Current affairs

When meeting with India’s Minister of Commerce and Industry in Delhi on 6 February, Minister for Foreign Trade and Development Paavo Väyrynen emphasised the importance of finding as quick WTO solution as possible.

Minister for Foreign Trade and Development Paavo Väyrynen will visit Nepal on 3-5 February. During the visit, the topics of discussion will include Finland’s development cooperation as well as Nepal’s political situation and development plans. The bilateral trade and economic relations and regional and international questions will also be discussed.

Foreign Minister Alexander Stubb absolutely condemns the terrorist attacks that took place in Mumbai, India, on 26 November.

The three-day Sustainable Development Research Conference was organized by the Management Development Institute (MDI) India in collaboration with Abo Akademi University (ÅA), Finland and University of Hong Kong (HKU) 21.-23.9.2008 at India Habitat Center New Delhi.

From the very beginning, the Sitra Fellowshisp programme aroused a lot of interest in inviting Indian researchers to Finland, which shows that researchers have many contacts across national boundaries. Mobility, too, is now increasing.

"Getting first hand exposure to a new culture, meeting colleagues from 17 other countries, learning more about the European Union and acquainting myself with the Finnish media", answers Kunal Majumder when asked about his expectations of the Foreign Correspondents' Programme  to be organised in Finland in August.

The best of European cinema is coming to India, once again. The EU Film Festival will take place on 1-30 April in Delhi, Chennai, Kolkata, Kozhikode and Pune. The Finnish contribution to the festival is called "FC Venus" (2005).

Cantores Minores, "small cantors" - the choir of boys and young men of Helsinki Cathedral, sopranos Satu Vihavainen and Helinä Siltanen representing the worldwide acknowledged operatic traditions of Finland and Iiro Rantala, Finland's most successful jazz pianist and a true virtuoso, will perform in New Delhi.

The 21-year old University of Helsinki computer sciences student, during a six-month stretch of marathon programming in 1991, wrote his own operating system - the massive program that runs a computer. The new operating system, ultimately named Linux, now runs millions of computers around the world, including the vast majority of those sending out content on the Internet.

Finnish and Indian schools have started collaborative online projects. A group of Finnish teachers has visited schools in Panchgani and Mumbai. A group of Indian teachers will visit their partner schools Finland in May 2008.