Latest news with #Eurovision2025
NDTV
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- NDTV
Eurovision 2025: Why Host City Basel, Switzerland Is The Heart Of European Culture
Basel was in the international spotlight for a week of festivities surrounding the Eurovision Song Contest but the Swiss city has been at the heart of European culture for centuries. With a population of 180,000, Switzerland's third-biggest city after Zurich and Geneva straddles the River Rhine and sits right on the northern border with both France and Germany. Basel's location played a major role in its growth and continental importance through the ages. From May 11 to 17, it was centre-stage in Europe again for hosting Eurovision 2025, the pop music extravaganza that has become one of the world's biggest annual live television events and a giant international party. The influence of the Rhine can be felt in Basel's historic centre, dominated by the twin towers of Basel Minster, where the Dutch thinker Erasmus is buried. But Basel's modern emblems are the two Roche Towers, Switzerland's tallest buildings. Completed in the last decade, standing 205 metres and 178 metres (673 and 584 feet) high, they are the headquarters of the eponymous giant pharmaceutical firm. The chemical and pharmaceutical industries now drive the city's economy. Basel is one of Europe's great centres of culture. The first edition of Sebastian Brant's "Ship of Fools", one of the bestsellers of the European Renaissance, was printed in the city. The Rhine spirit is vividly expressed every spring at the three-day Basel Carnival, which transforms the city streets into a river of painted lanterns, colourful masks and creative costumes, flowing to the sound of pipes and drums. The world's biggest Protestant carnival features on UNESCO's intangible cultural heritage list and attracts thousands of tourists. The city has world-renowned museums -- none more so than the Kunstmuseum, the oldest public art collection in the world dating back to 1661. In a referendum in 1967, citizens decided to buy two paintings by Pablo Picasso, who, moved by the vote, would later donate several more works to the city. Across the Rhine, the Museum Tinguely draws in thousands of visitors with its kinetic art sculptures, while just outside the city, the Beyeler Foundation hosts an outstanding collection of modern and contemporary artworks. And every year, art lovers and gallery owners from around the world flock to Art Basel, one of the world's top contemporary art fairs. In sports, Basel is home to tennis all-time great Roger Federer, while FC Basel are on the verge of winning their 21st Swiss football championship. Besides its culture, Basel is now synonymous with the chemical and pharmaceutical industries, home to globally important groups such as Roche, Novartis, Sandoz and Syngenta. The psychedelic drug LSD was created at the Sandoz laboratories there in 1938. Pharma and chemicals make Basel a major player in the Swiss economy, attracting researchers and students as well as cross-border workers. Around 35,000 people cross over from France and Germany, attracted by higher Swiss wages. Basel is the home of the Bank for International Settlements, considered the central bank of central banks. The city is left-leaning, perhaps due to the influence of its university, the oldest in Switzerland, founded in 1460. It has approximately 13,000 students from 100 countries, around a quarter of whom are studying for their doctorates. The city has also lived through major disasters: the great earthquake of 1356 and the Sandoz chemical spill 630 years later. The biggest quake in central Europe in recorded history, and the fires it caused, destroyed a city already ravaged by the Black Death. The 1986 fire at the Sandoz chemical plant on the outskirts of Basel also left its mark due to the ecological disaster caused by toxic chemicals leaking into the Rhine, killing wildlife as far downstream as the Netherlands.
Forbes
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- Forbes
Eurovision Star Survived Israel's Top Tourist Site, The Nova Festival
Israeli singer Yuval Raphael representing Israel with the song "New Day Will Rise" performs during ... More the second semi-final of the Eurovision Song Contest 2025 in Basel on May 15, 2025. Raphael is a survivor of the Nova Festival massacre on October 7, 2023. (Photo by FABRICE COFFRINI/AFP via Getty Images) Israel has dozens of important tourist attractions. They range from the Christian, Jewish and Muslim sites in Jerusalem to the beach at Eilat, the restaurants and shorefront of Tel Aviv to floating on the Dead Sea or visiting the mystical sites of Safed. Pilgrims can visit the River Jordan or the room where the Last Supper is said to have taken place. But the most visited tourist destination is none of these places. The Nova Festival site, where more than 360 mostly young people were murdered at a music festival on October 7, 2023, is the most visited destination in Israel right now. Most visitors are Israeli, but an increasing number of international travelers are coming as well. The KKL – JNF (Keren Kayemet LeIsrael - Jewish National Fund)Israeli National Parks office, operates the park in southern Israel where the festival took place. Dr. Michael Sprintsin, KKL-JNF's Forest Engineer of the Western Negev, told me the Nova Festival site gets between 4000 and 7000 visitors per day. A survivor of the festival, Yuval Raphael, represented Israel in the popular Eurovision Song contest in May 2023. She ended up finishing second with her powerful performance of a 'New Day Will Rise.' Raphael, 24, survived the Nova Festival by hiding under the dead bodies of friends, in a shelter attacked by gunmen. Memorials made by family and friends to individuals who lost their lives at the Nova Music Festival ... More in Israel on October 7, 2023. The National Park where the festival took place has become the most visited tourist site in Israel. Raphael will be one of the featured performers in a benefit concert in Tel Aviv on June 26. The show will benefit the Nova Tribe Community Association, which helps commemorate the victims, support bereaved families, and aid survivors. The Nova Festival was an electronic music and dance outdoor party held in an Israeli national park a few miles from the Gaza Strip. On October 7, 2023, the party was overrun by terrorists who brutally killed 364 partygoers and abducted another 40 to Gaza. Both of these numbers made up a significant portion of the 1200 people killed and 251 kidnapped on October 7. Tragically, several of the more than 50 hostages still being held in Gaza, alive and dead, were attendees or working at the Nova Festival. The site is an hour and a half south of Tel Aviv, along roads also attacked on October 7. At the Nova site, there are newly paved roads, benches and toilets, but no food or gift shops. To reach the Nova site, located at the Re'im Car Parking Lot near Kibbutz Re'im and the Re'im Forest, visitors can join one of the organized tour groups available online. Prices range from approximately $140 for a group tour to around $800 for a private tour. Alternatively, it is possible to rent a car. There is no ticketing or admission charge. We visited on April 30, Israel's Memorial Day, which honors its dead and the victims of terrorism. Every year, everything stops at 1100 when sirens blare all over the country. When the siren blew, we got out of our car and stood at attention. We happened to be at a concrete bus shelter where two people were murdered on October 7. A guitarist plays and sings a song by Yehuda Becher, a concert-goer at the Nova Music Festival in ... More Israel, who lost his life on October 7, 2023. At the site, grieving friends and families have set up impromptu memorials, with brief portraits of the dead written in both Hebrew and English. There are signs with photos, written memories and favorite possessions. Posters on signposts show so many young faces, seemingly so alive. There are some larger group memorials as well. I watched a guitarist play a song written by one of the dead, as a small crowd listened. With this tragic background, why is Nova a tourist site full of cars and buses in its dusty parking lot? It is a folk memorial, different than Israel's other monuments to its dead, like the black monument to those from Jerusalem killed in the war that began October 7, or the desert fortress of Masada where a handful of Jews held off a Roman legion until their deaths. Rusting armored vehicles in the Golan Heights memorialize the greatest tank battle since World War II, where at great cost a hundred Israeli tanks held off 800 attacking Syrian vehicles in 1973. Instead, family and friends have made the Nova site a shrine to beautiful young people who just wanted to dance. There is a stark empty stage where the performers played. There are scores of signs with pictures of smiling young men and women, with tattoos, with dogs, with birds, long hair and short, in bathing suits, in army uniforms, holding guitars. You feel you know them or people just like them. As an international visitor, I did not know any of the victims. But the colorful people smiling confidently at me from the signs and the posters could have been my children. For many other visitors, they could have been their brothers and sisters, their cousins or friends. Later, we talked to a waitress at a beautiful restaurant near the Dizengoff fountain in Tel Aviv. She told us she lost eight friends at Nova. Nova Millions of people have visited Europe's concentration camps like Auschwitz, Dachau and Buchenwald. But few Holocaust survivors remain to describe what happened. At Nova, the survivors are young people still in their twenties, perhaps with a lifetime of trauma ahead of them. Already, more than 50 concertgoers are believed to have committed suicide. At the site, I listened to a woman speaking in English to a group of foreign visitors. It quickly became clear she was talking about her own experience at the Nova Festival, when she and others hid in a trailer, listening to the shooting and the screams. Her husband was shot but survived. The site has some grim reminders. A steel dumpster, with a glass floor containing some garbage from October 7, was where a dozen people hid, only to be discovered and murdered. Signs commemorate a group of young people who sought shelter in a disabled ambulance, only to be killed by a terrorist anti-tank missile. A number of survivors of the Nova Music Festival are telling their stories now. Rita Yadid endured the horrific event alongside her husband and sister. As part of her healing journey, she speaks to groups and shares her story of survival, partly made possible by the bravery of her husband, Guy, who took bullets meant for her. The concert stage at the Nova Festival site in southern Israel. On October 7, 2023, the concert was ... More the site of a terrorist attack that killed over 360 people. Rita has since become a leading voice in the struggle for recognition and support for survivors. Visitors to Israel can set up a discussion or tour of Nova sites with Rita here. A number of films such as 'We Will Dance Again' have been made about the Festival and its survivors. The Nova Festival exhibit, a traveling show that shows the tents, the sleeping bags, the phones and the burnt cars of the murdered, has played in New York, Los Angeles, Miami and currently in Toronto. But nothing has the same impact as wandering among the memorials for these smiling, confident young people, who seem so alive. The site, with its blowing wind and trees growing in the desert, is beautiful and terrible. The beauty, and the rawness, is compelling. Eden Yerushalmi, 24, was working as a bartender when she was kidnapped from the Nova Festival on ... More October 7, 2023. She was murdered in a tunnel along with 5 other hostages on August 28 or 29th, 2024 after 11 months of captivity.
Glasgow Times
23-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Glasgow Times
The Royston Club to come to Glasgow after TRNSMT performance
The Royston Club, famous for songs like Mrs Narcissistic and 52, are coming to the Barrowland Ballroom on Saturday, October 25. READ NEXT: Popular Irish band announce huge Glasgow show The gig will follow their performance on the main stage of the Glasgow Green festival on Friday, July 11. The festival will run from Friday to Sunday, July 13. READ NEXT: Eurovision 2025 star announces show in Glasgow Having formed in Wrexham, the band consists of schoolfriends Ben Matthias (Guitar), Tom Faithfull (lead vocals, guitar) and Dave Tute (Bass), later adding Sam Jones (drums). Tickets for the Glasgow show go live on May 29 at 10am. To purchase tickets, visit
Glasgow Times
23-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Glasgow Times
Irish band Kingfishr announce Barrowland show in Glasgow
Kingfishr, known for songs like Eyes Don't Lie and Shot In The Dark, will be performing at the Barrowland Ballroom in the East End of the city. The gig will take place on Monday, November 24. READ NEXT: Here's why this star loves bringing 'UK's longest-running theatre show' to Glasgow The band formed in Limerick in 2022. They currently have over one million monthly listeners on Spotify. To grab tickets for the group's show, click HERE READ NEXT: Eurovision 2025 star announces show in Glasgow General sale will go live on May 30 at 10am. Pre-sale tickets will go live at 10am on May 29.
Yahoo
22-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Eurovision Song Contest Winner JJ Wants Israel Banned From 2026 Competition
The winner of the 2025 Eurovision Song Contest is speaking out against the war in Gaza and Israel's inclusion in the global music event. JJ, who won the competition May 17, said in an interview published Thursday (May 22) that he would like to see Israel banned from next year's contest. 'It is very disappointing to see Israel still participating in the contest,' the singer told Spanish publication El Pais, according to Reuters. 'I would like the next Eurovision to be held in Vienna and without Israel.' More from Billboard JJ of Austria Wins Eurovision 2025 With 'Wasted Love' SZA Says She's 'Actually So Shocked' by the 'Bullying' Megan Thee Stallion Is Facing in Tory Lanez Shooting Case Karol G Lands First No. 1 on Hot Latin Pop Songs Chart With 'Milagros' Billboard has reached out to Eurovision Song Contest for comment. The global songwriting competition bills itself as 'a non-political event,' with its rules noting that participating broadcasters are expected to take any necessary steps to ensure that their delegations and teams 'safeguard the interests and the integrity of the ESC and to make sure that the ESC shall in no case be politicized and/or instrumentalized and/or otherwise brought into disrepute in any way.' JJ — a classically trained countertenor — won this year's event with his song 'Wasted Love,' which combines opera with techno. The artist born Johannes Pietsch is Austria's first winner since drag queen Conchita Wurst won in 2014. Snagging second place was Yuval Raphael of Israel, who earned the runner-up position with her 'New Day Will Rise' anthem and also won the viewers' votes in the finale. (When jury votes were taken into consideration, they put JJ in the No. 1 spot.) According to the Associated Press, while Raphael had much public support in the form of voting, she faced pro-Palestinian protests that called for Israel's ouster from the competition over the Israel-Hamas war. The current war started on Oct. 7, 2023, when Hamas attacked several locations in Israel, including the Nova Music Festival near Gaza — which Raphael survived — killing about 1,200 people and taking more than 250 hostage. Since then, the Israeli government's military campaign has killed more than 53,000 Palestinians in Gaza, Reuters reports. Raphael coming in second prompted some countries — including Spain, Ireland, Belgium and Iceland — to question the voting, with some requesting an audit, the BBC reported on Wednesday (May 21). Organizers have since said that the votes were independently verified. In his El Pais interview, JJ also said that the vote-counting system needs to change to better improve transparency, Reuters reported. 'It is important to emphasize that the voting operation for the Eurovision Song Contest is the most advanced in the world and each country's result is checked and verified by a huge team of people to exclude any suspicious or irregular voting patterns,' ESC's director Martin Green said in response to the questioning of the vote counts, according to the BBC. 'An independent compliance monitor reviews both jury and public vote data to ensure we have a valid result. … Our voting partner Once has confirmed that a valid vote was recorded in all countries participating in this year's Grand Final and in the Rest of the World.' The Eurovision Song Contest 2026 is set to be held in Vienna, Austria. Best of Billboard Chart Rewind: In 1989, New Kids on the Block Were 'Hangin' Tough' at No. 1 Janet Jackson's Biggest Billboard Hot 100 Hits H.E.R. & Chris Brown 'Come Through' to No. 1 on Adult R&B Airplay Chart
