Right after the change of our layout – something we urged for giving more space to the news and for allowing a better and faster navigation of the site – we also had the great pleasure of welcoming in our team a new valuable member, Jaanus Karlson, and I am sure this is the right point for starting this unusual editorial.

Jaanus, a young Estonian currently based in U.K., immediately started to add a great value to Estonian Free Press with his interesting contributions and with a critical yet analytical approach to the events of the country – a great start that, to us, sounds also as a very important sign of the potential development EFP could achieve already in the next months.

In addition to that, the last weeks witnessed also the conclusion of two highly significant editorial agreements. One is with the young-but-interesting Lithuania Tribune, a cooperation that will allow us to offer you facts about Lithuania and will (hopefully) make the name of Estonian Free Press more known also among Lithuanians.

The second one, then, is something that makes us feel deeply rewarded for the efforts made till now on our constant try of being as objective and reliable as possible in our work. Starting from the end of this month, in fact, our articles will also start being published also on the column of Vaba Eesti Sõna, the only magazine in Estonian published in the United States.

Thanks to the attention and kindness of its editor-in-chief, Ms. Kärt Ulman, our works will populate the English page of the weekly bringing all the latest facts about Estonia around the United States and – again, hopefully – broadening the audience of people interested on discovering more about our Baltic State.

Keyword: Interaction and Offline

Bringing back the Cafebabel.com philosophy of getting to know our readers and start living and developing together with them, the next months will see an always greater focus on initiatives that will try to involve you all more into the life of EFP, participating to events and interacting to the magazine in a way we did not have till now.

Starting from today, as you might have seen even before starting to read this column, we will give our readers the opportunity to express themselves voting on weekly polls that will touch all the hottest issues in the political life.

The one about prostitution we propose starting from today is somehow an introduction to a series of articles ready to come on our pages and will be followed by different questions related to all the most sensitive spots of our life in Estonia.

And the polls are nothing but a beginning, since soon our –and your – involvement on the life of Estonian Free Press will keep growing thanks to all the opportunities offered by our active presence on Twitter and Facebook as some advanced services that will allow you to interact with us and have your say on everything right from the only thing that makes you come back home when you forget it there: your mobile phone.

But since interaction cannot be only virtual, it is finally time for us to go offline and to show ourselves to the people, trying to convince even more of those ones we have around that this magazine might be worth a visit after all.

On Saturday 27^th of March our photo exposition “I Shot the Crisis” will appear in Rotermanni Keskus in Tallinn for the whole FÖÖ – Foto öö organized by ArtFactory ( more info to come ) for moving then to Drink Baar on the next Monday and “delighting” customers with the photos our readers decided representing the hard times Estonia is living the best.

Right after the exposition, it will then be time to move on the big screen and offer our readers the possibility to participate to some projects that will bring some of the most acclaimed European classics in the history of cinema straight to the cinema halls in Tallinn thanks to the interest and commitment of several Embassies in Tallinn.

All this while, we hope, we will still keep your trust and attention with our daily news about Estonia

The explanation of the protest is that this is going to be the future of Estonian press if the government will approve the source protection act 656 SE, which would make possible to punish with imprisonment journalists in the field of investigating journalism.

The act would in fact allow law enforcement bodies to oblige journalists to disclose the sources of information and fine the publishers for a warning before a revealing article is released.

In Estonia, free press has been taken accounted for years. According to the international organization „Reporters Without Borders,“ Estonia was on the sixth place in the world for press freedom while on the same ranking realized by „Freedom House,“ the country was placed on the 14th – 17th place.

Mart Laar, the chairman of Isamaa and Res Publica union, doubts that the act is going to be approved in the government.

“The attorney general Rein Lang has the opinion that the act, above all, protects the press. However, if those who the act should protect find that it restrains them, a major problem exists,“ said Laar this morning to Kuku radio in the programm „Ärataja“.

He also said that he had not seen the blank pages of the newspapers; however “it is very good to live in a country where the press can show its attitude towards one or another act of law.”

The ministers, on their side, denounced the protest in the Government’s press conference and expect a debate on the topic instead.

The Minister of Internal affairs, Marko Pomerants, said that in his opinion the Estonian newspapers overestimate themselves.

“The cases they describe do not exist. I cannot remember any cases from recent history, where a danger would lie in this context” he said adding that he thinks papers are doing politics.

Finance Minister Jürgen Ligi added that he likes the blank front pages. If a politician is judged because of one’s slogans, then today’s papers even have no slogans.

“It is not about the freedom of word. It is so that the court could acquire information from the press in case of a difficult crime,“ Ligi said. He added also that the debate is about a very specific topic, not because the media is being constantly attacked. “But write about the debate as well,“ he suggested.

The Prime Minister Andrus Ansip said that the white pages do not represent the readiness to debate of the press. He says that this is a European act and if someone wants to specify anything, it can be done through a discussion.

“By excluding yourself from the debate with white pages, we cannot do that. Retreating from the debate does not increase the trust. “

Ansip added that at the moment the source protection does not exist and a court can question a journalist and one must answer.

“There is no muzzling, you muzzle yourselves with the white page, “said the Prime Minister.

Sampo owns the biggest Scandinavian property insurance company IF and the life insurance company Mandatum Life, which subsidiary – Sampo Life – operates in Baltics. In addition, the group is active in banking. In 2007 they sold Sampo bank, however they have increased their share in Nordea bank.

Petri Niemisvirta, who has been working in the company from the year 2001 and is the leader of the life insurance company Sampo Finland, as well as the member of the directive company of the group. Niemisvirta says that one factor, that has brought success to Sampo, is conservatism.

Unusual attitude

“During the financial crisis we did not need capital from the market,” he recalled. “Instead, we searched for more, because we had capital at that moment.” By compared to others, the group managed to accomplish a better state thanks to the prudent sale and decrease of the stock portfolio of Sampo bank.

“We saw quite realistically, that the market is moving too fast and is too high,” explained Niemisvirta. “We thought that the price of the bank is good now, so we were prepared to sell it, however it was, and is now, a good bank.”

“We also saw that the stock prices are high, and sold a substantial amount of stocks in the years 2007 and 2008,” he added. “Thanks to that, we were in a better situation compared to others in the beginning of the financial crisis – we had low stocks and a lot of capital.”

“We used common sense – taking risks is totally different for us than it is for others,” Niemisvirta disclosed another factor, which brought success to Sampo.

“We do not think that diversification decreases the risk. We do not think that in order to decrease the risk, we must invest into a lot of stocks,” he explained. “We think, it is better to invest in these names, which you really know, and even if there are not many, because you cannot know a lot of names well. In order to minimize the risk, we invest in tens of good stock, not into hundreds.”

Niemisvirta acknowledged that this kind of attitude is contrary to usual way of thinking that a company should invest everywhere: USA, Europe etc.

“Creating wealth in the longer perspective is based upon taking reasonable risks and avoiding superfluous risks,” the vice president of Sampo life insurance company, Janne Saarikko, agreed to Niemisvirta.

Nothing is certain

Because of this, Saarikko has a suggestion to Estonian people and companies. “It is very unlikely, that Estonia devaluates kroon in the near future,” recognized Saarikko. “However, if I were a company or an individual and difference between the interest rates of euro and Estonian kroon would be small, I would take all my loans in Estonian kroons and put my investments into euros.”

“If the difference in interest rates would be 0,2 per cent, it would be a good insurance for that really unlikely, however for individuals as well as companies catastrophic event,” she explained.

“It is important, that nothing is certain in the finance markets and everything can happen,” Saarikko emphasized. “Even whilst the probability of devaluating is small in Estonia, it is a possibility, which might come true, as we know from the experience of Finland from the beginning of 1990s.”

Discussing the issue of the adoption of the single European currency and the words coming from the Bussels-basedthink tank, the Estonian national broadcasting reported that the economic analytics believe that if Estonia would join the Eurozone, it would not escape from helping countries as Greece, if it is jointly decided.

Somehow less optimistic, on the matter of Greece, was instead the Estonian Minister of Finance, Jürgen Ligi, who said that Estonia has not thought about participating to such an intervention at all and, however, it all should depend on national money flows.

Greece is probably going to be aided with bilateral loans and all the Eurozone countries have agreed to participate in it. At the same time, the Finance Ministers of EU confirmed that the austerity plan of Greece is sufficient and Greece does not need any financial aid at the moment.

On March 16^th Greece reported in Brussels on how it has implemented the budget cuts – which were made in the beginning of the year – including the recent additional cut of 8.4 billion euro, which purpose is to decrease the tremendous budget deficit by four per cent.

According to the Lithuanian media the meeting was initiated by Moscow.  The same reports state that Kubilius was not planning to attend the cultural event in the first place.  Nevertheless, Kubilius changed his mind after the information via diplomatic channels from Russia indicated that the meeting of the two leaders would be desirable.

After the Government’s meeting on 17 March the Prime Minister said to the journalists, “This is an important news. An opportunity to meet with the Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin is important, and it came up courtesy of a certain proposal from the Russian side. We are going on an informal visit; my wife and I have an invitation to the Rostropovich festival. We also heard a proposal to use the occasion to meet with Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.”

This time Andrius Kubilius will be granted the Russian visa.  Five years ago, when Kubilius was a leader of opposition his visa application to visit Russia was refused.

This article was originally published by the Lithuanian Tribune,  Lithuanian partner of Estonian Free Press

According to Erik Sakkov, board member of Tallinn airport, the accident would have happened without causing any serious injury to the crew on board of the plane that crashed on the frozen Ülemiste lake right after sending an SOS message at 10.21.

The causes of the accident are still uncertain but further investigations will try to understand what happened after the take off of the plane even if the fact that the pilot and the other five members of the crew were able to leave the plane without the help of the paramedics it is already great news.

[Photo: Postimees.ee]

This is the largest touring exhibit of Leonardo’s inventions to date. More than 60 of Leonardo’s most innovative constructions are replicated to scale, based on the original drawings and manuscripts of the codices; showcasing their functionality and efficiency. Computer simulations developed by the University of Applied Arts in Vienna, show how physics, geometry, aerodynamics and other fields of science can be applied to Leonardo’s inventions.

This exhibit explains the influence this man has on our daily life. Most of the models are interactive, so visitors cannot only see Leonardo’s machines, but also discover on their own how or if they work!

Tickets are available at the exhibition stand and at Ticketpro

Time: until June 2010 (Mon to Sun, 10am to 9pm)
Location: Solaris Centre (Estonia pst 9)
Webpage: http://leonardo.fbi.ee

It will be Malcolm Lincoln, a singer who won the Eesti Laul qualification with the song Siren, which gainedthe majority of Estonian hearts by getting the 54 percent of votes, to represent Estonia during the Eurovision 2010 which will be held in Oslo this year.

The singer of Malcolm Lincoln, Robin Juhkental stated in an interview given right after the contest that the band will do its best to defend Estonian’s representation. Although he accepted that in the past five years, he did not watch the contest at all, he promised publicly to do his best when it will be his turn to perform on the stage in Oslo.

Therefore, hope is set and encouragement is granted to Malcolm Lincoln to achieve the reputation to Estonia as well as Dave Benton, Tanel Padar and 2XL did in Eurovision Contest 2001.



Reacting with some delay compared to other European countries, Estonia bought  between January and December some 250.000 dosages of the so called vaccine for the H1N1 flu – a number that, by now, is five times bigger than the quantity used.

According to some data coming from the Health Board, it seems that by February 2010, only 50.000 vaccinations were carried out in Estonia, determining an impressive surplus of a vaccine that, if kept within the country, would risk becoming useless.

Even if clear stats on the real quantity of unused dosage will be published only on April, the numbers that are currently populating the corridors of the Health Board are highly significant as for the cost the vaccine had, as for the opportunity of buying it in such a big quantity since a new seasonal flu vaccine would be developed for the next winter, and that might include the new flu component meaning that the majority of vaccine bought previously by Estonia will most likely remain unused.

One of the possible ways out of this impasse situation could be a massive donation of the majority of the unused doses to the World Health Organization leaving to the WHO then the task of distributing those to countries in need of help.

“There are talks under way at present with a bit more than ten states who are making or considering making a donation of new flu vaccine to WHO,” declared Mr. Jarno Habicht, representative of the WHO in Estonia, confirming that coordination of humanitarian aid is one of the primary goals of the Organization.

More cautious than Mr. Habicht was instead Mr. Martin Kadai, adviser at the Ministry of Social Affairs, who did not deny the intention to discuss possible donations to the World Health Organization but whom also invited everyone to wait since detailed talk on the issue still need to be started.

“Indeed – now that times are difficult on the labour market, the State will create an option to continue one’s studies for those who left the university during the period of economic growth,” declared the Minister of Education and Science Tõnis Lukas explaining that the initiative should be able to offer up to 800 people the possibility to complete their formerly disrupted studies.

The funds from the programme, which is expected to run between 2010 and 2013 and to cost some 75 million roons, are taken both from the Estonian State and the European Social Fund that made available a total sum of 71.25 million kroons.

In the intention of the Minstry, the programme will allow people who have been enrolled in higher education studies between the academic year 2003/4 and 2008/9 and have less than half of their curricula to be completed, the opportunity to finish their studies without paying any tuition fee.