This past weekend, the war in Ukraine spilled over into Finland in a tangible way.

On Sunday, two drones fell near Kouvola. One dropped to the north of the town, the other in nearby Luumäki. One of the downed unmanned aircraft has been confirmed as Ukrainian.

Helsingin Sanomat reports that President Alexander Stubb stressed that the country faces no direct threat.

"I want to emphasize that there is no military threat to Finland," Stubb posted on X.

As a first-of-its-kind incident, the drones that fell in the Kouvola area have captured international attention, making global headlines.

Falling behind

Teachers' union OAJ is calling for more investment into education, even as Finland faces multi-billion-euro pressures on its public finances.

Finland could, according to OAJ, fall to levels currently seen in Serbia, Romania and Greece in the PISA rankings, should results continue along the trajectory of the past 20 years.

This means Finland, a former top performer, risks sliding into the ranks of mid-level countries.

"It is, of course, a projection, and a worst-case scenario at that, but we are at a turning point," the OAJ's chair, Katarina Murto, told Iltalehti.

Healthcare inefficiencies?

Wellbeing service counties spend thousands of hours maintaining overlapping data systems, says University of Eastern Finland Professor Tomi Voutilainen.

"There is a lot of unnecessary work," he told Hufvudstadsbladet.

Each of Finland's 21 regional wellbeing counties are in charge of organising healthcare, social welfare, and rescue services.

Most of the data needed to calculate a welfare county's funding requirements is already in Kela's Kanta database, Voutilainen argues.

But according to public health authority THL's head, Mika Salminen, that is not entirely accurate.

"The data there is unstructured. Kanta mostly reflects the doctors' thoughts. In practice, it is impossible to extract what is needed to determine care needs from these streams of consciousness," he noted.