Finnish Minister of the Interior Paula Risikko told agricultural paper Maaseudun Tulevaisuus it would be a good idea to set up a police reserve consisting of some 2-3,000 retired military and law enforcement personnel.
The idea of being able to deploy extra police officers was initially floated by the police department and will be further explored by an interior ministry working group, the paper writes.
Risikko told the paper that the working group needs to carefully consider the details of such a reservist programme - and figure out how such a system would function.
The minister said that at the moment current legislation requires there to be exceptional circumstances in order to establish a reserve police force.
Supercell: More English day care needed in Helsinki area
Finnish mobile gaming giant Supercell's Melanie Dower - a New Zealander in charge of helping the company's new recruits adapt to life in Finland - told daily Helsingin Sanomat that the capital region needs more English-language day care centres.
She said that Supercell's good reputation attracts employees from all corners of the world, but that a lack of English-language day care services in the area might be turning away good candidates.
Dower said that her own child at the age of five learned to speak Finnish at a Finnish-language day care, but that it wasn't an easy process. She said that some Supercell employees do not plan to live in Finland permanently.
The availability of day care services in English would be a major attraction for foreigners with families who don't necessarily plan to remain here, she said.
"Finnish day care centres already have a number of advantages compared to many other countries," Dower told HS.
The paper explains that at the moment municipal day care centres offering languages other than Finnish are of the Swedish-language immersion variety. But the municipality oversees private day care centres.
According to the city's regional manager of early childhood education Ulla Lehtonen there are not enough qualified day care professionals with adequate foreign language skills.
However, not everyone agrees with the suggestion that Helsinki needs more English day care services. A software engineer from India, Anoop Vijayan, who has two young children in Finnish-language day care says that - unlike on the English front - there is not a lack of day care personnel on the Finnish side.
Vijayan added that even if a child goes to an English language day care centre, there is no guarantee of securing a spot in English-language school later on.
Weekend tragedies and rescue
There were two tragedies reported in the news over the weekend.
Helsingin Sanomat reports that two people and a dog died on Sunday afternoon after the car they were travelling in drove off the side of a bridge into a river in Leppävirta, in Eastern Finland.
The occupants were unable to get out of the car after it plunged into the Leppävirra River and sank some 4 to 5 meters. Rescue divers were forced to extract the bodies, according to the paper. Authorities say they do not know why the car drove off the bridge.
Another sad brief came in the Swedish language daily Hufvudstadsbladet. A woman in her fifties was stabbed to death at her apartment in the small town of Virrat, in central Finland's Pirkanmaa region on Saturday evening.
A man has been apprehended in connection with the slaying and the case is being investigated as murder. Police are quoted saying that the man - who's just under 60 years old - and the victim had been drinking and arguing the evening she died. A third man was also allegedly at the apartment that night and the one who called the police. All three of the individuals were previously known to police.
In Helsinki, a woman was able to take herself and her child out of their apartment after a fire broke out in her kitchen as she was preparing food at about 12:30 am on Monday. The fire spread quickly in the third-floor apartment in the Kontula neighbourhood, HS writes.
"It was a pretty bad situation," fire department duty officer Vesa Berg told HS. The fire caused extensive damage to the flat, according to the paper, leaving it uninhabitable.
There was no smoke alarm installed in the apartment, the paper writes.