Barcelona are celebrating their first Spanish league title since Lionel Messi left the football club two years ago amid the club’s financial struggles.

The Spanish club registered a 4-2 victory over Espanyol on Sunday in a match marred by Espanyol fans storming the pitch at the end of the game and forcing Barcelona players to head for their dressing room.

Robert Lewandowski scored twice to lead the Catalan club to its first league title since 2019. The title was secured with four rounds remaining.

The last time Barcelona celebrated a league title without Messi in its squad was back in 1998-99. He came into the first team in 2004-05 and won the title that season.

Celebrations on the field were short-lived as players had to rush to the dressing room after a large group of Espanyol fans from the ultra section behind one of the goals started running towards Barcelona players singing and celebrating in the centre.

Security guards quickly intervened but riot police had to stand in front of the tunnel’s entrance to prevent the fans from going in. The supporters threw chairs and other objects.

Alejandro Balde and Jules Koundé also scored for Barcelona, who now have 27 league titles, eight fewer than Real Madrid. Third-place Atletico Madrid are 16 points behind after losing 1-0 at last-place Elche earlier in the day.

‘Magnificent feeling’

The victory over city rivals Espanyol gave Barcelona an insurmountable 85 points from 34 matches, 14 points more than Madrid, which won 1-0 at Getafe on Saturday.

Barcelona have led since the 13th round and have the league’s best defence with 13 goals conceded – 14 better than any other club. They also have 25 clean sheets.

“It’s a magnificent feeling, a feeling of job well done,” Barcelona coach Xavi said. “This is important to give the club’s project some stability. The league title shows that things have been done the right way and that we have to stay on this path.”

Xavi + Barcelona = ???? pic.twitter.com/cEOHOOtAfc

— FIFA World Cup (@FIFAWorldCup) May 14, 2023

Barcelona won eight league titles in 11 seasons through 2019. They finished second to Madrid in 2020, then third – behind Madrid and champions Atletico – in 2021. They were second to Madrid last season.

Barcelona’s first title without Messi came in the Spanish Super Cup in January.

The club were yet to win a major trophy since President Joan Laporta took action to restructure their debt and revamp the squad with players like Lewandowski, Jules Koundé and Raphinha. Laporta celebrated with the players in the dressing room.

Lewandowski opened the scoring on Sunday from close range in the 11th minute after a cross by Alejandro Balde. The 19-year-old left back added to the lead nine minutes later off a pass by Pedri, scoring his first league goal with the club.

Lewandowski, the league’s leading scorer with 21 goals, added his second in the 40th after a low cross by Raphinha in a breakaway. Koundé scored the fourth in the 53rd with a header after a long pass by Frenkie de Jong. It was also his first league goal with the club.

The title is ours. pic.twitter.com/Ft4kUBhlMW

— FC Barcelona (@FCBarcelona) May 15, 2023

Busquets’s sweet goodbye

The win will be an emotional occasion for captain Sergio Busquets, who last week announced that he will be leaving Barca after 15 years at the end of the season.

It was the midfielder’s ninth LaLiga title and 32nd overall with the club, with his trophy cabinet also including three Champions Leagues, seven Copa del Rey and three FIFA Club World Cups, as well as his 2010 World Cup and 2012 European Championship success with Spain.

“I’m delighted, I think we had a spectacular campaign and clinched it today with a great win,” Busquets told Movistar Plus.

“We are a solid team, a well-oiled squad with an outstanding defence and that’s how champions are built.

“I’m proud of what we did the entire season, being solid and regular, winning the games we should and not dropping points. It was a remarkable season and I’m so happy to end my history here this way.”

Update Complete. pic.twitter.com/G2l1A8mVPr

— FC Barcelona (@FCBarcelona) May 14, 2023

Espanyol’s survival hopes dashed

The loss dealt a big blow to Espanyol in their fight against relegation. They stayed second-to-last, four points from safety.

Espanyol had won only once in their last 10 league matches, with a draw and eight losses. They were relegated in 2020 for the first time in nearly three decades, returning to the top flight in their first attempt as second-division champions.

Javi Puado scored Espanyol’s first goal in the 73rd and Joselu added the second in stoppage time as Barcelona players were getting ready to celebrate.

Ukraine hails the advance of troops in Bakhmut as Zelenskyy meets European leaders to drum up more military support.

Swedish singer Loreen has won the Eurovision Song Contest with her power ballad “Tattoo” at a colourful, eclectic music competition clouded for a second year running by the war in Ukraine.

The diva from Stockholm beat acts from 25 other countries on Saturday night to take the continent’s pop crown at the competition in the United Kingdom’s Liverpool.

Finnish singer Käärijä was second in a close-fought battle of the Nordic neighbours.

Loreen scored 583 points after the public and jury votes were combined, narrowly beating Käärijä who scored 526.

Loreen previously won Eurovision in 2012 and is only the second performer to take the prize twice, after Ireland’s Johnny Logan in the 1980s. The win also ties Sweden with Ireland as the nation with the most wins, with seven apiece.

The UK hosted the Eurovision this year on behalf of Ukraine, which won last year but could not take up its right to hold the contest because of Russia’s invasion and ongoing war.

As the Eurovision was under way, Russian missiles hit the western Ukrainian city of Ternopil, which is home to the electro-pop duo Tvorchi, this year’s contestants at the song contest from Ukraine. Local authorities, writing on Telegram, said the attack had hit warehouses owned by commercial enterprises and a religious organisation, injuring two people.

Tvorchi said this week they hoped to shine a spotlight on their country’s fight for freedom.

Ukraine’s Kalush Orchestra rode a huge wave of support from across Europe to win the contest last year.

Under the slogan “united by music”, the song contest this year fused the soul of Liverpool — the English port city that birthed The Beatles – with the spirit of war-battered Ukraine.

The sights and sounds of Ukraine ran through the show, starting with an opening film that showed the 2022 winners Kalush Orchestra singing and dancing in the Kyiv subway, with the tune picked up by musicians in the UK – including Kate, Princess of Wales, shown playing the piano.

The folk-rap band itself then emerged onstage in the Liverpool Arena on a giant pair of outstretched hands, accompanied by massed drummers.

Liverpool had embraced Eurovision, and Ukraine, with businesses across the city flying Ukrainian flags and a programme of cultural events introducing locals to the art, music and food of the Eastern European country.

But organisers said they turned down a request by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to make a video address to the song contest citing the show’s non-political nature.

Founded in 1956, Eurovision is a European cultural institution that has produced breakout stars — ABBA and Celine Dion are both past winners — alongside performers whose careers sank without a trace.

Contestants from the 26 finalist nations entered the arena on Saturday in an Olympics-style flag parade, accompanied by live performances from Ukrainian acts, including Go A, Jamala, Tina Karol and Verka Serduchka, all past Eurovision competitors.

Now in its 67th year, Eurovision bills itself as the world’s biggest music contest, an Olympiad of party-friendly pop. Competitors each have three minutes to meld catchy tunes and eye-popping spectacles into performances capable of winning the hearts of millions of viewers.

Loreen had been the bookies’ favourite and won by far the most votes from professional juries in Eurovision’s complex voting system.

About 6,000 fans watched the show inside the arena, and tens of thousands more at a Liverpool fan zone and at big-screen events across the UK.

The global television audience has been estimated at 160 million.

Here is the situation as it stands on Thursday, May 11, 2023:

Conflict

• A plan by Russian forces to relocate more than 3,000 workers from the town that serves the occupied Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant, will result in a “catastrophic lack” of personnel, Ukraine’s state-owned Energoatom company warns.
• Russian troops shelled Vovchansk city in the Kharkiv region, killing one person and injuring three people.
• Two armed drones attempted to attack a military facility in Russia’s Voronezh region but failed, the Russian regional governor said.
• Two Russian soldiers from Kamchatka in Russia’s Far East were sentenced to two-and-a-half years each in prison for refusing to fight in Ukraine, human rights group OVD-Info said.
• Russian Wagner mercenary force boss Yevgeny Prigozhin continued to complain that his fighters were not receiving enough shells from Russia’s defence ministry.
• The war in Ukraine will increasingly be a battle between large numbers of poorly trained Russian troops with outdated equipment and a smaller Ukrainian force with better Western weapons and training, said Admiral Rob Bauer, the chair of NATO’s military committee.
• Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba told the German daily newspaper Bild that the international community should not think of Kyiv’s much-anticipated counteroffensive against Russia as being the last such offensive.
• Tributes poured in for Agence France-Presse journalist Arman Soldin, who was killed by Russian rocket fire near Chasiv Yar in eastern Ukraine. The 32-year-old is the 15th reporter killed in the Ukraine war so far.

“Hoping for the best but expecting the worst Are you gonna drop the bomb or not?
Let us die young or let us live forever
We don’t have the power but we never say never Sitting in a sandpit, life is a short trip”@ArmanSoldin on his first trip to Donbass, April 2022 pic.twitter.com/sEEFeAym7i

— Daphné Rousseau (@daphnerousseau) May 10, 2023

Diplomacy

• Turkey’s foreign minister said he thought the Ukraine Black Sea grain deal could be extended for at least two more months.
• European Union states held an initial discussion about proposed new sanctions that would target Chinese and Iranian firms linked to Russia’s war in Ukraine and would allow export curbs on third countries for ignoring trade restrictions on Moscow.
• China’s Director-General for European Affairs Wang Lutong tweeted: “While China is making every effort to promote peace which is in Europe’s interest, Europe gives a stab in the back in return, bullying China on economic issues. Can’t understand what Europe is up to.”
• Russia’s foreign ministry says Poland will receive “a strong protest with an appropriate response” for not preventing demonstrations that sought to disrupt the Russian embassy’s Victory Day commemorations in Warsaw this week.
• The Kremlin said Poland’s decision to rename the Russian city of Kaliningrad in its official documents was a “hostile act”. Poland said Kaliningrad would now officially be called Konigsberg (“Krolewiec” in Polish).
• Poland summoned the Russian ambassador after a Polish border patrol aircraft “narrowly avoided a collision” with a Russian fighter jet over the Black Sea.

The Russian Ministry of Defence has said that Ukrainian aircraft struck two industrial sites in the Russian-held city of Luhansk in eastern Ukraine with Storm Shadow long-range cruise missiles supplied by the United Kingdom.

The UK on Thursday became the first country to say it had started supplying Kyiv with long-range cruise missiles, which will allow it to hit Russian troops and supply dumps far behind the front lines as it prepares a major counteroffensive.

British Defence Minister Ben Wallace said the missiles could be used within Ukrainian territory, implying that he had received assurances from Kyiv that they would not be used to attack targets inside Russia’s internationally accepted borders.

On Saturday, the Russian ministry said the missiles had hit a plant producing polymers and a meat-processing factory in Luhansk on Friday.

“Storm Shadow air-to-air missiles supplied to the Kyiv regime by Britain were used for the strike, contrary to London’s statements that these weapons would not be used against civilian targets,” the ministry said.

It also said Russia had downed two Ukrainian warplanes – an Su-24 and a MiG-29 – that had launched the missiles.

In its latest bulletin, the ministry also said Russian forces had gained control over another block in the eastern city of Bakhmut, which Moscow has been trying to capture for more than 10 months in an attritional artillery battle.

“The units of the Airborne Forces provided support to the assault units and pinned down the enemy on the flanks,” it said.

The ministry often uses the term “assault units” to denote the Wagner private militia, which has been spearheading the assault on Bakhmut at great cost in casualties.

EU calls for long-range weapons for Ukraine

Meanwhile, EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell called on Saturday for European nations to provide long-range weapons for Ukraine to help it counter Russian attacks, while accelerating arms deliveries overall.

“The Russians are bombing from far away so the Ukrainians have to have the capacity to reach … the same distance, the same range,” Borrell said after a meeting with Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba in Stockholm.

“But we have to speed up,” he said, as Germany announced a new weapons package for Ukraine worth 2.7 billion euros ($2.95bn), including tanks, armoured vehicles and air-defence systems.

“I welcome the German effort and invite all member states to follow this example,” Borrell said.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has been urging Western allies to provide more advanced weapons in advance of a widely expected counter-offensive against Russian troops in eastern Ukraine.

Zelenskyy is also seeking to accelerate the process for formal talks on EU membership for Ukraine in the wake of Russia’s invasion, launched in February 2022.

The Bank of England has raised interest rates to their highest level since late 2008 as it continues to combat stubbornly high inflation in the United Kingdom.

The decision on Thursday by the bank’s nine-member Monetary Policy Committee to lift its main interest rate by a quarter of a percentage point to 4.5 percent was widely anticipated in financial markets.

The increase was its 12th in a row. Just two members of the bank’s nine-member panel voted to keep interest rates unchanged.

Bank of England Governor Andrew Bailey told reporters in London after the rate changed: “The rise in bank rates since December 2021 will weigh more on the economy in the coming quarters and the [Monetary Policy Committee] factors this into its policy decisions.”

Like other central banks around the world, the Bank of England has sought to keep a lid on inflation, which over the past year has been fuelled by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

That sent energy prices soaring, a development that then led to price increases across a wide array of goods and services.

The Bank of England started raising interest rates in late 2021 from a low of 0.1 percent in order to keep a lid on price rises that were first largely stoked by bottlenecks resulting from the lifting of coronavirus lockdown restrictions and subsequently by the war in Ukraine.

Tasked with keeping inflation at about 2 percent, the bank said inflation would likely fall to about 5 percent by the end of this year.

But it warned there were “considerable uncertainties” over when inflation would return to its target, citing “significant” upside risks.

“If there were to be evidence of more persistent pressures, then further tightening in monetary policy would be required,” the bank said.

Inflation currently stands at just over 10 percent. In documents accompanying its decision, the bank said food prices have stayed higher for longer than expected. As a result, it said, consumer price inflation is expected to decline less rapidly than previously thought.

The interest rate hike will pile more pressure on borrowers, particularly those who have mortgages that track the bank’s headline rate.

Many homeowners will be cushioned from the recent increases because they fixed their mortgages when interest rates were ultra-low during the coronavirus pandemic.

However, those whose fixed-rate terms expire over the coming months will face much higher borrowing rates when they look to lock in new deals.

South African President Cyril Ramaphosa has said an investigation is under way after the United States ambassador in Pretoria accused the country of having provided arms to Moscow despite its stated neutrality on Russia’s war in Ukraine.

The government is opening an independent inquiry led by a retired judge into the allegation, Ramaphosa’s office said in a statement on Thursday.

Earlier, the US ambassador to South Africa, Reuben Brigety, told local journalists in a briefing that Washington was confident a Russian vessel had uploaded weapons and ammunition from South Africa in December.

“Amongst the things we noted were the docking of the Russian cargo ship Lady R in Simon’s Town between December 6 and December 8, 2022, which we are confident uploaded weapons, ammunitions … as it made its way back to Russia,” Brigety said in a briefing to local journalists, as cited by the Reuters news agency.

“Arming of Russia by South Africa with the vessel … is fundamentally unacceptable,” Brigety said, adding that senior US officials had “profound concerns” about South Africa not respecting its professed policy of non-alignment and neutrality with regard to Russia’s war.

This “does not suggest to us the actions of a non-aligned country”, he said.

Washington has repeatedly warned countries against providing material support to Russia, cautioning that those who do may be denied access to the world’s most important markets.

Brigety made the remarks to journalists following his return to Pretoria after accompanying a high-level South African delegation to the US to address concerns about South Africa’s relationship with Russia.

South Africa conducted joint naval exercises with Russia and China in February – calling it routine – which the US and other Western powers expressed concern about at the time.

Brigety said on Thursday that the naval drills and other issues, in addition to the arms shipment, had contributed to concerns about South Africa’s allegiance.

South Africa is one of Russia’s most important allies on a continent divided over Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine, but it has maintained it is impartial on the conflict and abstained from voting on United Nations resolutions on the war.