Tag: madrid

  • Global tourism won’t return to pre-covid levels until 2024

    Global tourism won’t return to pre-covid levels until 2024

    With the highly contagious Omicron variant in the picture, global tourism arrivals have further been affected, and will not return to the pre-pandemic levels until 2024, the World Tourism Organization (WTO) said on Tuesday.

    The highly contagious Omicron variant, though mild, will “disrupt recovery” for 2022. Last year in 2021, tourism saw a four percent growth over 2020, according to the Madrid-based UN agency’s World Tourism Barometer.

    Meanwhile, tourism revenue in 2020 was 72 percent lower than that in 2019.

    “The pace of recovery remains slow and uneven across world regions due to varying degrees of mobility restrictions, vaccination rates and traveller confidence,” the UNWTO said in a press release.

    In Europe and the Americas, foreign visitor arrivals increased by 19 percent and 17 percent in 2021, respectively, when compared to 2020.

    In the Middle East, however, arrivals declined by 24 percent in 2021, while in the Asia-Pacific region, they were 65 percent below the 2020 levels, and 94 percent lower than pre-pandemic levels.

    The statement said tourism professionals “see better prospects” for this year after turbulence in the early months because of the Omicron wave.

    Many countries are highly dependent on tourism and are eagerly awaiting a return to normal.

    “The economic contribution of tourism in 2021 (measured in tourism direct gross domestic product) is estimated at $1.9 trillion (1.68 trillion euros), above the $1.6 trillion in 2020, but still well below the pre-pandemic value of $3.5 trillion,” the statement noted.

  • Spanish man jailed for 15 years for ‘killing, eating’ mother

    Spanish man jailed for 15 years for ‘killing, eating’ mother

    A Spanish court on Tuesday sentenced a man to 15 years and five months in jail after finding him guilty of strangling his mother and then eating her.

    The court jailed him for 15 years for murder and five months for desecration of a corpse after he sliced up his mother’s body and ate “her corpse over at least 15 days”, giving some to his dog.

    As per reports, the suspect killed his mother in early 2019 during a clash between the suspect and his 69-year-old mother at the flat that they shared together in Ventas, according to the indictment. 

    He strangled his mother then dragged her into her bedroom where he used a saw and two kitchen knives to cut her up “in order to get rid of the body.”

    “He began eating the remains over the course of about 15 days, storing other parts in various plastic containers around the house and in the fridge,” it said.

    He also put some of the leftovers into plastic bags and threw them into the bin.

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    In testimony, a police officer said the suspect confessed to having eaten some of the remains raw, while others parts he had cooked or fed to the dog.

    The suspect was arrested on February 23, 2019 after police received a complaint by a friend of the mother that she was missing.

    The court also ordered the man to pay 60,000 euros in compensation to his older brother.