As the Paris Olympics draw closer, the hype is increasing – and it’s only going to build from here.
If you are kicking yourself for not bagging tickets when they first went on sale, all is not lost.
There are still ways you can get to Paris to see the Games.
Sky News talks to a travel expert to bring you all you need to know about securing your last-minute trip.
Can I still get tickets for the Olympics?
Yes, it is still possible to get tickets for the Games.
More than 250,000 tickets went on sale on 17 April to mark 100 days until the opening of the Games.
This is the last ticket sale, but tickets are still available for dozens of events.
The first sale involved a lottery and timeslots to buy packs of tickets for events.
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In the final stretch of ticket sales, things are a lot simpler.
Tickets are available on a first-come, first-served basis and you can see the availability for different events in real time on the website.
While a lot of the final tickets on sale are pretty pricey, there is still the chance to bag a bargain.
Almost 20,000 tickets were put on sale for €24 and it is still possible to get tickets to see football for this price.
At the other end of the spectrum, there are ticket and hospitality packages available that will set you back hundreds of Euros.
What about the Paralympics?
The Paralympic Games will take place from 28 August to 8 September and there are still tickets available from €15.
The booking works the same as for the Olympics – first-come, first-served, with the remaining tickets now available on the website.
Avoid the scammers
Don’t get caught out by scammers – make sure you only buy tickets through the official Paris 2024 ticketing website.
It’s not too late to book – but don’t wait
While the start of the Games is fast approaching, it’s not too late to plan a trip – but you should “get booking ASAP”, Jessica Dante, travel expert at Love and London, tells Sky News.
The Eurostar is not as “wildly priced” as you might expect, she says, with return fares available for the first week of the Games for under £200 – and the same is true of budget airlines.
But, Ms Dante cautions, “that will invariably only continue to go up” – so book soon rather than hold out for a last-minute deal.
Image: An athletics track floating on the Seine in 2017. Pic: Reuters
Could there be last-minute deals on accommodation?
Don’t bank on it, Ms Dante says.
“I’m always in the camp of just book something so you have it. If something else pops up closer to the time then fine, you can try to make a switch if you’ve got something that you can cancel.
“But there’s also the chance that something might not pop up that’s going to be in your price range as well.”
While there could be a small wave of accommodation deals open up as people cancel, a lot of accommodation will be non-refundable at least a couple of weeks before the Games, so any cancellations are likely to still be fairly far in advance, she says.
Tips for booking accommodation
There is still “decent availability” for hotels, she says, although some popular spots are already booked up.
Unsurprisingly, cost has a lot to do with location – so look away from central areas and places close to Olympic locations if you are looking to save money.
“The flip side of that is it then means that you’re probably going to have to deal with taking the metro and you’ll have to pay for the inflated cost of the rides.”
The price of metro tickets will almost double during the Games, from €2.10 (£1.80) to €4 (£3.40).
But the surcharge on public transport is unlikely to match the price difference on a more central hotel. Ms Dante advises looking at suburban areas or the outskirts of the city.
What about staying in another town?
Staying in another town entirely and travelling to Paris for events is one option.
But you should consider the pros and cons carefully, Ms Dante says.
There is a looming threat of train strikes. The CGT public servants union has announced plans to strike during the Olympics, which could mean many transport workers walking out.
If you are staying outside Paris, that could scupper your plans to easily travel into the city.
Even if there are not strikes, trains into Paris are likely to be crowded, Ms Dante says.
“You do have to kind of balance that and just be prepared that you might have some difficulty.”
Image: Train strikes could be called during the Olympics. Pic: AP
Can you go to the Olympics and avoid Paris entirely?
The Games may be headlined as Paris 2024, but there are events taking place across the country – and the surfing is even in Tahiti.
The cities of Lyon, Saint-Etienne, Nice, Bordeaux, Nantes and Marseille will host events.
The Olympic ticketing site allows you to filter available events by location, so if you are keen to give Paris a miss you can seek out what is happening in other places.
“They’re going to be a little bit less popular than stuff that’s right in the centre of Paris, so I think that’s a really good option,” Ms Dante says.
Consider the Paralympics
The Paralympics often gets overshadowed by the Olympics, but it’s a great option if you want to experience the Games, Ms Dante says.
“It’s going to be a little bit less crowded, the pricing will be better, probably a little bit more of a relaxed experience.”
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Is it worth going to Paris if you don’t have tickets to the Games?
Maybe there are no tickets left in your price range, or your favourite event is sold out – is it worth planning a trip to Paris anyway?
“Definitely,” according to Ms Dante. “This whole summer it’s going to be really buzzy there.”
A lot of locals will leave the city, she says. It’s French tradition in the summer, but the exodus is likely to be even bigger this year as Parisians flee the crowds – meaning some areas could end up being quieter than normal.
Attractions away from the main Olympic sites could also be quieter than normal, she says.
How to make the most of your trip
If you are keen to combine cultural activities with sporting ones, consider booking a guided tour to big attractions, Ms Dante advises.
That way, you have got your ticket secured and the tour guides will be up to speed on any road closures or access changes that could make your visit more tricky.
Also keep in mind that there will be a lot of security measures in place and getting around the city will take longer than normal.
Gaza’s health ministry has removed 1,852 people from its official list of war fatalities since October, after finding that some had died of natural causes or were alive but had been imprisoned.
The list of deaths currently stands at 50,609 following the removals. Gaza’s health ministry records do not distinguish between civilians and combatants.
Almost all of the names removed (97%) had initially been submitted through an online form which allows families to record the deaths of loved ones where the body is missing.
The head of the statistics team at Gaza’s health ministry, Zaher Al Wahidi, told Sky News that names submitted via the form had been removed as a precautionary measure pending a judicial investigation into each one.
“We realised that a lot of people [submitted via the form] died a natural death,” Mr Wahidi said. “Maybe they were near an explosion and they had a heart attack, or [living in destroyed] houses caused them pneumonia or hypothermia. All these cases we don’t [attribute to] the war.”
Others submitted via the form were found to be imprisoned or to be missing with insufficient evidence that they had died.
Some families submitting false claims, Mr Wahidi said, may have been motivated by the promise of government financial assistance.
It is the largest removal of names from the list since the war began, and comes after 1,441 names were removed between August and October – 54% of them originating in hospital morgue records rather than the online form.
Mr Wahidi says his team audited the hospital data after receiving complaints from people who had ended up on the list despite being alive.
They found that hospital clerks, when operating without access to the central population registry and lacking full names or dates of birth for the dead, had marked the wrong people as dead in their records.
In total, 8% of people who were listed as dead in August have since been removed from the official death toll. Many of those may later be added back in, as the judicial investigations proceed.
‘It doesn’t look like manipulation’
Gabriel Epstein, a research assistant at US thinktank The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said there’s no reason to think the errors are the result of deliberate manipulation intended to inflate the share of women and children among the dead.
“If 90% of the removed entries were men aged 18-40, that would look like manipulation,” he said. “But it doesn’t look like that.”
Of those entries removed since the start of the war and whose demographic information was recorded, 41% are men aged 18 to 60, while 59% are women, children and elderly people.
By comparison, 44% of remaining deaths are working-age men. This means that the removals have had the effect of slightly reducing the share of women and children in the official list.
Names were previously added to the list without verification
Until October, Mr Wahidi said, names submitted via the online form had been added to the official list of registered deaths before undergoing a judicial confirmation process.
The publication of unverified deaths submitted via the form had previously led to issues with the data, with 1,295 deaths submitted via the form being removed from the list prior to October. This included 474 people who were later added back again.
Sky News previously understood that names from the form were only published after undergoing judicial confirmation. However, Mr Wahidi says this practice only began in October.
“This does cause me to downgrade the quality of the earlier lists, definitely below where I thought they were,” said Professor Michael Spagat, chair of Every Casualty Counts, an independent civilian casualty monitoring organisation.
A Ministry of Health document from July 2024 confirms that names submitted through the online form were, at the time, included in the official fatality list before being verified.
These names “are initially included in the final count of martyrs, but verification procedures are undertaken afterward”, the document says.
“They basically said that they were posting these things provisionally pending investigation,” said Prof Spagat.
“There may have been literally zero people, including us, who actually absorbed this message, but they weren’t hiding it either.”
More than 1,200 Israelis have been killed in the 7 October attack and ensuing war.
The Data and Forensics team is a multi-skilled unit dedicated to providing transparent journalism from Sky News. We gather, analyse and visualise data to tell data-driven stories. We combine traditional reporting skills with advanced analysis of satellite images, social media and other open source information. Through multimedia storytelling we aim to better explain the world while also showing how our journalism is done.
Global financial markets gave a clear vote of no-confidence in President Trump’s economic policy.
The damage it will do is obvious: costs for companies will rise, hitting their earnings.
The consequences will ripple throughout the global economy, with economists now raising their expectations for a recession, not only in the US, but across the world.
At least 19 people, including nine children, have been killed in a Russian attack on Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s home city, according to Ukrainian officials.
Around 50 people were also wounded in the attack, according to emergency services, and regional governor Serhiy Lysak said more than 30, including a three-month-old baby, were in hospital.
“Every missile, every strike drone proves that Russia only wants war.
“And only on the pressure of the world on Russia, on all efforts to strengthen Ukraine, our air defence, our forces – only on this does it depend when the war will end.”
Russia’s defence ministry claimed it had struck a military gathering – a statement denounced by the Ukrainian military as misinformation.
Mr Lysak wrote on the Telegram messaging app that 18 people were killed when a missile hit residential areas and sparked fires.
Later on Friday, Russian drones attacked homes and killed one person, Oleksandr Vilkul, the city’s military administrator, said.
Local authorities said the missile strike damaged about 20 apartment buildings, more than 30 vehicles, an educational building and a restaurant.
They said emergency responders were at the scene and psychologists were helping survivors.
Confirming the “high-precision strike”, the Russian defence ministry said on Telegram it targeted “a meeting of unit commanders and Western instructors” in a city restaurant.
“As a result of the strike, enemy losses total up to 85 servicemen and officers of foreign countries, as well as up to 20 vehicles,” the ministry added.
Image: Pic: Telegram/Zelenskyy
Image: Pic: Telegram/Zelenskyy
US ‘not interested in negotiations about negotiations’
It comes after the US secretary of state issued a veiled threat to Russia as talks about a ceasefire with Ukraine continue.
Speaking in Brussels during a NATO meeting, Marco Rubio said the US was “not interested in… negotiations about negotiations”.
“We’re testing to see if the Russians are interested in peace. Their actions – not their words, their actions – will determine whether they’re serious or not, and we intend to find that out sooner rather than later,” he said.
Since then, the warring countries have accused each other of violating the energy ceasefire.
UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy, who was also in Brussels on Fridaym said Vladimir Putin “continues to obfuscate, continues to drag his feet” on ceasefire talks.
He added that while the Russian president should be accepting a ceasefire, “he continues to bombard Ukraine, its civilian population, its energy supplies”.
“We see you, Vladimir Putin. We know what you are doing,” he said.