Extra 100,000 visitors expected amid £1bn lift for UK hospitality in May helped by coronation, bank holidays and Eurovision
Liverpool is likely to receive a £40m boost as tens of thousands of Eurovision fans descend on the city to celebrate the annual song contest next week.
Liverpool, which saw off Glasgow to be chosen as host after last year’s winners, Ukraine, were unable to hold the event amid Russia’s invasion, is expecting an influx of visitors.
Continue reading...Ukraine intercepts 15 out of 18 missiles as Moscow launches strikes apparently designed to hamper Kyiv’s plans for a counteroffensive
Russian missiles have struck warehouses reportedly storing ammunition at a railway depot in the Ukrainian city of Pavlohrad, in an apparent effort to slow Kyiv’s preparations for its much anticipated counteroffensive expected to start shortly.
Video posted on social media showed secondary detonations amid a significant blaze at the site of the strike, which came amid overnight missile launches against a number of Ukrainian cities by Russian strategic bombers.
Continue reading...Project hopes Beatles classic will ‘unite the world’ and show victims of the conflict that they’ll never walk alone
An ambitious campaign to create the world’s biggest sing-along as an expression of solidarity with Ukraine during the Eurovision song contest is gaining momentum.
The #HelpUkraineSong project is aiming to “unite the world through music” by getting as many people as possible to sing the Beatles’ With a Little Help from My Friends at noon on Saturday 13 May.
Continue reading...With one of the lowest fertility rates in the EU and fewer women to have children, classrooms are emptying and the future of communities is in doubt
For centuries, the infant school in Champorcher, in the Aosta Valley, has been an integral component of the community, with the sound of children’s voices in the playground providing a beacon of hope for the mountain village’s survival.
In September last year, however, the school fell eerily silent. It was forced to close after just two pupils enrolled.
Continue reading...Two injured by rocket attacks in Kherson after heavy shelling and homes hit by anti-aircraft missiles in Kharkiv
Shelling through the night in the city of Kherson has injured two people, deputy head of Kherson Oblast Council Yuriy Sobolevsky said this morning.
More than 27 attacks were reported on residential areas of the wider Kherson region on Saturday, according to its authorities, with some 135 shells fired.
Continue reading...A strike that killed 23 people far from any frontlines has forced residents to understand that one could come anywhere
Huddled under a blanket, Iryna Babii turned away from the empty space where, until Friday, nine floors of apartments had been stacked, one of them home to her daughter’s best friend.
The apartments were obliterated when a Russian missile crashed into this residential block, which sits beside a school in a neighbourhood just near the botanical gardens of Uman, a central Ukrainian city that before the war was known mostly as a Jewish pilgrimage site.
Continue reading...Sixty of the keystone species released near Bordeaux to feast on waste from wild cattle and help restore a vital habitat on the Atlantic coast
In a forest clearing filled with cowpats, French history is being made: the country’s first translocation of dung beetles in a nature reserve near Bordeaux.
With the same pomp and ceremony afforded to the release of an Iberian lynx or a European bison, about 60 “ball rolling” insects were brought to the marshy forests of Étang de Cousseau in south-west France on Wednesday to restore a vital ecosystem function on the Atlantic coast.
Continue reading...With concern among allies seemingly growing, there is a lot riding on an imminent counter-assault on the Russians in the south
The last time “Luh” served in the military, he was a Soviet conscript, sailing the Arctic Ocean with the USSR’s northern fleet over four decades ago.
When Russia seized the Crimean peninsula and Russian-backed proxies moved into his home region of Luhansk nearly a decade ago, he cheered on the Ukrainian army but thought his fighting days were behind him.
Continue reading...The country has recorded its hottest, driest April yet. For people working outdoors, it’s no joke
There are many better places to be in Spain than Madrid when recordbreaking temperatures bring summer’s ruthless heat in spring, prompting government health warnings, action plans from regional authorities and the familiar agonising wait for outdoor public pools to open.
There are also many better places to be in Madrid when the mercury nudges 30C (86F) than under a woolly hat inside a furry Sonic the Hedgehog costume in the elegant, shadeless air fryer that is the Spanish capital’s Plaza Mayor.
Continue reading...Crimea navy oil depot fire extinguished after reported Ukrainian drone strike on fuel tanks; Nancy Pelosi speaks about her ‘dangerous’ Kyiv visit
Continue reading...Investigation reveals that at least 440 people appear to have been abandoned in the weeks before the worst Channel disaster in 30 years
• Read more: ‘Horror beyond words’: how Channel distress calls were ‘ignored’
Hundreds of vulnerable migrants were abandoned to their fates after the UK coastguard “effectively ignored” reports of small boats in distress during the days leading up to the worst Channel disaster in 30 years when at least 27 people died, an Observer investigation suggests.
Around 440 people appear to have been left adrift after the coastguard sent no rescue vessels to 19 reported boats carrying migrants in UK waters, according to an analysis of internal records and marine data seen by the Observer and Liberty Investigates.
Experts said the failure to act appears to breach international law.
Continue reading...Investigation reveals that understaffed Dover control room was overwhelmed by calls from people in trouble before 27 died at sea
• Read more: UK coastguard ‘left Channel migrants adrift’
On the afternoon of 3 November 2021, a woman called Hampshire police. Her brother was crossing the Channel in a small boat that day, she said via a translator. But something awful had just happened. Twenty minutes earlier he’d texted to say that smugglers had begun shoving passengers overboard. “Loads had been kicked off and were in the water”, fighting for their lives in the treacherous currents of the world’s busiest shipping lane.
Police passed the details to HM Coastguard and at 4.57pm an operator flagged the incident, according to internal logs obtained by the Observer and Liberty Investigates.
Continue reading...Moscow-installed governor in Sevastopol says blaze, attributed to Ukrainian drone strike, now under control
Ukraine’s president said on Friday that he had asked his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping to help bring back Ukrainian children deported by Russia.
In his evening address, AFP reports that Volodymyr Zelenskiy as saying:
We need to involve everyone ... to put pressure on the Russian aggressor and the terrorists who kidnapped so many of our children.
The UN, many others want to do something, but so far the results have been poor. So I have appealed to the leader of China.
Now, with regard to the need in general for shells at the front, what we want. Today we are coming to the point where Wagner is ending.
Wagner, in a short period of time, will cease to exist. We will become history, nothing to worry about, things like this happen.
Continue reading...Campaigners commemorate mammal who drew large crowds in Norwegian capital last summer before being put down
A bronze sculpture has been unveiled in Norway of the walrus nicknamed Freya, who gained global attention last summer after basking in the Oslo fjord until officials euthanised her.
The lifesize sculpture depicts Freya lying on her side on the rocky shore of Oslo’s Kongen marina, not far from where the real 600kg mammal last summer drew large crowds as she chased ducks and swans, and rested on boats that struggled to support her bulk.
Continue reading...Column of smoke seen rising from burning fuel tanks in port city of Sevastopol
A huge fire was burning in the Crimean port city of Sevastopol on Saturday after what was reported to be a Ukrainian drone strike on fuel tanks at a Russian navy depot.
Video footage posted on social media showed a large waterside area on fire, with a column of black smoke rising from the burning fuel. Other images showed a huge pall of smoke hanging over the area.
Continue reading...Experts say it is vital to check you meet EU requirements, or you could risk losing your holiday
Travellers who have not used their passport for a while were this week being urged to dig it out and check it conforms to the post-Brexit rules for entering the EU – because if it doesn’t, you will almost certainly be denied boarding this summer.
Despite previous warnings in Guardian Money and some other publicity, UK travellers trying to enter the Schengen zone are being turned away on a daily basis by airline staff at boarding gates – in most cases because their UK passport was issued more than 10 years ago.
Continue reading...Chair says small changes could make big difference to cultural and educational interests on both sides of Channel
An influential House of Lords committee is urging the government to start working with EU capitals to remove Brexit barriers that block musicians, young people and professionals working easily in Europe.
After six months of research and evidence from 40 witnesses the European affairs committee says it has identified 72 areas where small changes could make a huge difference in areas of cultural and educational interests on both sides of the Channel.
Continue reading...Five children among dead as toll from Russian missile attacks across Ukraine rises to 26; five EU countries agree on Ukrainian grain transit deal
Continue reading...Record heat in southern Europe and chilly start to British growing season spell more misery for shoppers
Shoppers have been warned they face more fruit and vegetable shortages, as temperatures in southern Spain soar to unprecedented levels while the UK growing season gets off to a late start because of cold, overcast weather.
Temperatures were expected to reach a new April record of 39C (102F) in parts of Andalucía on Friday amid a long-lasting drought that has affected the production of vegetables in Spain. Córdoba reached a record 38.8C on Thursday.
Continue reading...Nation’s guidelines say no donor should father more than 25 children in 12 families
Dutch judges have ordered a man suspected of fathering more than 550 children through sperm donations to stop donating, in the latest fertility scandal to shock the Netherlands.
The man, identified in Dutch media only as Jonathan M, 41, was taken to court by a foundation protecting the rights of donor children and by the mother of one of the children allegedly fathered from his sperm.
Continue reading...