The farmers' and forest-owners' union paper, Maaseudun Tulevaisuus, reports that some of the candidates in the race for the presidency are shifting their campaign focus to the capital region, as Sunday's voting approaches.
It notes that in particular, Jussi Halla-aho, the candidate of the Finns Party, and the Centre Party's Olli Rehn are popular in provinces and in rural areas where they have run high-profile campaigns.
However, during this final week before this first round of the election, both Halla-aho and Rehn are campaigning in the southern Uusimaa region and the capital, Helsinki.
The same paper notes that a record number of Finns have already cast advance votes in the first round, almost 1.9 million. That is about 44.2% of all eligible voters.
Kimmo Grönlund, professor of political science at Åbo Akademi, estimates that 1.2-1.4 million more votes will be cast on election day.
Grönlund believes that the final turnout will be somewhere between 73 and 78%.
"It's impossible to say exactly, but I'd bet on 75 percent," he told MT.
According to Grönlund, high turnout is likely to benefit the Finns Party's candidate Halla-aho.
"And possibly also Pekka Haavisto (Green). A large number of Finns are also likely to consider voting for Olli Rehn (Centre) or Alexander Stubb (NCP)," said Grönlund.
During advance voting, pensioners were the most active group. Finns aged 35-44 were the least active voters, with just more than 35 percent of that group casting early votes.
Worrying migrant development
The Southeast Finland Border Guard reported Thursday it had detained 18 people who were found crossing the border with Russia through the forest on foot, north of the Imatra border station.
According to the Border Guard, the group included men, women and children.
Ville Kuusisto of the communications department Southeast Finland Border Guard told Ilta-Sanomat that the individuals were in need of care when detained but he did not comment further on their condition.
Pia Lindfors, executive director of the Finnish Refugee Advice Centre NGO, told the paper that she finds the news very worrying.
"I hope this does not become more common, because crossing the land border is always dangerous, and in these weather conditions definitely very dangerous," she said. "You only have to imagine going into unknown terrain in a climate that is not really suitable."
The journey is also dangerous for men, she points out. However, Lindfors is most concerned that children, who are always particularly vulnerable, are now involved in these irregular border crossings.
Munitions plant expanding
Friday's Iltalehti carries an article about the Nammo Lapua Sastamala factory, Finland's only facility that produces artillery shells.
Nammo is half-owned by the Finnish company Patria and the Norwegian state. Nammo's main customer in Finland is the Finnish Defence Forces.
None of its output, the paper notes, goes directly to Ukraine. However, demand for the 155 mm artillery shells it manufactures has exploded since the start of Russia's attack on Ukraine. The EU's target is to supply Ukraine with a total of one million artillery shells by the spring.
IL says Sastamala needs new factory space and more workers, with plans to increase production by a factor of five this year.
The company is now in the process of investing 10 million euros in its plant, with the possibility of more funds from the EU in the spring.
Poor puffin
Over the past week, there have been several sightings in Finland of Atlantic puffins, a bird very rarely seen in this country.
The North Karelian newspaper Karjalainen reported on Thursday afternoon that a woman in Joensuu who saw one in her yard called the police to rescue it, but to her shock and dismay, they shot it instead.
The incident led to outpourings of rage on Finnish social media.
Police defended their decision by saying that they made an assessment of the bird's condition, determined that it couldn't fly, and decided it should be put down to avoid suffering.
In a follow-up, Aki Arkiomaa, executive director of Bird Life Finland, the national umbrella organisation for birdwatchers, told Helsingin Sanomat that more information would be needed before judging whether or not the police acted correctly.
According to Arkiomaa, one possibility is that the police misinterpreted the bird's behaviour. Puffins are sea bird that cannot take off from the ground after landing on snow – a fact that may have given the mistaken impression that it was injured.
Phone care in the cold
It's happened to most of us.
Your phone is fully charged when you go outside. You are tapping away in freezing weather and suddenly you realise that the battery indicator is showing a single digit, or the phone even just turns off.
The simple explanation for this common winter problem is that the battery simply doesn't like the cold, writes Aamulehti.
"The battery has to work harder to produce the power your phone needs as more energy is wasted. If the battery can't produce that power, the phone shuts down," explains Pekka Peljo, Professor of Materials Engineering at the University of Turku.
Temperatures even just a few degrees below freezing can slow down your phone, but there are differences between phone brands and battery types.
The battery charge percentage of some phones can drop to nearly zero when you're outdoors, but bounce back up in no time after you plug it in.
"It depends on how the battery charge status of the phone is determined. It probably tracks how much power is coming out of it and correlates with its state of charge. If the power output is suddenly much lower when the battery is cold and isn't working as well, then it's basically a measuring error," says Peljo.
He recommends letting your phone warm up inside for a while before plugging it into the charger.
You can also have some influence on the phone's performance in sub-zero temperatures.
"You should try to minimise power consumption and keep the battery warm by keeping it close to your body," Peljo advises, and further suggests switching on the power-saving mode when outdoors.
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