Helsingin Sanomat writes that the fate of a controversial new traffic tunnel in the Sörnäinen area of Helsinki will be decided at a meeting of the City Council on Wednesday evening.

HS called around the councillors to get a sense of how the vote might go, and found that a majority are planning to vote in favour of the project moving forward.

All but one delegate from the biggest party on the council - the National Coalition Party (NCP) - said they intended to vote for the tunnel, the paper writes, and although many Finns Party delegates said they were still on the fence about the project, HS believes a majority of the party's councillors will vote in favour.

"The party's leader on the council, Mari Rantanen, said that she is in favour of the tunnel, and support from the Finns Party will also come with the vote of [former leader of the party] Jussi Halla-aho," HS writes.

Votes against the tunnel will come en masse from both the Greens and the Left Alliance, as well as from - HS notes in a separate article - from city councillor, member of Parliament and Minister of Transport and Communications Timo Harakka (SDP).

In a "brief but concise" blog post on Tuesday evening, the minister wrote that the tunnel was "unnecessary", underlining the split among social democrats on the council.

The 1.6-kilometre tunnel is currently estimated to cost approximately 180 million euros. If the project is given the green light at Wednesday evening's council meeting, construction could begin as early as next year with the aim of the tunnel being open for traffic by the early 2030s.

Dark days

Tabloid Ilta-Sanomat writes that November has been a dark month for the Uusimaa region, in more ways than one.

Over the course of just one week, IS reports, police in the region have launched preliminary investigations into seven suspected homicides spread over five different cases - three in Eastern Uusimaa and two in Helsinki.

The cases include a man in his late 30s suspected of killing his parents in Vantaa and the suspected murders of a mother and her child in Porvoo followed by the death of the father of the family in a road crash in Helsinki later the same morning.

Seppo Kujala, Deputy Chief of Police at the Eastern Uusimaa Police Department, told IS that he does not remember a police department in Finland ever previously having to deal with five suspected homicides in the space of one week.

"This is indeed exceptional, and eyebrows were already raised even before this latest incident that took place this weekend in Vantaa," Kujala said.

He added that the investigations are at too early a stage to draw any wider conclusions about why so many suspected homicides occurred over such a short period of time, but he noted that each of the cases did not appear to follow "typical" lines.

"A typical Finnish homicide is one in which there is a group of intoxicated people and then things, for whatever reason, suddenly turn violent. This does not seem to be the case here, as these recent cases are believed to have different backgrounds," Kujala said.

Fair Play supporting roles

Tabloid Iltalehti writes that while Finland does not have any direct involvement in this year's Fair Play Awards, decided by world football's governing body FIFA, two of the three nominations do involve the Finnish team or players.

The first nomination is for the Danish medical team and players who responded heroically after Christian Eriksen collapsed on the pitch during the team's Euro 2020 match against Finland in Copenhagen in June. The team created a circle around Eriksen to shield him from cameras while the medical team administered life-saving CPR.

In the second nomination to involve Finnish players, IL writes that former Glasgow Celtic captain Scott Brown has been recognised for offering a show of support to Finland and Glasgow Rangers Glen Kamara after the latter had been a victim of racial abuse.

Brown approached Kamara before the 'Old Firm' derby between fierce city rivals Rangers and Celtic - not usually an occasion for the exchanging of pre-match pleasantries - to shake the Finnish international's hand.

The game was Kamara's first following an incident involving Czech player Ondrej Kúdela, for which Kúdela later received a 10-match suspension.