Finland

Finland's center-right National Coalition Party, headed by Petteri Orpo, eked out a narrow victory over the country's populist party. Sanna Marin's party fell to third place.

All 276 lawmakers present voted in favor of Finland's application. The action lifted the last hurdle in the way of the Nordic country's long-delayed accession into the Western military alliance.

"NATO will become stronger with Finland's membership and thus, I believe, will play an active role in maintaining global security and stability," Turkey's president said Friday.

Asked whether she met with her Finnish counterpart "just because" of their similarities in age and gender, New Zealand's leader questioned whether reporters would ask the same of her male predecessor.

The anticipated approval by the 30 NATO allies for Sweden and Finland on Tuesday will send the membership bids of the two nations to the alliance capitals for legislative approvals.

The paintings and sculptures, some of which are reportedly priceless, had been loaned by Russia to museums in Italy and Japan. Finnish agents detained them at a border crossing over the weekend.

It was the members of a Facebook group who noted that the auroras they'd seen didn't look like any that had been previously catalogued. So physicists asked them to take a few carefully timed photos.

Obama commended the country's prolific metal scene while speaking with European Nordic leaders. "Finland is making the weirdest heavy metal imaginable," Decibel editor-in-chief Albert Mudrian says.