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Abba say ‘no way’ to reuniting on stage for Eurovision next year

The 2024 Eurovision Song Contest will be held in Sweden, 50 years after Abba won the competition. But, sorry fans, it's a no from the group to performing at the event.

Abba say 'no way' to reuniting on stage for Eurovision next year
The members of Abba, from left, Björn Ulvaeus, Agnetha Fältskog, Anni-Frid Lyngstad and Benny Andersson at the premiere of the Abba Voyage concert in London in 2022. Photo: AP Photo/Alberto Pezzali

Björn Ulvaeus and Benny Andersson, one half of Abba, downplayed the prospect despite Sweden hosting Eurovision on the 50th anniversary of the band’s win – the country’s first – with their breakthrough hit Waterloo.

The Nordic nation is set to stage the world’s biggest live music event for the seventh time after Swedish singer Loreen won this year’s contest, hosted by Britain on behalf of war-torn Ukraine.

Her victory at the eccentric, much-loved competition in Liverpool this month prompted immediate speculation that Abba could take to the stage next year.

However, in an interview with the BBC’s Newsnight programme, Andersson said there is “no way” the group will make a celebratory performance or even appearance.

“I don’t want to. And if I don’t want to, the others won’t. It’s the same for all four of us. Someone says no – it’s a no,” he explained.

Ulvaeus added: “We can celebrate 50 years of Abba without us being on stage.”

Abba – which also comprised Agnetha Faltskog and Anni-Frid Lyngstad, and is an acronym of their first names – shot to international fame after their 1974 Eurovision success.

The band went on to sell hundreds of millions of records and top the charts worldwide, including in the United States in 1977 with Dancing Queen – their only stateside number one.

Other global hits include Super Trouper, Money, Money, Money and Knowing Me, Knowing You.

In 1981, the group released what they said would be a final album and split up the following year.

But their success continued, notably with the compilation Abba Gold released in 1992, and in 2021 they made a comeback, releasing their first new album in nearly 40 years.

They also launched a new concert format featuring de-aged digital avatars – dubbed Abbatars – in London who perform their hits and resemble their 1979 selves.

Ulvaeus and Andersson said the show’s success was “surpassing every expectation”.

“We achieved more than we could ever hope for… seeing this happening after four or five years of work… and realising that the audience actually connected to what was on stage,” Andersson told the BBC.

He added that he would like to take the show to Australia in the future.

“It would feel good to go back there and say thank-you to Australians for supporting us from day one.”

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WILDLIFE

Malmö calls in team of ferrets to weed out rats ahead of Eurovision

A team of ferrets and dogs are set to help Malmö crack down on its rat population with less than two months to go until the city is set to host Eurovision Song Contest.

Malmö calls in team of ferrets to weed out rats ahead of Eurovision

The southern Swedish city is stepping up its efforts to crack down on its rat infestation, with specially trained ferrets being brought in to help a team of dogs in the hunt. They’re especially focusing on the area near Malmö Arena, where Eurovision will take place on May 7th-11th.

“Trying to fight the rats in Malmö is something that [the municipality] has been doing for over a year, putting in extra efforts, and now we’re just putting in some extra-extra efforts on certain locations where Eurovision will be,” Mona Ghalayini from Quality Detection Dogs, the company supplying the ferrets and dogs, told The Local, after Swedish public broadcaster SVT first covered the story.

Using ferrets and dogs to hunt is not a new method. Ferrets have for example helped chase rabbits out of difficult spots and holes on the Baltic Sea island of Gotland, and Ghalayini explained that the technique is more environmentally friendly than other pest control methods.

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The ferrets are able to enter the rat holes and chase them out to where the dogs await. That means that pest controllers don’t have to do as much digging to find them, which in turns means that fewer plants and other things have to be destroyed to get to the rats.

“The good thing with using the ferrets, and the dogs, is that you use less poison, and the more we can come away from using poison, the better for everyone, both for dogs, cats, for the environment, for the wild animals,” said Ghalayini.

“We see that rats are actually building up a resistance to lots of poisons that we are using.”

Rats have been a long-standing problem in Sweden but the construction boom in southern Sweden has sped up their growth in recent years. Quite simply, the construction projects disrupt the rats’ habitats and force them above ground where they are more visible to residents.

Additionally, where there is a growing population there is an increase in waste. 

Hyllie, where Malmö Arena is located, is part of the building boom, with almost an entirely new suburb created in the district in the past decade, including hundreds of new homes built alongside the arena, as well as restaurants, a train station and a major shopping centre.

Experts say that as a rule of thumb, the rat population is almost always certain to outnumber a city’s human inhabitants, meaning that Malmö is likely to have well over 350,000 rats.

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