Word: finnish
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...occasional bursts of fireworks.The program opener was Jorma Elo’s “In on Blue,” a sort of “Midsummer Night’s Dream” set in water, evoking a fairy underworld and land of mer-people. Elo, a Finnish choreographer and the acclaimed “successor” to William Forsythe, evidently takes transition to the modern very seriously: the ballet featured women in bejeweled tutus but no pointe shoes, and steps in the purely classical ballet idiom crassly segued into flexed feet and robotic contractions...
...awarding former Finnish President Martti Ahtisaari this year's Nobel Peace Prize, the Norwegian prize committee is returning to its original mandate of honoring those who help in the resolution of conventional armed conflicts. For the past several years, the committee has opted for nontraditional honorees, from Al Gore for his work on climate change to the microcredit guru Muhammad Yunus for his work in extending small loans to the world's poor. The choice of Ahtisaari, a lifelong diplomat whose work over 30 years on three continents has helped bring an end to fighting and saved thousands of lives...
Ahtisaari, a former primary-school teacher, joined the Finnish Foreign Ministry as a diplomat in the mid-'60s. His first peace mediation job was as U.N. envoy to Namibia, where guerrillas were fighting the apartheid government of South Africa. He spent 20 years abroad as a diplomat for Finland and the U.N. before contesting and winning the presidential election in 1994, serving one term before returning to mediation work full time...
...school in the town of Kauhajoki, some 180 miles (290 km) northwest of Helsinki, in the world's deadliest school shooting since gunman Cho Seung-Hui massacred 32 at Virginia Tech in April 2007. The incident bore eerie similarities to a killing spree that left nine dead at another Finnish school last November. In both cases, the perpetrator posted ominous videos on YouTube shortly before the attack. The Kauhajoki killer, identified as Matti Juhani Saari (below), had been interviewed by police in connection with the footage but was released...
...France and Italy were more conciliatory, warning that the E.U. needed Russia too much to risk any rash retribution - especially given how reliant much of the E.U. is on Russian gas and oil. "We are economically interdependent with the Russians: Russians need our market, we need the Russian market," Finnish Foreign Minister Alexander Stubb said...