Iltalehti reports on the situation in Finland's nursing homes, and it is not a happy read. The paper says that Finland's law on care for the elderly has recently been amended. It no longer states that 'securing a dignified life' is a justification for admission to a care home, meaning that older people can now only be admitted to homes on medical grounds.
That's a problem, according to experts interviewed by IL. The trend in recent years has been towards home care and away from institutions, partly to save costs and partly for capacity reasons as Finland's population ages rapidly.
That's wrong, according to Gerontology professor Marja Jylhä. She says that home care is inappropriate for people with dementia, as they might not even remember that a nurse had been to visit five minutes earlier.
The feature includes a comment piece from the journalist remembering when her elderly grandfather died at home, and was found by a cleaner. She's clear on one thing: "everyone deserves a dignified old age".
Asylum seekers save the day
Picking berries and other forest products is a problem for Finnish companies. The fruit firms know that berries abound in the forests, that they will just rot there if they're not harvested, but persuading people to head out into the swampy, mosquito-infested backwoods of Finland is quite a challenge.
That's why they're mostly picked by foreign labour. Thai, Ukrainian and Russian workers dominate the industry, but since the influx of asylum seekers from the Middle East there has been an increase in Iraqi labourers slaving away in the forests.
Kauppalehti covers one firm, Arctic Warriors, which has made extensive use of the newcomers. They needed spruce tips for a new product, but this year the harvest came early--before the foreign workers had arrived in Finland.
Luckily the reception centre in Ranua had a willing workforce just waiting for something to do, and so they stepped in. Whereas Finnish pickers got 80 kilos of spruce tips, the asylum seekers managed 1,200 kilos.
The paper also interviews managers at the Helsinki firm Integrify, which has held coding classes for asylum seekers and helped many of them find work in a growing industry with a more urban setting.
First medal for Finland
Finland's long wait for Olympic success ended on Monday when Mira Potkonen secured at least a bronze medal in the women's light 60kg boxing. She won her quarter-final against Ireland's Katie Taylor and now faces China's Yin Junyua in the semi-finals.
That means she's guaranteed at least a bronze medal even if she loses, and the Finnish press are very happy indeed. Ilta-Sanomat has five pages of coverage, including a story from Potkonen's home where her husband and daughter were cheering her on.
Aamulehti puts the boxer on its front page and has another story from the Potkonen living room in the town of Nokia, and all the signs are that Mira is now one of Finland's favourite Olympians.