Finland

Finlandia Hall is a concert hall with a congress wing in Helsinki, Finland, by Töölönlahti bay. The building was designed by Alvar... Aalto. The work began in 1967 and was completed in 1971. Alvar Aalto was commissioned by the city of Helsinki to design a concert and congress building, the first constructed part of a great central city plan, which Aalto first presented in 1961, and which included a series of cultural buildings aligned along the Töölönlahti bay which penetrates the city centre. The earliest sketches show features of what were to be the main features of the final design. The principal set of blueprints for the concert hall are dated 10 May 1967. None of the other buildings in the grand scheme were ever completed. The main features of the building's exterior are the great horizontal mass of the building proper and the towering auditorium that rises above it. The main external wall material is Carrara marble and with copper roofs, which have acquired a green patina, and teak window frames. The marble continues in the interior, and is supplemented by details in hardwoods, and ceramic.
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The Sibelius Monument is dedicated to the Finnish composer Jean Sibelius . The monument is located at the Sibelius Park in the district of... Töölö in Helsinki, the capital city of Finland. The monument was designed by Eila Hiltunen and unveiled on September 7, 1967. Originally it sparked a lively debate about the merits and flaws of abstract art, for which reason an effigy of Sibelius was included in the work. It consists of series of more than 600 hollow steel pipes welded together in a wave-like pattern. The purpose of the artist was to capture the essence of the music of Sibelius. The monument weighs 24 tonnes and measures 8.5 × 10.5 × 6.5 metres. A smaller version of the monument is located at the UNESCO headquarters in Paris. A work with a similar concept, also designed by Hiltunen, is located at the grounds of the United Nations headquarters in New York City.
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The Helsinki Olympic Stadium , located in the Töölö district about 2 kilometres from the center of the Finnish capital Helsinki, is... the largest stadium in the country, nowadays mainly used for hosting sports events and big concerts. The stadium is best known for being the center of activities in the 1952 Summer Olympics. During those games, it hosted athletics, equestrian show jumping, and the football finals. It was built however to host the 1940 Summer Olympics, which were moved from Tokyo to Helsinki before being cancelled due to World War II. The stadium was also the venue for the first World Athletics Championships in 1983 as well as for the 2005 World Championships in Athletics. It hosted both the 1971 European Athletics Championships and the European Athletics Championships in 1994. It will once again be the venue for the championships in 2012. It is also the home stadium of the Finland national football team. Construction of the Olympic Stadium began in 1934 and it was completed in 1938. The Olympic was designed in functionalistic style by the architects Yrjö Lindegren and Toivo Jäntti.
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Suomenlinna, until 1918 Viapori , or Sveaborg , is an inhabited sea fortress built on six islands , and which now forms part of the city of Helsinki,... the capital of Finland. Suomenlinna is a UNESCO World Heritage site and popular with both tourists and locals, who enjoy it as a picturesque picnic site. Originally named Sveaborg , or Viapori as called by Finns, it was renamed Suomenlinna in 1918 for patriotic and nationalistic reasons, though it is still also sometimes known by its original name. In Swedish-speaking contexts, the name Sveaborg is always used. The Swedish crown commenced the construction of the fortress in 1748 as protection against Russian expansionism. The general responsibility for the fortification work was given to Augustin Ehrensvärd. The original plan of the bastion fortress was strongly influenced by the ideas of Vauban, the foremost military engineer of the time, and the principles of Star Fort style of fortification, albeit adapted to a group of rocky islands.
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The Eastern Front of World War II was a theatre of World War II between the European Axis powers and co-belligerent Finland against the Soviet Union,... Poland, and some other Allies which encompassed Northern, Southern and Eastern Europe from 22 June 1941 to 9 May 1945. It was known by many different names depending on the nation, notably the Great Patriotic War in the former Soviet Union, while known in Germany as the Eastern Front , the Eastern Campaign or the Russian Campaign . The battles on the Eastern Front constituted the largest military confrontation in history. They were characterized by unprecedented ferocity, wholesale destruction, mass deportations, and immense loss of life variously due to combat, starvation, exposure, disease, and massacres. The Eastern Front, as the site of nearly all extermination camps, death marches, ghettos, and the majority of pogroms, was central to the Holocaust. Of the estimated 70 million deaths attributed to World War II, over 30 million, many of them civilians, died on the Eastern Front.
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The term Great Patriotic War , Velíkaya Otéchestvennaya voyná, is used in Russia and some other states of the former Soviet Union to... describe the period from 22 June 1941 to 9 May 1945 during World War II, in the many fronts of the Soviet-German war against Nazi Germany and its allies. The term Patriotic War refers to the Russian resistance of the French invasion of Russia under Napoleon I, which became known as the Patriotic War of 1812. The term denotes a war for otechestvo, "the fatherland", i.e. a defensive war for one's homeland. The phrase Great Patriotic War appeared in 1914. It was the name of a special war-time appendix to the magazine Theater and Life in Saint Petersburg, and referred to the Eastern Front of World War I, where Russia fought against the German Empire and the Austrian Empire. The phrases Second Patriotic War and Great World Patriotic War were also used during World War I in Russia.
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The Lapland War was fought between Finland and Nazi Germany from September 1944 to April 1945 in Finland's northernmost Lapland Province. While the... Finns saw this as a separate conflict much like the Continuation War, German forces considered their actions to be part of the Second World War. A peculiarity of the war was that the Finnish army was forced to demobilise their forces while at the same time fighting to force the German army to leave Finland. German forces retreated to Norway, and Finland managed to uphold its obligations under the Moscow Armistice, although it remained formally at war with the Soviet Union and the United Kingdom, one government in exile in London, and the British Dominions until the formal conclusion of the Continuation War was ratified by the 1947 Paris peace treaty. Germany and Finland had been at war with the Soviet Union since June 1941, co-operating closely in the Continuation War. As early as the summer of 1943, the German High Command began making plans for the eventuality that Finland might make a separate peace agreement with the Soviet Union.
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The ground for the fate of Estonia in World War II was laid by the German-Soviet Nonaggression Pact, particularly its Secret Additional Protocol of... August 1939. The Republic of Estonia declared neutrality in the war but fell under the Soviet sphere of influence due to the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact and was occupied by the Soviet Union in 1940. Mass political arrests, deportations, and executions followed. In the Summer War during the German Operation Barbarossa in 1941, the pro-independence Forest Brothers captured South Estonia from the NKVD and the 8th Army before the arrival of the German 18th Army. At the same time, the Soviet paramilitary destruction battalions carried out punitive operations, including looting and killing, based on the tactics of scorched earth proclaimed by Joseph Stalin. Estonia was occupied by Germany and incorporated into Reichskommissariat Ostland. In 1941, Estonians were conscripted to the 8th Estonian Rifle Corps and in 1941–1944 to the Nazi German forces. Men who avoided these mobilisations, fled to Finland to be formed as the Finnish Infantry Regiment 200.
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The African Development Bank Group is a development bank established in 1964 with the intention of promoting economic and social development in... Africa. The Group comprises the African Development Bank , the African Development Fund , and the Nigeria Trust Fund . AfDB provides loans and grants to African governments and private companies investing in the regional member countries in Africa. It is owned and funded by member governments, and has a public-interest mandate to reduce poverty and promote sustainable development. Its headquarters is in Abidjan, Côte d'Ivoire. Following the end of colonial period in Africa, growing desire for more unity within the continent led to the establishment of two draft charters, one for the establishment of the Organisation of African Unity , and for a regional development bank.
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The Arctic Council is a high-level intergovernmental forum which addresses issues faced by the Arctic governments and the indigenous people of the... Arctic. The first step towards the formation of the Council occurred in 1991 when eight Arctic countries signed the Arctic Environmental Protection Strategy . The Ottawa Declaration of 1996 formally established the Arctic Council as a high level intergovernmental forum to provide a means for promoting cooperation, coordination and interaction among the Arctic States, with the involvement of the Arctic Indigenous communities and other Arctic inhabitants on common Arctic issues, in particular issues of sustainable development and environmental protection in the Arctic. The Ottawa Declaration named eight members of the Arctic Council: Canada, Russia, Norway, Denmark, Iceland, the United States, Sweden and Finland. The Arctic Council has conducted several studies on climate change, oil and gas, and Arctic shipping. Only states with territory in the Arctic -of which there are eight- can become member of the Council. As all eight are members, the Arctic Council is a true circumpolar forum.
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The Asian Development Bank is a regional development bank established on 22 August 1966 to facilitate economic development of countries in Asia. The... bank admits the members of the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific and non-regional developed countries. From 31 members at its establishment, ADB now has 67 members - of which 48 are from within Asia and the Pacific and 19 outside. ADB was modeled closely on the World Bank, and has a similar weighted voting system where votes are distributed in proportion with member's capital subscriptions. At present, both the United States and Japan hold 552,210 shares, the largest proportion of shares at 12.756% each. China holds 228,000 shares , India holds 224,010 shares , the 2nd and 3rd largest proportion of shares respectively. The highest policy-making body of the bank is the Board of Governors composed of one representative from each member state. The Board of Governors, in turn, elect among themselves the 12 members of the Board of Directors and their deputy.
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The Zangger Committee, also known as the Nuclear Exporters Committee, sprang from Article III.2 of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear... Weapons which entered into force on March 5, 1970. Under the terms of Article III.2 International Atomic Energy Agency safeguards must be applied to nuclear exports. Between 1971 and 1974, a group of 15 nuclear supplier states held a series of informal meetings in Vienna chaired by Professor Claude Zangger of Switzerland. The group's objective was to reach a common understanding on: the definition of "equipment or material especially designed or prepared for the processing, use or production of special fissionable material;" and the conditions and procedures that would govern exports of such equipment or material in order to meet the obligations of Article III.2 on the basis of fair commercial competition. The group, which became known as the Zangger Committee, decided that it would be informal and that its decisions would not be legally binding upon its members.
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Matti Mäntylä is a Finnish actor who has worked predominantly on Finnish television. Mäntylä began acting in 1979 and has made... many appearances mostly on TV in Finland since the early 1980s although he had appeared in several films such as the 1983 James Bond spoof Agentti 000 ja kuoleman kurvit where he acted alongside actors Ilmari Saarelainen and Tenho Sauren. He had a small role in the 2005 Timo Koivusalo film Kaksipäisen kotkan varjossa alongside actors such as Mikko Leppilampi. More recently he appeared on Finnish television in FC Venus, 2005 and in two episodes of "Presidentit" in 2006.
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Mikko Sakari Koivu is a Finnish professional ice hockey center and captain of the Minnesota Wild of the National Hockey League . Koivu was the... captain for the gold-winning Finnish national team at the 2011 Men's World Ice Hockey Championships. After playing in the Finnish junior leagues, Koivu began playing for TPS of the SM-liiga as a seventeen-year-old in 2000–01, the same team for which older brother Saku also once played. He was selected 6th overall in the 2001 NHL Entry Draft by the Minnesota Wild and continued to play with TPS Turku for three more seasons. Koivu moved to North America in the 2004–05 to play for Minnesota's AHL affiliate, the Houston Aeros, while that NHL season was canceled. The next season, he made his NHL debut with the Wild, scoring 21 points in his rookie season. In 2006–07, Koivu improved to a career-high 20 goals, 34 assists and 54 points. Injuries slowed him down in his third season; in a game against the Vancouver Canucks, defenseman Mattias Öhlund retaliated to an unpenalized elbow from Koivu and slashed him, breaking a bone in Koivu's leg. Ohlund was given a four game suspension and Koivu missed 24 games.
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Aki-Petteri Berg is a retired Finnish professional ice hockey defenceman. He was drafted third overall by the Los Angeles Kings in the 1995 NHL... Entry Draft. He played both for the Kings and the Toronto Maple Leafs over eight seasons and has represented Team Finland twice at the Winter Olympics, winning a bronze medal at the 1998 Nagano Olympics, a silver medal at the 2004 World Cup of Hockey in which Finland lost in the finals to host Canada, and a silver medal at the 2006 Torino Olympics. Although Berg had developed into a solid regular NHL defenceman, he nonetheless failed to shed his underachiever tag after entering the NHL in 1995–96 from Finland. As a teenager playing for TPS in the Finnish SM-liiga, Berg was thought to be a cannot miss prospect. Thus, while he turned into a nice complementary player at the NHL level, he nonetheless failed to have the impact that was expected of him. Some analysts feel that, had Berg been given time to refine his offensive game in Finland, as well as some minor technical aspects, he would have become an impact NHL defenceman.
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Matti Salminen is a Finnish operatic bass singer, who has sung at all of the most important opera houses of the world, including the Metropolitan... and Bayreuth Festival. Salminen is distinguished by an imposing figure and height; an enormous, sonorous and dark voice; and an expressive face. According to one reviewer, in his prime Salminen was " simply the largest bass voice in captivity. It is not just its roar in powering over Wagner's maximum orchestra, but the way he carves the sonority and forms the color." He performed as Fafner and Hagen in the PBS video broadcast Ring Cycle from the Metropolitan Opera, for the largest viewing-audience of the Ring in history. He sang in the premiere of Sallinen’s Kuningas Lear in 2000 , and Jukka Linkola's Robin Hood in 2011 . Salminen has a contract at the Zurich Opera, and he also frequently performs in his native Finland. Most of all he has been admired in such Wagner roles as Daland , Gurnemanz and Titurel , King Marke , Fasolt and Fafner , Hunding , and Hagen .
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Norway /ˈnɔrweɪ/ or  Noreg , officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic unitary constitutional monarchy whose territory... comprises the western portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula, Jan Mayen, the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard and the subantarctic Bouvet Island. Norway has a total area of 385,252 square kilometres and a population of about 5 million. It is the second least densely populated country in Europe. The majority of the country shares a border to the east with Sweden; its northernmost region is bordered by Finland to the south and Russia to the east; in its south Norway borders the Skagerrak Strait across from Denmark. The capital city of Norway is Oslo. Norway's extensive coastline, facing the North Atlantic Ocean and the Barents Sea, is home to its famous fjords. Two centuries of Viking raids tapered off following the adoption of Christianity by King Olav Tryggvason in 994. A period of civil war ended in the 13th century when Norway expanded its control overseas to parts of the British Isles, Iceland, and Greenland.
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Russia /ˈrʌʃə/ or /ˈrʊʃə/ , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in... northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects. From northwest to southeast, Russia shares borders with Norway, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland , Belarus, Ukraine, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, China, Mongolia, and North Korea. It also has maritime borders with Japan by the Sea of Okhotsk, and the US state of Alaska by the Bering Strait. At 17,075,400 square kilometres , Russia is the largest country in the world, covering more than one eighth of the Earth's inhabited land area. Russia is also the eighth most populous nation with 143 million people. It extends across the whole of northern Asia and 40% of Europe, spanning nine time zones and incorporating a wide range of environments and landforms.
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