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The ITB Berlin 2024 kicked off last week seeing professionals and key stakeholders from the travel industry gather in the German capital.
It is considered the world's biggest travel trade show, with 24,000 visitors expected to attend.
Among them was Ahmed Al-Khateeb, Minister of Tourism for Saudi Arabia, who led a delegation that aimed to build awareness of the country's year-round destination offerings to the European market.
It came as Saudi Arabia celebrated reaching 100 million tourists in 2023.
“That's a testimony of how the world would like to come and visit Saudi Arabia and experience the Arabian culture and the Saudi hospitality,” Al-Khateeb told Euronews.
Saudi’s tourism sector has recovered since the pandemic with a 56% growth in international arrivals in 2023 compared to 2019 – the highest in the G20.
This was driven by a 65% increase in international visits, with almost 11 million more inbound visits in 2023 compared to 2022; from 16.6 million in 2022 to 27.4 million in 2023.
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Spain's national parliament approved a controversial amnesty law on Thursday pardoning hundreds of leaders and supporters of the Catalan separatist movement – including those involved in the region’s unsuccessful attempt to declare independence from Spain in 2017.
The bill was proposed by socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez as a way to move past the secession attempt by the then-leaders of Catalonia – a suggestion that angered many Spaniards.
The amnesty bill was approved with a close 178-172 vote in the 350-seat lower house of Parliament in Madrid. The application of the law will be decided by the courts on a case-by-case basis.
The bill's opponents see it as outrageously lenient toward those who provoked one of the country’s biggest crises since the death of General Francisco Franco in 1975.
The Catalan Parliament declared independence on October 27, 2017, after calling for a secession referendum backing the move, but it failed to gather international support. Carles Puigdemont, the architect of the illegal referendum, later fled Spain, as did several other senior Catalan officials.
Hundreds of thousands of people in Catalonia face the threat of prosecutions related to the referendum or protests, and Puigdemont and other leaders remain abroad.
The vote came a day after Catalan President Pere Aragones called a snap election on May 12 following his minority government's failure to pass a budget for the wealthy region in northeast Spain.
Catalan President Pere Aragones addresses the media in front of the Spanish Parliament in Madrid, Spain, Thursday, April 21, 2022.AP Photo/Manu Fernandez, File
“On May 12, Catalan citizens will choose between responsibility or irresponsibility,” Aragones said in a televised address on Wednesday, accusing the parties that opposed his budget proposal as “irresponsible”.
Voters will go called to the polls to elect the autonomous region’s new parliament, with all its 135 seats up for election.
Their decision could have significant consequences for Spain’s national politics, with Sanchez currently relying on Catalan separatist parties to approve laws in the national parliament.
The regional election had to be held before the end of the current legislative year and was initially scheduled for February 2025. The 2017 Catalan regional elections were held in December, while the 2021 ones were held in February.
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Reports have emerged saying six people were killed and at least 83 wounded after Israeli forces opened fire on Palestinians waiting for food in Gaza city.
The attack came a few hours after Israeli forces bombed a United Nations food distribution centre in southern Rafah city, killing at least five people including a member for the United Nations Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA).
UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini said on X that "Since this war began, attacks against UN facilities, convoys and personnel have become commonplace in blatant disregard to international humanitarian law."
Having instructed Gaza residents to evacuate to Rafah for their safety, Israel plans to tell 1.4 million Palestinians currently there to seek shelter in central Gaza ahead of a planned military offensive to the south of the Gaza Strip.
Israel's chief military spokesman, Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari, said that civilians would be directed to "humanitarian islands" where they would receive temporary housing, food, water and other necessities.
Humanitarian groups and numerous governments, including allies of Israel, have warned a military offensive into the densely crowded area would be a catastrophe.
Most of Gaza's 2.3 million people have been forced from their homes, with many driven into sprawling tent camps. A quarter of Gaza’s population is starving, the United Nations has warned. Rafah is Gaza’s main entry point for aid.
More than 31,270 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza, the territory's Health Ministry says. The ministry doesn’t differentiate between civilians and combatants in its count, but says women and children make up two-thirds of the dead.
Efforts to achieve even a pause in the fighting have so far proven futile. The most recent setback came with the breakdown of talks between Hamas and Israel that were intended to secure a truce ahead of the holy month of Ramadan.
In a view from southern Israel, parachutes drop supplies into the northern Gaza Strip. Tsafrir Abayov/Copyright 2024 The AP. All rights reserved.
Meanwhile, Israeli Defence Forces published a video showing a drone strike on a moving vehicle carrying a Hamas official in Lebanon.
The IDF have said that Hamas official Hadi Mustafa was killed in the strike close to the southern Lebanese city of Tyre. One other person was reportedly killed in the strike.
The US and other governments are scrambling to prevent the ongoing war between Israeli and Palestine from spilling over into Lebanon, as Hezbollah militants and the Israeli military trade fire.