6-party government in Finland after lengthy talks (AP)

HELSINKI – Six parties across the political spectrum united Friday to form a government, saving Finland from the embarrassment of having no prime minister at a key European Union summit next week.

Coalition talks had dragged on for weeks, marred by disagreements over economic policy and European bailouts, following an April 17 election that for a while appeared to have catapulted a nationalist party into power.

After a previous attempt failed, a relieved Prime Minister-designate Jyrki Katainen announced that six parties had agreed on the main priorities for a broad-based coalition government.

Katainen's National Coalition Party, which won the election, joined forces with the Social Democrats, the left-wing Left Alliance, the Greens, the Swedish People's Party and the Christian Democrats. The coalition, dubbed "the six-pack" by Katainen, will command 126 seats in the 200-seat Parliament.

The True Finns, a nationalist group that opposed bailout packages for debt-ridden European Union nations, scored the biggest gains in the election but were dropped from coalition talks because of disagreements on EU policy.

At the insistence of the small Christian Democrats — with close ties to the country's state Lutheran church — the coalition said it would consider tightening Finland's abortion laws.

Katainen pledged to improve the competitiveness of the Nordic country's economy and boost employment and entrepreneurship by lowering taxes, especially for lower income households. The government would raise some excise taxes and cut spending to balance the budget.

"Finland needs to get back on a growth track," Katainen said at a news conference. "We need ... such economic policies that will boost employment and bring investments to Finland."

Friday's agreement paves the way for Katainen to be formally approved by Parliament next week, so that he can travel to a June 23-24 EU summit as prime minister.

In their program, the coalition parties pledged not to change Finland's EU policies, committing the country to be actively involved in key EU projects also in the future. But in a nod to the euroskeptic sentiment that boosted the True Finns, they promised to also take into account views critical of European integration.

The coalition said it would not grant new permits to build nuclear power plants, dealing a blow to national utility Fortum Oyj, which has expressed interest in increasing its current nuclear capacity.

The conservatives will get six portfolios in the 19-member Cabinet, including the posts of prime minister and foreign trade minister. The Social Democrats will also get six portfolios including finance and foreign affairs.

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Google's new Finland data center is cooled by Baltic Sea's water (Digital Trends)

Google is once again showing off its big environmental conscience with video of the new Hamina, Finland data center, due to open up towards the end of the year. The new center, much like Google’s Saint-Ghislain center, will not be using chillers in its cooling system. Instead, waters from the Baltic Sea will be harnessed to keep servers cool.

Google paid $52 million for the Summa paper mill that yielded the 410 acres of land where the new data center is being built. Stora Enso, the paper-making company that formerly owned the land, closed the paper mill down in 2008 because of the drop in newspaper and magazine-paper production.

According to the video, the center collects cool water through an inlet pipe and travels through granite tunnels built by the paper mill in the 1950s. The Register has found that the pipes are two meters in diameter and “the system uses 20-year-old water pumps installed by the mill.” The tunnels and pipe are kept clear of blockage by using a small submarine to explore regularly.

The water travels through four straining systems and meets a water-to-water heat exchanger. The heat exchanger cools a separate stream that carries on to the data center. Google senior director of data center construction Joe Kava says that once the watera€™s purpose is met, a€?we return the temperature that is much more similar to the inlet temperature, so we minimize any environmental impact in that area.a€

The total costs for the structure comes to roughly $260 million, including the purchase price but the money Google saves from cooling costs will be significant. The Register also reports that the Finland data center will use wind power from the wind park next to the facility.

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Gains of True Finn party point to 'Euroskeptic' surge in Finland (The Christian Science Monitor)

Helsinki, Finland – Some call it a political earthquake that, in a single election, reshaped the landscape of Finland and put the European Union on notice that its days may be numbered.

A country of 5.3 million people tucked into Europe's forested northeast corner, Finland has been thought of as a well-adjusted EU member. But leaders of the insurgent True Finn party, which rocketed out of obscurity to win third place in parliamentary polls last month, say 16 years of membership in the "United States of Europe" has allowed Brussels bureaucrats to usurp Finnish sovereignty.

"Finns have been tolerant for too long, and now they've had enough," says True Finn party secretary Ossi Sandvik. "Finns don't go into the streets; they express their frustrations at the ballot box. Now the people have spoken, and changes must follow."

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The True Finns blend nationalism and social conservatism with a left-wing populism that defies easy categorization. Tea party­ers might nod approvingly at some items in the True Finn charter, which identifies Christianity as a hallmark of Fin­nish­ness and rails against free immigration, easy abortion, same-sex marriage, and the "Islamization" of Europe.

One in 5 Finnish voters backed the True Finns and their charismatic leader, Timo Soini, reacting mainly against the rising cost of bailing out crisis-hit eurozone members like Greece and Portugal. But other resentments also emerged, including some Finns' anger over the influx of outsiders under the EU's open-border system and the consequent erosion of what True Finn leaders call "Finnish values." At the very least, the True Finns, which opted to go into opposition after other major parties backed the Portugal bailout, have brought "euroskepticism" roaring into the political mainstream.

Since Finland is the only EU country that requires parliamentary approval for participation in bailouts, and any such EU decision must be unanimous, the sudden surge of the True Finns is giving EU boosters a major headache and may have thrown Finland's support for future rescue packages into doubt.

"Greece and Port­ugal have been wasteful and dishonest, and Finns resent these demands to give them more money," says Simon Elo, head of the True Finns youth movement, which has been inundated with applications to join since the election success.

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He says the party, which made opposition to the Portugal bailout the centerpiece of its campaign, expects to be proved right in the long run. "We don't want people to say, 'Finland was to blame for bringing down the euro....' Anyway, we believe the [eurozone] system will collapse by itself, and our duty is to prepare Finland for life after the euro. Eventually, we want to take Finland out of the European Union."

Finland, once one of Europe's poorest countries, has fared well since the collapse of the USSR 20 years ago freed it from the tough strictures imposed on it by Moscow after World War II. After joining the EU in 1995, Finland's exports of electronics, forest products, and high tech took off. But the global economic crisis hit hard, punishing many small industrial towns and leaving lingering unemployment that's still more than 8 percent.

"The eurozone crisis came like a wake-up call for the populist movement," says Tapani Makinen, editor of the pro-European Helsinki newsweekly Nykypaiva. "We have an export-based economy, and the euro has provided stability. But our economy is small, and it's extremely vulnerable to shocks. Many structural changes are happening as a result of the crisis; people feel that normal life is threatened, that danger is just around the corner."

While US conservatives might find common cause with the True Finns, they would recoil at demands for a stronger social safety net and government regulation to equalize incomes of rich and poor.

"People have been divided into haves and have-nots, and we are the party of the have-nots," says Mr. Sandvik. "The right to a socially just life, determined by good values, belongs to every Finn."

The recipe combining left and right agendas is shared by a few other Nordic populist movements, including the Danish People's Party, which won nearly 14 percent of the vote in 2007 elections by tapping into an anti-immigrant backlash while backing the country's generous welfare system.

But across most of the Continent, rising euroskeptic parties generally combine a xenophobic message with contempt for the welfare state. There's Geert Wilders's Party of Freedom in The Netherlands, France's surging National Front led by Marine Le Pen, and Italy's regionalist Northern League.

The True Finns say they have little interest in the wider picture, only in restoring Finland's independence. "After all, empires always end badly, as did Rome and the USSR," says Mr. Elo. "That will happen to the EU as well, because it's a misguided piece of history."

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