BREAKING NEWS: ISRAEL WINNER OF EUROVISION 2018I The Eurovision Song Contest 2018 will be the 63rd edition of the annual Eurovision Song Contest. It will take place for the first time in Portugal following the country's first victory at the 2017 contest in Kiev, Ukraine with the song "Amar pelos dois", performed by Salvador Sobral. The contest will be held at the Altice Arena in Lisbon and will consist of two semi-finals on 8 and 10 May and a final on 12 May 2018. Forty-three countries will participate in the 2018 Song Contest. Russia will return after their absence from the previous edition, and for the first time since 2011, no country will be withdrawing from the contest.
On a snowy evening in New York City, David Hockney’s 1972 painting Portrait of an Artist (Pool With Two Figures) sold at auction for a jaw-dropping $90.3 million, shattering the previous world record for a work sold at auction by a living artist—Jeff Koons’s Balloon Dog, which went for $58.4 million back in 2013. It also far exceeded the estimated sale price of $80 million, which itself would have been a record. What do these kinds of prices say about the state of the art world, and of the world in general?
Doctors said a London man with HIV has become the second known adult in the world to be apparently cleared of the infection since the global epidemic began decades ago, giving hope for a potential cure for AIDS. Doctors said that recent tests showed no trace of the man’s previous HIV infection. The milestone came about three years after the man received bone marrow stem cells from an HIV-resistant donor and about a year and a half after coming off antiretroviral drugs. The patient was receiving the bone marrow transplant for cancer. The case offers hope that researchers will soon find a cure for AIDS. But doctors cautioned against calling the patient’s results a cure for HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.
The 91st annual Academy Awards was a night of firsts for many Oscar winners and for the categories in which they won. The evening also delivered a surprise win for “Green Book,” which took home the Oscar for best picture, defeating strong competition from “Roma,” “A Star is Born” and “Bohemian Rhapsody.” For the first time in 30 years, there was no host to usher the audience from category to category. The show, instead, started with concert-like performance by Adam Lambert and the band Queen and segued into a pseudo monologue featuring Tina Fey, Amy Poehler and Maya Rudolph. The live telecast took place on Sunday, Feb. 24, on ABC at 8 p.m. ET. See Film Trailers Video Wall.
