President Arnold Ruutel sent a message of congratulations to Tarja Halonen on her reelection as president of Finland and invited her to visit Estonia. "Our joint activity as countries on the Baltic rim helps reinforce stable and sustainable development and the security of the whole region. Our region plays a significant role in Europe and has great potential for development whose realization must continue. These are views which are shared by our countries and which have brought our nations closer together," Ruutel said. Estonia and Finland traditionally enjoy intense and close relations, and Estonia attaches great importance to continued successful cooperation in the future, the Estonian president told his Finnish colleague.
No European country has as many women serving in the police force as in Estonia, which the trade union believes is due to police officers' low wages, the daily Postimees wrote. If the percentage of women in most European countries is between 10-20 percent, in Estonia it is as high as 33 percent. ROTAL, the Estonian trade union of state and municipal employees, said that if the present trend continues the figure could soar to above 50 percent, the critical line where the police can no longer and perform the duties laid on the force. Juhan Kubu, director of the Police College at the Civil Service Academy, admitted that the role of women among those learning to become a police officers was really growing at a fast pace, now amounting to 28 percent. "Contrary to men, the scholarship paid at the school as well as the policeman's minimum wage of 5,300 kroons (339 euros) are rather attractive. No such wages are paid to shop-assistants or seamstresses," Kubu said.
Howard League, a British group, published statistics according to which Estonia is second in Europe in terms of number of prisoners per 100,000 inhabitants. Ukraine has the highest percentage 's 406.3 per 100,000 inhabitants 's while for Estonia it is 337.9 and for Latvia 333.3. A spokesman for the Justice Ministry said that there are currently 4,434 prisoners in Estonia. Taking the population figure of 2003 as the basis (1,356,000 inhabitants), the figure would be 326 detainees per 100,000 inhabitants. Moldova, Lithuania and Azerbaijan followed the top three with respectively 287.8, 227.1 and 220.9 detainees per 100,000 inhabitants.
A worldwide study by the European Commission research center and Columbia and Yale universities showed that Estonia leads the European Union in per capita emissions of carbon dioxide. Aare Sirendi, environment attache of the Estonian representation at the EU, said the large amount of carbon dioxide emissions is in Sirendi's words due to Estonia's oil shale-based energy production. "Of course, the indicator is not good. It's related to oil shale. Since we use it to generate power, our carbon dioxide emissions per capita are much bigger than for example in Latvia where oil shale is not used," he said.
