Sunday’s election saw Niinistö claim 62.6 percent of the vote, leaving him streets ahead of his rival Pekka Haavisto, who secured 37.4 for the Green League.

Niinistö won a majority in all but one of the 15 electoral districts, with Haavisto only winning Åland with a 60-40 split in his favour. Niinistö’s largest lead was in Vaasa (72.3 percent), while the closest battle was in the capital where he scraped a majority of just 50.3 percent.

Haavisto conceded defeat after 80 percent of the votes had been counted, but said he was satisfied with his campaign. “From the summer’s five percent it is a good rise. Over a million people gave me their backing,” he said, according to YLE.

With a voter turnout of just 68.9 percent, it was the lowest for a presidential election in Finland since 1950. Although 36 percent of voters cast advanced ballots, the relatively poor turnout is thought to be due to the bitterly cold weather sweeping the country and Europe as a whole.

The National Institute for Health and Welfare (THL) believes the number of workplace drug checks has now hit 100,000 a year.

The practice is particularly popular in the transport sector and in jobs within the healthcare, security or surveillance industries.

The law surrounding drug testing in the workplace, which has been in force since 2004, permits both the screening of new recruits as well as of long-term employees if there is reason for suspicion.

When the practice was first made legal, only around 10,000 workers a year were tested. However, this number has now shot up tenfold according to Kimmo Kuoppasalmi, Chief Physician at THL’s Drug Research Unit.

He believes the current rate has almost reached its peak, however. “I think that the number will not increase much from this point. A very small proportion of these tests turn up positive in practice—about 1-2 percent. The preventive effect and the message that the workplace does not tolerate substance abuse are perhaps the most important factors,” Kuoppasalmi said in a YLE report.

Police want to battle the growing trend of citizens tipping off news outlets in return for rewards, by providing better information services to the media themselves, according to the Keskisuomalainen newspaper.

“Citizens often first report a disturbance to the media or put a video up on YouTube before they even think that maybe they should inform the authorities,” Inspector Tuomo Korhonen of the Central Finland police told Keskisuomalainen.

In an effort to get back in the loop, officers asked journalists for feedback on their communication skills and were told that they are somewhat non-responsive in fast-breaking situations.

In a bid to ensure that information is made more readily available to the media, three new communication units are now being set up within the force. Videos, photos and reports will soon be posted onto police websites by the new units, making the information available to journalists worldwide.

There are also plans to post real-time updates on crimes and emergencies via social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook. The plans will be finalised and announced by the national police administration by the beginning of March.

The list is compiled each year by a committee of around 130 broadcast and press journalists. In 2010 Iceland was ranked second, after Finland — but this year the country has fallen to sixth on the list. It shares the position with Luxembourg. No explanation has been given for Iceland’s slight fall; but court cases against journalists last year are likely reasons, Vísir.is reported.

In the years 2007 and 2008, before the financial crisis, Iceland was ranked as having the freest press in the world.

Finland keeps the top spot this year and shares it with Norway. Estonia, Austria and the Netherlands are all ahead of Iceland on this year’s list.

Countries including North Korea, Syria and Iran come bottom in the Index.

The fact that both the USA and the UK have dropped down the list has caused raised eyebrows in those countries. The USA dropped from 20th to 47th and Britain fell from 19th to 28th. The harsh measures taken against the Occupy movement in the USA and the UK’s phone tapping scandal are thought to be the main reasons.

Kim Schmitz, who legally changed his name to Kim Dotcom, is being held without bail in Auckland, where he is known for his lavish lifestyle.

A dual citizen of Germany and Finland but a resident of both New Zealand and Hong Kong, 37 year-old Dotcom is the chief innovation officer and former CEO of Megaupload. He was arrested with three employees on Thursday, while three others are said to still be ‘at large’. US authorities also closed down the website in their controversial battle against online piracy of movies and music.

Megaupload made more than USD 42 million (EUR 33 million) in 2010 alone, according to the indictment, and several expensive cars and artworks were seized at ‘Dotcom Mansion’. A further NZD 11 million (EUR 6.9 million) has been frozen in Dotcom’s New Zealand bank account pending the outcome of proceedings.

Dotcom was a well-known hacker when he was just a teenager and has been convicted for insider trading in Germany. His mother and siblings live in Turku, but he has not been to Finland in several years.

No applications from Icelandic organisations or individuals were received by the Nordic Council to meet with its council members before their own meeting which begins in Oslo today.

The public in all the Nordic countries were invited to meet council members to press them on important subjects or get them on board with their causes or points-of-view.

A total of just four meeting requests were received; mostly from Norway. The meetings held were mostly about transportation between Norway and Sweden and citizenship rights in the Nordic countries.

This was the first time the public were invited to interact directly with the Nordic Council in this manner and among the stated goals is to stimulate open debate within the Council and to open the Council up to the people.

Tina Bostrup, an employee of the Nordic Council, told Vísir.is that she hopes Icelanders show the meeting initiative more interest when the Nordic Council meets again in Iceland at the end of March.

Casual research indicates that today’s first attempt failed primarily because most people did not know about it. That is unlikely to be the case next time.

Paavo Väyrynen of the central party was a close third with 17.5 percent, while with only 9.4 percent, Timo Soini of the right-wing Finns Party conceded defeat and called his fourth-place ranking, “Not good, but satisfactory.”

Paavo Lipponen of the Social Democratic Party faired slightly worse with 6.7 percent, but said he is remaining hopeful.”It could have gone better, but it is better that the polls expected. It’s rather far from the second round, but let’s see,” he said according to a YLE report. He also claimed he was swimming against the current in his campaign and paraphrased Vaclav Havel, the late Czech president, when declaring that his ethos on values will have an impact in the long term.

Paavo Arhinmäki from the Left Alliance said he was satisfied with the party’s campaign, even though he only received 5.5 percent of votes. He added that the atmosphere of the elections was good and that they were worth taking part in.

Sari Essayah of the Christian Democratic Party interpreted her 2.5 percent share as an indication that women’s issues do not rank high on Finland’s agenda. She said, however, that she was happy with her own drive. “The campaign was good and there has been positive feedback,” she said.

There was a turnout of roughly 73 percent, with slightly more than 4.4 million eligible to vote.

A 37 year-old-man is being charged with three counts of murder after admitting killing his wife and children, aged one and four, on Tuesday 10th January.

The tragic incident marks the sixth family homicide to occur in the past nine months in Finland, prompting the government to set up a panel to investigate the trend. As many as 73 lives have been lost in 30 such cases since 2000. The killings seem to come in waves, with other surges seen in 2008, between 2004 and 2005, and between 2001 and 2002.

Head physician of the Prison Mental Hospital of the Criminal Sanctions Agency, Hannu Lauerma, told Helsingin Sanomat that many factors can lead to such drastic action. “A family can live in a well-cared-for brick house with a well-trimmed lawn, and then something like this can happen. Heavy, even psychotic depression is often involved,” he said.

Lauerma went on to say that most perpetrators either kill in a fit of rage or plan their actions in an attempt to deliver their children from evil. He added, however, than in some cases, the murders come as part of an “extended suicide”, where the perpetrators slays other family members and even pets before killing themselves.

Martti Lehti, a researcher at the National Research Institute of Legal Policy, said incidents may come in surges due to a copycat effect. “It could be that actions feed each other. There is research on this in connection with suicides,” he told HS.

“The actions can be linked with failure in the role of a man. With one powerful act, people try to compensate for a long series of minor failures,” Dr Ville Sarkamo, of the Academy of Finland, added.

The defendants, who deny the bodily injury charges, issued two-day-old babies with the powerful antiseptic Chlorhexidine rather than a sugar solution, as the products were kept in almost identical bottles.

The infants in question were all rushed to intensive care when the error was realised, and some had to be placed on respirators. One child was issued with an emergency baptism in hospital and is still to fully recover despite the passing of several years.

“We’re not saying that any of the nurses did it on purpose. The issue is that these injuries would not have occurred if the nurses had been careful,” district prosecutor Tapio Mäkinen said in court, according to Helsingin Sanomat.

The nurses, however, are claiming that the pharmacy which packaged the liquids is to blame. “Why isn’t the pharmacy on trial? Both solutions were put in identical bottles,” said a legal representative of one of the defendants.

Alison Fournier, a businesswoman from New York, said in a statement on Monday that she was sexually assaulted at the Hotel Kämp in Helsinki, Finland, on the night of 15th January of 2011 by a man who had made advances toward her earlier in the evening.

The lawsuit, in which Fournier accuses the company of negligence for allegedly providing the “visibly intoxicated” stranger with the key to her room, has been filed with the help of women’s rights lawyer Gloria Allred as well as New York law firm Cuti Hecker Wang LLP. The suit claims that Starwood Hotels and Resorts has not followed up on the incident nor has it opted to disassociate itself from the Hotel Kämp.

Fournier said in an official statement, “Starwood is the go-to brand for business travellers and I expected a certain level of security from their hotels,” ABC News reports. She added, “To this day, I still suffer from the memories of that night and I am still not able to put it behind me.”

According to ABC News, Starwood Resorts has issued an official statement saying, “The safety and security of our guests is our first and foremost priority. It is company-wide policy to ensure proper identification is shown and verified before distributing a key to a registered guest’s room. We are taking this allegation seriously and are working with the hotel in question to understand the facts and any breach of security that may have contributed to this very unfortunate event.”