Mart Laar is an Estonian politician and historian. He served as the Prime Minister of Estonia from 1992 to 1994 and from 1999 to 2002. Laar is credited with having helped bring about Estonia's rapid economic development during the 1990s. He is a member of the centre-right Isamaa party.
Estonia has participated in the Eurovision Song Contest 28 times since making its debut in 1994. Its first appearance would have taken place in 1993 but a qualification round was installed for seven former Eastern Bloc countries hoping to make their debut in the contest, with Estonia failing to qualify. Estonia has won the contest once, in 2001.
Same-sex marriage will soon be legal in Estonia. The government elected in the March 2023 election, led by Prime Minister Kaja Kallas and consisting of the Reform Party, the Social Democrats and Estonia 200, vowed to legalize same-sex marriage. Legislation to open marriage to same-sex couples was introduced to the Riigikogu in May 2023, and was approved in a final reading by 55 votes to 34 on 20 June. It was signed into law by President Alar Karis on 27 June, and will take effect on 1 January 2024.
Concord Academy, established in 1922, is a coeducational, independent college preparatory school for boarding and day students in grades 9-12. The school is situated in Concord, Massachusetts. The school enrolled 395 boarding and day students as of 2022.
The Estonian Navy are the unified naval forces among the Estonian Defence Forces.
The Kadriorg Stadium is a multi-purpose stadium in Tallinn, Estonia. Opened in 1926, it is one of the oldest stadiums in Estonia. It is currently used mostly for track and field competitions, but also serves as a home ground for JK Tallinna Kalev. The stadium holds 5,000. The Kadriorg Stadium is located about 2 km east of the city centre in the subdistrict of Kadriorg near the Kadriorg Palace. The address of the stadium is Roheline aas 24, 10150 Tallinn.
Parliamentary elections were held in Estonia on 4 March 2007. The newly elected 101 members of the 11th Riigikogu assembled at Toompea Castle in Tallinn within ten days of the election. It was the world's first nationwide vote where part of the voting was carried out in the form of remote electronic voting via the internet.
Laura Põldvere sometimes known professionally as simply Laura, is an Estonian singer. She is said to be the most played Estonian artist on Estonian radio in the past decade. She is internationally known for representing Estonia in the Eurovision Song Contest 2005 as part of the girl group Suntribe and did so again in 2017 in a duet with Koit Toome, singing "Verona."
Quantcast is an American technology company, founded in 2006, that specializes in AI-driven real-time advertising, audience insights and measurement. It has offices in the United States, Canada, Australia, Singapore, United Kingdom, Ireland, France, Germany, Italy, and Sweden.
Vahur Afanasjev was an Estonian novelist, poet, musician and film director best known for his novel Serafima and Bogdan a story following the lives in a village of Russian Orthodox Old Believers on the shore of the lake Peipus from the end of the World War II to the nineties. The novel won the 2017 Estonian Writers' Union's Novel Competition.
Science Centre AHHAA is a science centre located in Tartu, Estonia, and is currently the largest science centre in the Baltic states. AHHAA was established to promote science and technology using interactive exhibits.
Tallinn Music Week (TMW) is an international new music showcase, city culture festival and networking event for music and creative industry professionals, held every spring in Tallinn, Estonia since 2009. Operated by Tallinn-based company Shiftworks OÜ, it showcases emerging artists from all over Europe and beyond, provides a networking platform for music and creative industry professionals, and introduces the city of Tallinn. The festival is attended by around 20,000 people and 1,000 music industry executives yearly. TMW has been acknowledged as an important industry event and attractive tourism destination by The Guardian,New York Times, Forbes, and Experty.by.
Kersti Kaljulaid is an Estonian politician who served as the fifth president of Estonia between 2016 and 2021, and was its first and only female head of state since the country declared independence in 1918. She was also the youngest president, aged 46 at the time of her election.
Jüri Ratas's second cabinet was the 50th cabinet of Estonia, in office from 29 April 2019 to 14 January 2021. It was a centre-right coalition cabinet of the Centre Party, right-wing populist Conservative People's Party (EKRE) and conservative Isamaa.
Veriff is a global identity verification service company founded and headquartered in Tallinn, Estonia. The company offers services for online businesses to mitigate fraud attempts and assisting regulatory compliance. Offering protection from identity fraud and identity theft, Veriff verifies a customer's identity automatically, using an AI that analyzes a multitude of technological and behavioural indicators, including facial recognition. The service is provided to companies as an API, which has been compared to Stripe.
Open Estonia Foundation is an Estonian organization which supports and develops open society in Estonia. To reach its goals, OEF organizes events, initiates programmes and supports projects.
e-Governance Academy is a non-profit foundation that assists public sector institutions worldwide in digital transformation. The organization was founded in 2002, by a joint initiative of the Government of Estonia, Open Society Institute (OSI), and the United Nations Development Program (UNDP).
Arvi Siig was an Estonian poet, translator and journalist. He was a member of the CPSU and a communist, but still critical of many aspects of the political aspects of his day. His poetry inspired later punk poets and many of his texts are used as lyrics by the Estonian alternative rock band Vennaskond. He was among the first to include modern urban themes in Estonian poetry, also giving a voice to prostitutes, including Soviet prostitutes. The creators of the award-winning computer RPG Disco Elysium, Robert Kurvitz and Aleksander Rostov hailed Siig as inspiration and the greatest Estonian poet when accepting the president's Young Cultural Figure award in 2020: "Without his modernism, Elysium - the world the game is placed in - would not be half of what it is."
Maarja Kruusmaa is an Estonian computer scientist, professor at Tallinn University of Technology, vice-rector for research and head of the biorobotics center at that university. Her main research area is bio-inspired underwater robotics to imitate the movements of fish and turtles.
