hour.
Unit records record the aircraft flight time as 30 minutes each way from its home base at Marine Corps Air Facility Quantico in Virginia.
The White House argues the true cost of operating the helicopter is well below that rate.
"To place a cost to taxpayers based on the reimbursement rate estimates is highly misleading," Walters said.
"These rate estimates include personnel, maintenance and many other sunk costs that are included in annual appropriations."
According to a 2015 RAND study, DoD reimbursement rates do not include the cost of personnel, but do account for fuel, maintenance, and contracting costs.
At the time, former White House press secretary Sean Spicer defended the use of the helicopter for the event.
"The idea is to showcase this week things that are made in America," Spicer said.
"And I know Sikorsky and the state of Connecticut are very proud of the fact that they contribute to our national security, that there are, I assume, hundreds if not thousands of people whose job depends on that.
And I think, like most Americans, we're all proud of the helicopter and other military equipment that so many Americans worked tirelessly to do.
So, of course, it's appropriate to highlight that."
It wasn't clear whether Trump interacted with the helicopter as he toured the South Lawn for the event, but he did step into the driver's seat of a fire truck.
Inside the White House, Trump addressed Sikorsky representatives, joking with the media about his own fleet of company products.
"I know Sikorsky very well," the President said, "I have three of them."
Lighting struck the Vaasa track – trains to be replaced by buses
The Rail Traffic Management Centre reports that passenger trains between Seinäjoki and Vaasa cannot operate due to a technical fault.
Trains will be replaced by buses for the time being.
The fault in the traffic control system was caused by lightning.
In the morning, the Rail Traffic Management Centre was unable to estimate when the repairs would be completed.
Prosecutor General of Venezuela demands justice when appointing new delegates
The Prosecutor General of Venezuela has applied for a court order to prevent the new delegates from being appointed.
Nicolas Maduro, President of Venezuela, has announced that the new delegates elected through last Sunday's elections will be appointed on Friday.
As a result of the controversial elections, Venezuela received new delegates who are authorised, for example, to amend the nation's constitution.
According to Prosecutor General Luisa Ortega, the decision to prevent the appointment was demanded due to suspicions that the elections were rigged.
Ortega has also launched investigations for the allegedly rigged elections.
She appointed two judges after the British company that organised the elections announced that the results had been manipulated.
According to the company, the number of voters reported by Venezuelan officials is higher than the number of actual voters by approximately one million.
Only Maduro's allies ran for the constituent assembly, and the 545 delegates elected include, for example, Maduro's wife and son.
In addition to amending the constitution, the delegates are authorised to dissolve the opposition-led congress and amend laws.
Maduro described as a dictator
Maduro's actions have been criticised extensively.
The opposition regards the attempts to amend the constitution as a way for Maduro to strengthen his position.
The United States has imposed sanctions on Maduro and called him a dictator.
The EU, the UK, Mexico, Columbia and Argentina have announced that they will not recognise the new delegates.
Maduro claims that the new delegates offer a solution for the country's political and financial crisis.
Unrest in Venezuela has already gone on for months.
Many have been injured and more than 100 people have been killed.
Venezuela faced a financial crisis after the price of oil collapsed.
Now, many cannot afford food or medicine.
The opposition is expected to organise a protest on Friday when the new delegates are to start in the constituent assembly.
Russian man extradited from Finland was sentenced to four years of imprisonment in the USA
On Thursday, the District Court of Minneapolis in the United States sentenced 41-year-old Maxim Senakh to nearly four years of imprisonment for his involvement in a global computer fraud.
Senakh was apprehended in Finland in August 2015 as a result of a claim issued by the USA.
According to Russian newspaper Fontanka, Senakh was on holiday in Finland.
The Finnish border authorities apprehended him when he was returning home.
AFP reports that Finland extradited Senakh to the US criminal justice authorities in February 2016, regardless of the objections of the Russians.
In March, he was found guilty of a computer fraud to generate millions of dollars in profits.
Senakh was sentenced to 46 months of imprisonment.
According to the US Department of Justice, Senakh will be expelled once he has served his sentence.
The Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs blamed Finland harshly after the apprehension and stated that Senakh must not be extradited to the United States.
In its statement, it criticised Finland and the USA for apprehending the man in Finland without notifying Russia of the situation beforehand.
According to the prosecutor's office, Senakh had used a computer virus called Ebury to infect tens of thousands of computers around the world.
The virus was then used to phish usernames and passwords.
Next, the perpetrators used these to reroute internet traffic to commit click frauds and spread junk mail.
According to Kenneth Blanco, acting director of the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, this case indicates that the USA is also able to chase cybercriminals operating in other countries.
"We have the ability and will to identify and track them, and to bring them to justice", Blanco stated in his statement.
Edited at 8:58 pm: Transcription of the sentenced man's name edited.
Narcos season 3 trailer: With Pablo Escobar gone, the Cali Cartel take centre stage in Netflix's hit series
Despite season two of Narcos revealing Pablo Escobar's killer, Netflix's series is far from over.
Season three and four have already been confirmed by the streaming service, the former receiving its first trailer, teasing the show's upcoming villains.
With season three, the DEA has turned their attention towards the richest drug trafficking organisation in the world: the Cali Cartel.
Led by four powerful godfathers, they operate "like a Fortune 500 company" just with more government bribes and violent actions.
Gilberto Rodriguez Orejuela (Damian Alcazar) is the cartel's leader, Miguel Rodriguez Orejuela (Francisco Denis) being the brains, Pacho Herrera (Alberto Ammann) running the Mexican connection, and Chepe Santacruz Londono (Pepe Rapazote) based in New York.
The newly released trailer sees Pedro Pascal return as Javier Peña, the character enlisting American and Colombian law enforcement to help with the war on drugs.
Other new actors include Matias Varela, Michael Stahl-David, Matt Whelan, Miguel Angel Silvestre, Kerry Bishe, and Arturo Castro.
Season three of Narcos will debut 1 September.
Kari Kola to install a spectacular light display in Paris
Kari Kola (in the photo), a light artist from Joensuu, will install a spectacular light display in Paris on 1 May of next year to celebrate the first UN Day of Light.
Kola's installation entitled "Day and Night"
deals with light and darkness – day and night – the sun and the moon.
The installation lights up UNESCO's headquarters at Place de Fontenoy and the Globe monument in front of the building.
"With this installation, I want to emphasise not only light, but also darkness.
Currently, light pollution from metropolises is a major problem that affects us all.
Through my art, I can concretely display themes that I find important", light artist Kari Kola says describing his installation.
"I'm touched by this invitation to take part in the very first Day of Light and bring light art as part of the day", Kola says.
Kari Kola took part in the opening ceremony of the Year of Light in 2015 when he illuminated UNESCO's headquarters.
"I feel privileged by having the opportunity to light up the iconic building", Kari Kola says.
The installation may expand significantly.
"We will issue more news during the autumn", Kola continues.
The goal of the international Day of Light is to highlight the importance of light to people and increase the awareness of people of the fields of science, art, culture and sustainable development.
The very first Day of Light will be celebrated at UNESCO's headquarters in the centre of Paris on 16 May.
Two men in a fight in a shopping centre parking garage in Espoo
Two men got into a fight in the parking garage of shopping centre Iso Omena in Espoo on Wednesday morning.
According to the parties involved, the fight started when one of the parties accidentally drove the wrong way.
The two men got into a verbal altercation.
The driver who had driven the wrong way slapped the other driver whose car then started moving, hitting the first driver's car.
Next, the man who had driven the wrong way to begin with hit the bonnet of the other driver's car.
In preliminary investigations, the man admitted doing wrong and causing damage.
Timo Soini's blog raises questions: "After, the flood"
On Thursday, Minister for Foreign Affairs Timo Soini published a blog text that raises questions.
The text is short, consisting of only two sentences.
"During my reign, the party grew from nothing to a Government party with 37 members of parliament.
After, the flood, now everything floats", Soini writes.
Soini's text includes references to the 18th century France.
King Louis XV or his mistress Madame de Pompadour is known to have used the flood metaphor.
Depending on the interpretations, phrases "After us, the flood" or "After me, the flood" remain in the history books.
Afghan democracy depends on political role for women, U.N. says
Elections can only be representative if all members of society, including women, play a role, the head of the U.N. mission in Afghanistan said Wednesday.
Nicholas Haysom, acting head of the U.N. Assistance Mission said hundreds of women are running in provincial council elections, three women are running for vice president and more than 30 percent of the newly-registered voters are women.
"The role of women cannot be overstated," he said in a statement Wednesday.
Elections can only be truly representative and credible when women fully participate and are included in all parts of the electoral process.
Afghan provincial council and presidential elections take place April 5.
The Taliban has issued threats against an election process that coincides with the transition of international combat operations to an advisory role.
This year's elections mark the first time power is handed peacefully from one democratically elected government to the next.
Haysom said a strong role for women will add to Afghanistan's democratic success.
The Afghan Independent Election Commission reports 1.2 million women are registered out of 3.6 million total registered voters.
Rain and high winds expected on Friday
Heavy rain is expected in the south on Friday.
The day will be rainy with fairly high winds in the Helsinki region.
In the afternoon, there is a possibility of clearer skies and even thunderstorms.
Fair weather is expected in the evening.
The weather front brings heavy rains to the southern and central parts of Finland, with a chance of thunderstorms in the south.
In the evening, south-westerly winds and clearer skies are expected with the possibility of local showers.
The temperature will be close to 15 °C in rainy areas in the afternoon and close to 20 °C in the south-western coast following the rain.
In the north, there will be different degrees of cloud cover and local showers in the afternoon.
On Friday and Saturday, the weather will be dominated by a low pressure area in southern and central parts, and rains are expected.
The rainfall is expected to be lower in the north.
On Saturday, rains are expected in many parts of southern and central areas with a chance of thunderstorms.
Rains will also extend to parts of the Kainuu region.
In the north, there will be a heavy cloud cover in the afternoon with local showers.
South-westerly winds are expected on the south coast and easterly winds in central and northern parts of the country.
A large low pressure area is located on the north-eastern side of the UK, bringing heavy rains to southern parts of Fennoscandia.
South-westerly winds and local showers are expected in western and central Europe.
In southern Europe, the day will be hot and sunny with temperatures expected to rise above 40 °C in places.
Thunderstorms are expected in the eastern part of the Mediterranean.
Flood of certain types of tourists threatens local culture
The authorities are considering limiting the number of tourists in Venice.
The local population is particularly enraged by tourists travelling on cruise ships.
The Italian Minister of Cultural Heritage and Activities and Tourism calls this "eat and flee" tourism: travellers spend a few hours at a destination, running through the major attractions as a large group.
Venice is suffocating under travellers popping in the city for a day.
It is difficult to move around in narrow streets and beautiful squares are packed with tourists, leaving no room for those who live in Venice.
They are forced to move farther away from the historic centre, while homes have been replaced by hotels.
The problems presented by tourism in Venice are reported by The New York Times and The Guardian.
The authorities are considering limiting the number of tourists.
They call the current phenomenon low-quality tourism.
"When a large ocean liner arrives at port, you have two to three hours to see the city.
You follow a flag-holding guide from Piazzale Roma to the Rialto Bridge and Piazza San Marco and then turn back", says Dario Franceschini, the Minister of Cultural Heritage and Activities and Tourism, describing the current problematic form of tourism.
"The beauty of Italian cities does not lie only in architecture, but also in their location, stores and workshops.
We need to be able to preserve this part of the identity of our cities."
Piazza San Marco is one of the most popular attractions in the historic centre of Venice.
Saint Mark's Basilica is located by the piazza.
The local population is mainly angered by cruise ships.
The historic centre of Venice only has a local population of 50,000.
In 1951, its population was 175,000.
In July, roughly 2,000 Venetians protested against mass tourism.
According to them, tourism reduces their quality of life, destroys the environment and drives out the local population.
"Some 2,000 people move out every year.
If the same continues, there will be nothing but tourists in Venice.
This would be a social, anthropological and historical disaster", says Carlo Belframe, one of the organisers of the demonstration.
This is a difficult situation, as cruise ships provide Venice with badly-needed funds and jobs in various fields.
In addition to limiting the number of tourists, one solution would be if cruise ships moored farther away from the historic centre.
According to Luciano Bortot who lives in Venice, the situation would certainly change if the Veneto, the administrative region where Venice is located, had more power to decide on its own affairs, or became fully autonomous even.
Every year, Venice is visited by 20 to 30 million tourists.
Are you going to drive in the Kuopio area?
Serious traffic jams of several kilometres on the highway
After working hours on Thursday afternoon, there were traffic jams of several kilometres on the northbound lane on the highway between Kuopio and Siilinjärvi.
Savon Sanomat reports that the highway is being repaved, which is slowing down traffic.
In roadwork areas, there is a speed limit of 50 km/h instead of the regular 120 km/h.
In practice, traffic proceeded at a walking pace on Thursday afternoon, also in areas with a speed limit of 50 km/h.
On Thursday afternoon, the roadwork had moved on to the Ilmestys statue (the golden deer) in Siilinjärvi.
I get along fine without such attention
The 23-year-old runner has witnessed the downsides of being in the public eye.
Amalie Iuel has published spectacular photos of herself in such places as the Grand Canyon.
Danish-Norwegian Amalie Iuel has become a highly popular athlete in her current home country Norway, not least because she broke the 26-year-old Norwegian record in 400 metres by crossing the line at 51.81.
A month later she broke the Norwegian record in 400 metres hurdles by running 55.38.
A frequent user of social media, Iuel noticed, soon after breaking the records, that there are downsides to being famous and in the public eye.
Men from all parts of the world started to send her photos of their genitals in the hope of catching the attention of the young hurdler.
Iuel was forced to make her Snapchat account private.
"I received numerous obscene photos from people I don't know, and I had to make my account private", Iuel said to VG.
In her interview for VG, Iuel did not want to go into details regarding the photos she has received.
"You can probably guess", Iuel said laughing.
"It's nice to get feedback after my run, but I can get along nicely without the other kind of attention."
Iuel was born in Denmark in 1994.
Her mother is Danish and his father is Danish-Norwegian.
Iuel's family moved to Norway when she was two years old.
When Amalie was 12, the family first moved to Namibia and then to Pakistan because of her father's work.
These were followed by Dubai, Thailand and the United States.
Iuel trained four years at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, from where she returned to Norway.
In June 2015, she changed from being Danish to being Norwegian.
In Norway, Iuel trains under three coaches: Leif Olav Alnes, Karsten Warholm and Elisabeth Slettum.
Norwegians are much more open for discussion than Americans.
"In the USA, coaches do not ask anything, they simply tell us what to do.
In Norway, coaches have much more time to interact personally with athletes", Iuel said to VG.
Amalie Iuel is the holder of Norwegian records in 400 metres and in 400 metres hurdles.
Foot injury threatened the whole career of snowboarder Janne Korpi – now ready to race in the World Championships: "It's nice when nothing hurts"
It's been fun to snowboard when nothing hurts!
Janne Korpi, 31, one of the most successful snowboarders in Finland, has once again been able to enjoy the sport he loves.
Last summer, his whole career was at risk.
A repetitive strain injury to Korpi's foot required surgery in January, and the foot took its time healing.
Korpi's has also hurt his arm when racing.
"In summer, I had no idea whether or not I would be able to continue my career.
My sponsorship deals ended and many things remained undecided", Korpi says.
"But so they say that everything will be alright in the end.
My foot got better, my sponsor extended our deal by two years and I wanted to get back on the slopes.
After all this, it was an easy decision to continue my career.
I knew it when I hit the slopes again.
I thought that, damn, this sure is fun, let's continue for a couple of seasons."
Korpi was able to ride properly in September and October, but being able to train without any pain after a long break was a big thing.
Korpi has only raced a few times,
but that is OK.
Races have never been that important in snowboarding for Korpi.
"I've never snowboarded for the sake of any single competition.
It's frustrating to train four years for a single competition, only to fall ill just before.
I don't have that mindset", Korpi says.
Today, Korpi will be racing in the halfpipe event of the World Championships in Sierra Nevada, Spain.
Even though individual competitions are not what attract Korpi in snowboarding, he is always fired up and ready to race.
According to Korpi, competitions held by the International Ski Federation (FIS) have become more widely accepted in recent years, even though some snowboarders chose to take part in the X-Games that are held at the same time in Norway.
"These are big races with a lot of exposure round the world.
Then again, I think that acceptance always depends on the conditions and level of each competition."
Korpi is the oldest athlete in the 12-athlete Team Finland competing in Sierra Nevada.
The youngest members of the team, 17-year-old Rene Rinnekangas and Emmi Parkkisenniemi, are 14 years younger than Korpi.
"It's fun to watch the younger riders.
I remember when I was that young that everything was new and I was insanely excited about everything.
This also gives me energy", Korpi says.
"I can just about keep up with them on the slopes, but nowhere else; they are so full of energy!"
Alongside his snowboarding career, Janne Korpi has also been building another career in sports.
The son of legendary harness racer Pekka Korpi is a fan of harness racing: he has his own racehorses that he prepares training plans for.
"When I'm travelling all the time, there's no time to be more involved.
However, I try to at least check the race results every day, even watch some races as well", Korpi says.
According to Korpi, harness racing and coaching offer a potential career plan when his snowboarding career eventually ends.
"I don't want to look that far ahead, but it's a possible option.
It feels like I'm studying it alongside snowboarding.
I try to stay on top of things and improve myself, maybe even take part in a few races in summer.
If that becomes my future profession, it won't be that hard to start if I already know a thing or two."
The Elitloppet cruise hosted together with Jaajo Linnonmaa is also part of harness racing.
The two have leased a cruise ship for the Elitloppet event in Stockholm at the end of May.
Korpi and Linnonmaa decided to bring the age-old tradition back to life.
"We've already sold heaps of cruise tickets, and there’s been plenty of excitement about the event.
Now we are at the point where at least we cannot go bankrupt.
There are still a few months to go, and we hope that we have a ship full of people", Korpi says enthusiastically.
Attendo's nursing home project in Kitee has taken everyone by surprise
Attendo Esteri is the name of the new nursing home to be built in Kitee. It will have room for 41 elderly clients.
The over 1,700 m2 building will be completed next summer across the healthcare centre on Terveystie.
People in Kitee are wondering from where the new nursing home intends to get its clients, as the social and healthcare service reform has caused a shortage of clients at many private nursing homes.
Anne Flink, regional director of nursing services at Attendo, said that Kitee will have demand not only for optional services, but also for service housing with 24-hour assistance.
"All kinds of services are needed and, when there are options, people also have the freedom of choice", Flink says.
Last year, Attendo acquired private nursing homes Kanervikkola and Eerika in Kitee.
The transaction covered the business operations of these homes, but Attendo apparently has a five-year lease agreement on the buildings.
Flink says that Attendo has no urgent need to move its operations from these buildings.
More news will be released later today.
GMB concern over investment at McVitie's Glasgow factory
A union is seeking reassurance from managers at biscuit maker McVitie's over its long-term commitment to production at its factory in Glasgow.
GMB Scotland said the company had been silent over the future of investment at the Tollcross site.
More than 500 people work at the plant, which produces Hobnobs and Rich Tea biscuits, among other products.
McVitie's owner Pladis said it had invested more than £5m at the site in the last few years.
It added employees and union representatives "will be the first to know" if there were any changes to its operations.
In a letter to the company's site manager, GMB Scotland called on McVitie's to "address concerns that funding is not being brought forward for the modernisation of production lines."
GMB senior organiser Drew Duffy, said: "The fact that we cannot get clarity from the general site manager over the business needs and investment plan for the future of Tollcross is deeply concerning our members.
Generations of families have worked here and the workforce is highly concentrated in the local community and the greater Glasgow area, a crucial pillar of decent employment in an area of high unemployment and social deprivation.
So, from the perspective of jobs, pay and prosperity, and against the backdrop of Brexit, rising cost of living and chronic manufacturing decline, the east end of Glasgow desperately needs a thriving manufacturing presence at McVitie's."
A spokeswoman for Pladis said: "The site manager at Tollcross received a letter from GMB Scotland only yesterday and the company will be responding directly as we value ongoing engagement with employees and union representatives.
We had a regular meeting with employees and GMB representatives at Tollcross two months ago at which a number of issues were discussed openly.
We discussed with employees then that like all companies operating in an extremely competitive and uncertain economic climate, we review our operations on an ongoing basis - and that applies across our all our businesses and sites - in order to remain competitive.
She added: "In recent years, we have invested over £5m in our Tollcross site, notably on production lines and operational improvements.
We fully recognise the heritage of Tollcross as a manufacturing site and should there be any changes to our operations at the site, employees and their union representatives will be the first to know."
Did PSG warn Barcelona about move for Neymar three years ago?
La Liga side may rue their interest in Marco Verratti
Paris Saint-Germain will not let up in their pursuit of Neymar after lodging a £189m offer to trigger his release clause, but did they warn Barcelona of the world-record raid three years ago?
The sensational approach has lit up the summer transfer window, with the Ligue 1 club ready to break the world transfer record by more than double the previous mark, which saw Paul Pogba return to Manchester United last season for £89m.
Once completed, the move will see Neymar become the world's most expensive player and also the highest-paid professional sportsman in the world, with PSG offering wages of over £500,000-a-week after tax.
Barcelona are known to be furious with the manner of the approach and the way that Neymar has forced his way out, despite a source close to the Catalans' board insisting that the club have always done their best to look after him since his arrival from Santos in 2013.
But was the football world warned of this prospect three years ago by the PSG president?
When Manchester City expressed an interest in signing Blaise Matuidi in 2014, Nasser Al-Khelaifi had a stern warning for any club looking to sign one of PSG's best players.
"I am not worried because they know that if they touch one of our players, then we will be in opposition to them, we'll contact their players," Al-Khelaifi said.
"We respect all clubs.
But if they try to sign one of our players, they'll face consequences."
Barcelona appear to have crossed this line, with the Spanish club expressing an interesting in PSG midfielder Marco Verratti earlier this summer.
PSG made it clear that they would not allow the Italy international to leave under any circumstances, and Barcelona could well be feeling the repercussions of that interest by losing one of their prize assets in Neymar.
Neste decelerated rising stock prices – stock market news – Ilta-Sanomat
Metsä Board, another major corporation that released news of its results today, maintained a more moderate decrease.
STOXX Europe 600, a European general index, increased by 0.1 per cent when the Helsinki stock exchange closed.
OMXH, the general index of the Helsinki stock exchange, also increased by 0.1 per cent to 9,542.08.
OMXH25, the index of the most exchanged companies, increased similarly.
Total trading in the stock exchange stood at EUR 469 million, of which Nokia accounted for EUR 67 million and Neste, which released news of its results this morning, made up EUR 59 million.
Nokia's share price increased by 0.3 per cent to EUR 5.51.
It was followed by Neste which fell by 5.1 per cent.
The company's profit before taxes decreased but was higher than expected.
However, its net sales exceeded expectations.
In particular, the sales volume of renewable products increased.
The company expects global crude oil stocks to remain high, regardless of production cuts by OPEC.
Of other highly exchanged companies, steel company Outokumpu went up by 1.6 per cent and energy company Fortum by 1.3 per cent.
Forest company Stora Enso's R-share increased by 0.2 per cent.
Board company Metsä Board's profit before taxes and net sales grew from the year before.
The company expects its comparable operating result to improve this quarter.
The company's good performance was driven by record-high deliveries of board and the increase in pulp prices.
Its profit was a little lower than estimated,
while its volumes developed positively.
"Metsä Board has a strong product market, both in terms of pulp and consumer and industrial packages", said Henri Parkkinen, head of equity research at OP, to Taloussanomat.
The company's B-share decreased by 0.4 per cent after a significant increase.
Information service company Asiakastieto Group's profit before taxes fell slightly from the previous year, while its net sales increased.
The company's share price went up by 5 per cent.
Software company QPR Software's profit before taxes was negative.
Its net sales were close to last year's figures.
The company's share price decreased by 5.6 per cent.
Office supplies dealer Wulff's profit before taxes was also negative, and its net sales decreased.
Its share price decreased by 4 per cent.
Building system supplier Uponor completed its plant building and real estate acquisition in Hutchinson in the United States.
The value of the transaction is EUR 5.6 million.
The company's share price decreased by 0.6 per cent.
OP raised its recommendation for the share of Ramirent, a construction machine rental company which released news of its improved results yesterday, up to "buy" from "hold."
Inderes raised its recommendation for Ramirent's shares to "underperform" from "sell."
The company's share price decreased by 6.3 per cent.
Its competitor Cramo stayed at 0.7 per cent.
NYT: Calls praised by Trump were phony – White House press secretary: "I wouldn't say it was a lie"
The New York Times reports that the White House admits that the two calls mentioned by President Donald Trump never happened.
The calls with the President of Mexico and the leader of the Boy Scouts praised by Trump turned out to be fabrications.
Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the White House press secretary, confirmed that neither one of the calls took place.
However, she said that Trump did not lie.
According to Sanders, many leaders of the Boy Scouts talked with Trump in person, and Trump had a conversation with Enrique Peña Nieto, the President of Mexico, at the G20 summit in Hamburg.
"I wouldn't say it was a lie – that's a pretty bold accusation.
The conversations took place, they just simply didn't take place over a phone call, they happened in person", Sanders said.
Speech to Boy Scouts raised criticism
On Monday, Trump told that the President of Mexico called him and congratulated Trump for his success in reducing illegal immigration.
According to Trump, Peña Nieto said that not many cross the southern border because they know that they will be stopped at the US borderline.
On Wednesday, the Mexican Government issued a statement, saying that this phone call never took place.
On Tuesday, Politico published a full version of Trump's interview with the Wall Street Journal
where Trump praised his speech at the National Scout Jamboree in West Virginia.
"I got a call from the leader of Boy Scouts who said that it was the best speech that was ever made to them,
and they were very thankful", Trump said.
On Wednesday, the Boy Scouts of America announced that they do not have any information about any of their leaders placing a call to Trump.
According to the announcement, the previous statement of Michael Surbaugh, the Chief Scout Executive, in which he apologised to all members of the organisation for Trump's speech speaks for itself.
Trump's speech at the National Scout Jamboree aroused astonishment, as it was unusually political considering the nature of the event.
For example, he praised the results of last autumn's presidential election.