Iltalehti covered the death of a woman at the Iso Omena shopping centre in Espoo.
Police said that the woman "became lifeless" after an interaction with mall security guards and died despite resuscitation efforts by passersby. The incident occurred around 5pm on Saturday.
Eyewitnesses said that the woman was removed from a clothing store against her will by guards and, although she was not behaving aggressively, she was forced to the ground and handcuffed. One of the four guards involved in the incident laid on top of the woman, while a fifth guard observed the situation.
IL wrote that University of Eastern Finland legal professor Henri Rikander said that when he watched some of the videos taken by bystanders, he wondered why CPR had not been given earlier.
"If you think there is cardiac arrest: turn on [the patient's] back and start compressions. Even if this death had not occurred, the person should have been lifted to a sitting position and talked to earlier in the video," Rikander stressed.
Rikander added that proportionate force can be used by security guards to apprehend uncooperating individuals, but questioned the actions of the guards in the video. The guard must constantly monitor how the individual is responding to any use of force, and if the individual shows no signs of life, CPR must be administered immediately.
"She is still for a long time, so from the point of view of the use of force, she had already calmed down," Rikander noted.
Rikander pointed out that the European Court of Human Rights has dealt with similar deaths where people were handcuffed and entered into cardiac arrest.
However, Rikander clarified that the situation is still being investigated by police and the causes of the Iso Omena death are still unknown.
IL also published an article on Sunday asking whether the police had detained the security guards, as that had not been mentioned in police statements.
”In order to protect the preliminary investigation, the police have to arrest suspects and separate them from one another so that they do not have the time to agree on a common story. One of the biggest questions in the early stages of an investigation is whether the police did this—and if they did not, for what reason.”
Virologist: China not of concern
On Saturday, Minister of Family Affairs and Social Services Krista Kiuru (SDP) told Yle that some restrictions will be placed on travellers arriving from China this week, following EU recommendations last week.
Kiuru had commented that she is concerned about China's low vaccination rates and travellers from the country bringing new variants with them.
Ilta-Sanomat highlighted that while there are fears of the substrain coming from China, the XBB.1.5 variant of Covid-19 is spreading at an increasingly high rate in the United States.
According to some virologists this XBB.1.5 variant, which has been dubbed "kraken", is not particularly widespread at the moment in China.
"The strains that have been sequenced [from China] are mainly extensions of BA.5 variants that have been circulating in the West, such as the BF.7," University of Helsinki zoonosis virology professor Olli Vapalahti told Ilta-Sanomat.
Vapalahti also stressed that comprehensive data on the Covid situation in China is still not available.
Despite shaky statistics from China, Vapalahti warned against pigeonholing XBB as specifically Chinese, because the XBB.1.5 subvariant or even the XBB variant did not originate in China or spread more widely there, unlike, say, in the US.
"XBB.1.5 was first identified in the northeastern United States. In that sense, I don't see what it is about this particular variant that makes it Chinese," Vapalahti said.
Speaking on Yle's Ykkös Aamu, Kiuru spoke about XBB.1.5 as the "Chinese virus".
According to Vapalahti, it would be good to keep an eye on the Covid situation not only in China, but also globally. He added that Chinese travel is of no particular concern from a European perspective. Europe already has a high level of Covid variants circulating and they are no different from the variants prevalent elsewhere, including China.
Ukraine reforms amidst war
Helsingin Sanomat spoke with the head of the European Advisory Mission (EUAM) to Ukraine Antti Hartikainen, a former colonel from the Finnish Border Guard.
The aim of the mission is to help Ukraine reform the functioning of its civil security authorities.
Ukraine, with the support of EUAM, is in the process of reforming a number of its civilian agencies, including those pertaining to its police force, border guards and customs services.
HS interviewed Hartikainen at the end of January last year, when he visited a EUAM field office in Mariupol.
Since then, Russia's invasion of Ukraine has produced a multitude of dilemmas for both Ukraine's civilian agencies and EUAM.
After briefly relocating the office to Moldova in February of last year before the invasion, EUAM has been busy assisting Ukraine in relieving congested border crossings, helping Ukrainian agricultural exports leave the country, and making sure that humanitarian aid gets to its intended destination, among other things.
EUAM and Hartikainen were also given a new mission in the spring.
"Our task was to advise on the investigation of international crimes, in practice war crimes," Hartikainen told HS.
Additionally, EUAM has been instrumental in supporting Ukrainian authorities in recently liberated areas.
"Our role is to support the proper treatment of people and the authorities, to ensure that the authorities keep control of the situation and that no one takes the law into their own hands," Hartikainen emphasised.
Hartikainen highlighted how remarkable it is for Ukraine to institute such reforms in its governance during a time of crisis.
"Despite the war, they have a strong desire to move forward with these reforms," he told HS.
As for the mood in Ukraine, Hartikainen said that the country believes it can win the war.
"When success comes, it keeps the faith alive."
