An STT news agency report notes that Finnair has announced the cancellation of around 60 flights on Friday, due to a strike by the Aviation Industry Union IAU. The cancellations are expected to affect around 6,000 of the airline's customers.
Other outlets, including Yle, have reported as many as 80 of the airline's flights were cancelled on Friday.
The strike is aimed pressuring the service sector employers group (Palta) to move faster to reach a settlement in talks on a collective agreement on air transport services.
Negotiations have been going on since January, but so far no agreement has been reached. The labour dispute was last mediated on Tuesday, but the mediator, Nina Pärssinen, said at the time that there was not yet a basis for a settlement proposal.
If no agreement is reached within the next few days, the next air traffic strike could be seen as early as this coming Monday.
The IAU also staged a strike last week. At that time, Finnair cancelled about a hundred flights due to the walkout.
Ignoring the rules
The Finnish government is moving ahead with plans to restrict healthcare services for undocumented migrants.
Helsinki officials say that they will not comply, reports Helsingin Sanomat.
Currently, migrants without legal residence status can receive not only emergency care but also essential care, such as treatment for long-term illnesses. A new law proposed by the government was intended to restrict care to only emergency services.
The draft has, however, been watered down from a previous proposal, somewhat expanding the concept of emergency care. Under the current proposal, undocumented residents must also be offered essential non-urgent care if refusal would be "manifestly unreasonable in view of the person's state of health or disability" or if refusal would pose a health risk to the rest of the population.
Pregnancy-related services must also continue to be provided. In addition, all health services for children should be provided in the same way as for all other residents.
In practice, the change in the law will have less of an impact than the government would like, HS points out.
It is estimated that the maximum number of undocumented migrants in Finland at the moment is around 3,000-4,000. Most of them are in Helsinki or in the surrounding areas.
Helsinki has systematically opposed the proposed restrictions and will continue to offer all the same health services as before.
"We have no intention of changing our policy," Juha Jolkkonen, head of Helsinki's head of Social Services, Health Care and Rescue Services, told HS.
The paper also notes that the government's proposal has almost no impact on the balance of public finances. It is estimated that the change in the law would reduce annual costs by around 560,000 euros.
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No official US Pride presence
The US Embassy in Finland has participated in the Helsinki Pride parade for the past several years. This summer will be a different story, writes Iltalehti.
The paper quotes the executive director of Helsinki Pride, Annu Kemppainen, as saying that she does not expect representatives of the US Embassy in Finland to be marching in this year's parade in the capital.
In past years, according to Kemppainen, the embassy has always approached the Pride organisation itself about participating.
Iltalehti attributes the change to the decision by the US President Donald Trump's administration to dismantle diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programmes as part of its fight against "woke ideology".
Last Sunday, the paper reported that it had received a written statement from the US Embassy saying that the Trump administration's policies also apply in Finland.
"It is our understanding that US embassies are not authorized to promote the rights of sexual minorities people anywhere in the world. We are enormously saddened by that," Kemppainen told IL.
The Helsinki Pride parade this year is scheduled to take place 28 June.
Capital punishment loophole
Finland's last peacetime execution was carried out in 1825.
Capital punishment for crimes committed in peacetime was abolished by law in 1949, and in 1972 it was abolished entirely.
Ilta-Sanomat writes that abolishing capital punishment left a loophole in the law, and the Finnish parliament is set to close it with legislation that will make it possible to commute a death sentence handed down in another country to imprisonment in Finland.
At present, it is not possible to enforce or commute a death penalty in Finland. The possibility of commutation applies to prison sentences, deprivation of liberty sentences and involuntary psychiatric treatment sentences imposed in other countries.
The proposed change stems from a case where an Iraqi man sentenced to death for the murder of his Norwegian wife in his home country escaped from prison and ended up in Finland, where he posed as a Syrian refugee under a false identity and obtained a residence permit.
The man's stay in Finland was protected because Finland could not repatriate him to a country where he could face the death penalty. According to a 2023 report in Helsingin Sanomat, he also could not be extradited to Norway because of a legal technicality.
Sun 24/7
The sun rose above the horizon in Utsjoki in Finland's far north in the early hours of Friday and will continue shining for more than two months without interruption.
The next sunset in Utsjoki will be on 28 July, according to the Ursa astronomical society, Uutissuomalainen reports.
The last so-called 'dark night' on the south coast of Finland was on 11 May. Bright summer nights will continue in southern parts of the country for more than two and a half months. The next dark night will be on 2 August.
Ursa defines dark nights nights as being when the sun falls at least 12 degrees below the horizon.
Daylight hours will continue to lengthen until the longest day of the year, Midsummer 21 June. In Helsinki, the summer solstice day's sunlight hours amount to nearly 19 hours, whereas in the northernmost regions of the country, the sun does not set at all.
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