ERR News - Due to the increase in fuel prices on the global market, the cruise ship and ferry operator Tallink will introduce a two-euro surcharge to its passenger tickets.
The additional cost will be added on bookings made after June 1.
The fuel surcharge per passenger on the Tallinn-Helsinki, Tallinn-Stockholm, Riga-Stockholm, Turku-Stockholm and Helsinki-Stockholm routes will add on an extra two euros for both cruises and one-way trips.
On the Helsinki-Rostock route, the additional cost per passenger will be eight euros for a one-way ticket, as the distance is much longer and fuel consumption considerably higher.
According to Tallink, the fuel price on the world market has risen 203 percent since 2009 and during the first five months of 2011 the growth has been 25 percent.

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Published: June 06 2011

ERR News - Purchase prices of apartments in newly-constructed buildings are rising, while those in pre-existing buildings have stayed the same since the beginning of the year, according to a representative of the Uus Maa real estate agency.
Elari Tamm, the company's executive director for residential properties, said that prices in new buildings in and around the center of Tallinn had risen by about 10 percent, and those elsewhere in the city by about 5 percent.
He recommended that anyone trying to sell an older apartment in one of the established residential areas lower their prices if they want to sell.
Newly-built apartments, which make up about a fifth of the nation's market, are currently only a phenomenon in Tallinn, and to a lesser extent in Tartu.

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Published: June 06 2011

No need to wait any longer: as Estonia is not the land where last-minute political earthquakes can be expected to revolutionize consolidated choice, today we feel like telling you the name of the new President of the Estonian Republic.
A little less than three months before elections will decide the future President of the country, it seems already clear that Mr. Toomas Henrik Ilves will not miss the honor of a second mandate to guide Estonia also during the next five years.

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Published: June 06 2011

Couple weeks ago our solar energy park site in Kurenurme was visited by several representatives from our neighboring Baltic countries, Latvia and Lithuania. The scientific academic community in Estonia, i.e. Jaan Saar, Director, and Ain Kallis of EMHI as well as Enn Meliakov from Tallinn Technical -have all been very supportive of our solar “proof of concept” project right from the start. They believe solar energy should and must be taken more seriously in the Baltics.

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Published: June 06 2011

ERR News - The US Secret Service opened its Estonian office in the Pirita district of the capital on May 20 to serve as the headquarters "to engage counterparts" in Russia and the Nordic region.
"Estonia was selected as the site for the new Secret Service office due to both the investigative nexus it provides in combating cyber and financial crimes, as well as the opportunity it provides the agency in the fulfillment of its protective duties within the region," stated the US Embassy in Tallinn.

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Published: June 06 2011

ERR News - Research commissioned by the Archimedes Foundation, an independent body tasked with implementing national education programs, has found that difficulty in getting residence permits is prompting many foreign students to pass up the chance to study in Estonia.
The foundation's “Study in Estonia” analysis concluded that efforts to attract an international student body to the nation's universities are being hindered as complicated and time-consuming visa and residence permit procedures steer candidates to other countries.

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Published: June 06 2011

ERR News - The University of Tartu's computer science institute has received a grant from one of the world's largest web service providers - 6,500 euros worth of computing power on Amazon's servers.
Senior researcher at the Institute of Computer Science's distributed systems group, Satish Srirama said access to Amazon's servers is valuable to the students due to the possibility of seeing for themselves the theory applied in practice.

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Published: May 29 2011

It is a lot of work straightening up a farm, even when you don’t have animals other than a couple of dogs and cats. In the first weeks of the spring thaw, when the snow melts all the broken bottles, cans, lids and whatever has been hidden all over the place, come to light. These dangerous and gnarly things will only be visible for a week or so, so if you’re going to do anything, it has to be done right away because the weeds will grow up, through, and around, everything making it impossible to find them again in a couple of weeks. Usually I have solved this problem, by ignoring it all, but not this year. One of the problems of getting rid of junk is determining just what is junk. The Estonian saying, perhaps I will need it later has a very strong influence on me. 

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Published: May 29 2011