Last week, an appeals court raised Vastaamo hacker Aleksanteri Kivimäki's prison term to six years and 11 months, one month short of the maximum seven years allowed by law.
Helsingin Sanomat has published a letter to the editor noting that in contrast, more than 30,000 of Kivimäki's victims have in effect received a 'life sentence' as a consequence of his crime.
Kivimäki hacked into a private psychotherapy centre's database and extorted victims.
For the rest of their lives, they must guard their personal data against further abuse. In practice, this means maintaining voluntary credit bans and blocking the disclosure of their contact details across various registers, the letter pointed out.
Fragile growth
Business paper Kauppalehti looks at Finland's fragile growth, overshadowed by soaring deficit forecasts.
The end of last week brought signs of a tentative revival in Finland's economic growth. The country's gross domestic product expanded by 0.2 percent last year, according to Statistics Finland.
Now the spring's budget framework proposal foresees large public finance deficits in the years ahead. According to the latest estimates from the Ministry of Finance, state debt will have swollen to around 260 billion by the end of 2030.
The business daily explains that a closer reading of the proposal reveals a major shift in assumptions in less than a year. The ministry now expects the 2027–29 deficit to be, on average, 3.2 billion euros larger than was envisaged last year.
The deficit forecasts have been pushed higher by an exceptionally sharp drop of nearly three billion euros in projected tax revenues, KL reports.
Eggs for Easter?
Shoppers have begun to notice a shortage of eggs on supermarket shelves. The regional daily Keskisuomalainen reports visible gaps on shelves, along with signs informing customers of supply problems.
Jarno Minkkinen, a group manager at the S-market chain, says two main factors lie behind the disruption: rising demand for eggs and the annual hen turnover on the production side, when laying flocks are replaced.
"Supply challenges will continue through the spring," Minkkinen told KS.
