Por Issy Ronald, CNN

A pesar de la insistencia de Eurovisión en que es apolítico, la política siempre ha formado parte del concurso de la canción que se celebra en todo el continente, siendo un elemento tan importante como cualquier constelación de pirotecnia y baladas poderosas que se exhiban ese año.

Pero si antes la política era una especie de chiste, un indicador útil para que los aficionados cínicos adivinaran qué país podría otorgar puntos a otro, este año amenaza con eclipsar toda la contienda.

Cinco países —Irlanda, España, Eslovenia, los Países Bajos e Islandia— están boicoteando el evento de este año debido a la continua participación de Israel, lo que supone la mayor crisis en los 70 años de historia del concurso.

El revuelo ha empañado las festividades de este espectáculo, normalmente extravagante, alegre y ostentoso, en el que artistas que representan a diferentes países, en su mayoría europeos, interpretan una canción y compiten por ser coronados ganadores tras una votación del público y del jurado.

El año pasado, 166 millones de personas lo vieron por televisión y se ha convertido en un referente cultural clave para la comunidad LGBTQ+.

Sin embargo, solo 35 países viajaron a Viena, Austria, para el concurso de este año, que culmina con la gran final del sábado, lo que representa el menor número de participantes desde 2004. Es posible que la asistencia de público también haya disminuido.

“Podemos ver que aún quedan entradas disponibles para la final del sábado, algo insólito”, declaró a CNN desde Viena Frank Dermody, presidente del club de fans irlandés de Eurovisión.

Mientras que normalmente unos 800 aficionados irlandeses viajan a la ciudad anfitriona, este año solo unos 40 lo han hecho, añadió.

“Hay mucha gente de otros países que no viene. Simplemente no se sienten cómodos. Puede que en los próximos días sientan miedo de perderse algo y vengan a la ciudad, pero ahora mismo diría que hay menos gente de lo normal”, comentó.

La participación de Israel en el concurso ha resultado controvertida durante los últimos dos años debido a su guerra en Gaza, lo que ha provocado protestas y boicots por parte de los aficionados.

En diciembre, las divisiones entre los países que conforman la Unión Europea de Radiodifusión (UER), organizadora de Eurovisión, salieron a la luz cuando se reunieron para debatir el asunto.

Finalmente, no se votó sobre la participación de Israel en el concurso, pero se introdujeron “cambios específicos” para “reforzar la confianza, la transparencia y la neutralidad del evento”, según informó la UER en diciembre.

Irlanda, España, los Países Bajos y Eslovenia anunciaron de inmediato su boicot, e Islandia se sumó una semana después.

En aquel momento, el ministro de Asuntos Exteriores de Israel declaró sentirse “avergonzado” por los países que boicoteaban el concurso.

Todo esto surgió tras los rumores y las acusaciones de que el gobierno israelí había influido en los resultados de las dos últimas competiciones mediante la promoción de una campaña de votación masiva.

La UER nunca se ha pronunciado públicamente sobre tales acusaciones, pero una investigación del New York Times publicada el lunes describió una “campaña bien organizada por el Gobierno del primer ministro Benjamin Netanyahu que adoptó Eurovisión como una herramienta de poder blando, y un organizador secreto del concurso que no estaba preparado para responder”.

La Oficina del Primer Ministro de Israel declinó hacer comentarios a CNN. Amichai Chikli, Ministro de Asuntos de la Diáspora de Israel, declaró qu

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By Amarachi Orie, CNN

(CNN) — Dylan Sprouse and his wife, Barbara Palvin, are expecting their first child.

The “The Suite Life of Zack and Cody” star was pictured holding his wife’s baby bump while the pair smiled in a joint carousel post on Instagram Thursday.

The 33-year-old actor was dressed in a suit and bow tie, and his 32-year-old wife, a model, was wearing a baby blue dress — the same outfits the couple wore on the red carpet of the 79th Cannes Film Festival in Cannes, France, that night.

Another image in the post shows a baby scan, with the fetus apparently making a “sign of the horns” hand gesture. The couple copied the gesture in another image and used multiple “rock on” emojis to caption their baby announcement.

“Oh my god!! I’m so happy for you guys! Congrats!” commented fellow “Suite Life” star Brenda Song under the post.

“Congrats!!!!” wrote “Riverdale” star Madelaine Petsch, with a heart emoji and the holding back tears emoji. Model Taylor Hill expressed the same sentiment.

Sprouse’s twin brother, Cole, shared an image on his Instagram story Thursday of the couple at the Cannes Film Festival, and added three red heart emojis. In the photo, Palvin is holding her baby bump while her husband holds her hand.

The baby announcement comes almost three years after Sprouse and Palvin tied the knot in Hungary, the bride’s home country. The pair met at a party in 2017 and started dating the following year, according to media reports.

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By Jacqui Palumbo, CNN

When she was four, the artist Widline Cadet was separated from her mother for six years as she emigrated from Haiti to New York to pursue a better life for her family. Cadet, her father and older sister remained in Thomassin, eventually joining her. During that time, her father would travel back and forth, bringing a small number of photographs between them — it was how Cadet learned she had a new baby sister, too, as her mom settled in New York City’s Hamilton Heights.

But photographs of her own childhood and family were scarce. At 10 years old, she reunited with her mother in New York, but as she grew into adulthood, Cadet realized that she didn’t know her well at all. Nor did she have a larger sense of her family, the ancestral threads that weave back through time. Her mother didn’t have a picture of her own mother. Memories faded with each passing year.

Now, for nearly a decade, Cadet has been crafting her own multi-generational “living archive,” mixing together photographs, video, sound and sculpture to explore the connection and disconnection of the diasporic experience, and make visible the elusiveness of memory. Over the past few years, she has shown parts of the archive at major museums, galleries and art fairs, and has published it in book form. The largest presentation of her work to date is on view at the Milwaukee Art Museum, for the show, “Currents 40: Widline Cadet.”

“Something happened in the process of me becoming a photographer that made me really think about these images and the roles they play in our lives,” she explained during an interview at the newly opened exhibition.

Cadet’s multimedia pieces have always been transportive, but walking through the show’s spacious galleries feels akin to traversing her mind, becoming swept into her enigmatic scenes based on fragments of memory or scarce family images, as well as the other photographs she’s made to fill the gaps. Often, she plays with both notions, towing the line being real and imagined, she explained.

“When I started making the work, I thought broadly about creating an archive — more so in the strict sense of taking pictures for the purpose of being archived,” she said. “But along the way, I think things got more imaginative and fluid in the ways that I’m thinking.”

Because of that melding, her photographs are rarely a straight read. She often embeds them with small videos, prints them to fold into the junctures of gallery walls, or frames them within portal-like half-circle frames, redolent of a window shape seen in one of her grandparents’ photos.

Within the artist’s images, faces turn away, figures disappear into the luminous dark, and hues nearly vibrate with technicolor saturation. She probes both the intimacy of relationships and the tricks of memory, casting strangers as her sisters or friends as stand-ins for herself. Even a photo of Cadet’s mother holding her baby sister — which the artist had never seen until she began hunting for images — feels like the soft edges of a dream. In the museum, Cadet printed the small, grainy image as a wall-spanning altarpiece, flanked by rows of colorful sculptures of aloe plants. It’s titled “I put all my hopes on you.”

“I use this image because I think it felt important as a starting point,” she said. “She’s my mom’s last child; she was born in the US. Thinking about my mom in that moment, all the things she must have been going through, I wanted to have a space for that experience.”

Kristen Gaylord, who curated the show, said that Cadet’s work has a resonance to it, even though it is particular to her own upbringing.

“She’s very deeply excavating her own archive, and there’s something about that specificity, almost para

By Betsy Klein, Simone McCarthy, Kristen Holmes, CNN

Beijing (CNN) — President Donald Trump departed Beijing Friday afternoon local time without any immediate sign that the US and China have resolved thorny challenges dogging their fractious relationship, but with a freshly stabilized relationship with Chinese leader Xi Jinping – for now.

The leaders covered a range of issues from Iran and Taiwan to trade, during two days that included intensive bilateral meetings. But there were also grand displays of soft diplomacy, marking the first Beijing meeting for the longtime rivals in nearly a decade.

Since Trump’s last visit in 2017, he has reimagined Washington’s role in the world, while Xi has tightened his grip on authority domestically and spurred China’s high-tech transformation.

“We’ve settled a lot of different problems that other people wouldn’t have been able to settle, and the relationship is a very strong one,” Trump said at the start of bilateral discussions Friday, offering no concrete details on the problems in question.

Given how bad relations have been in recent years, the fact both leaders came away speaking of each other in warm terms and agreeing on the importance of their ties is evidence of a shift to stabilization at a time when a jittery world is desperately seeking geopolitical calm.

The US-Israeli war with Iran loomed over the whirlwind summit. There were questions of what, if any, behind-the-scenes support Xi might be willing to extend to help bring an end to the months-long conflict, which has thrown the global economy into turmoil without a clear endgame.

Details of the sweeping trade deals Trump promised ahead of the trip remain unclear, with big pronouncements from the president and some top officials, but any substantive announcements still absent and unconfirmed by China.

And amid concerns from experts and analysts that Xi was walking into the meeting with the upper hand, the Chinese leader offered his own flex on the issue of Taiwan.

But the visit also provided an opportunity to reset the tone of the fractious US-China relationship, Xi rolling out a literal and figurative red carpet that charmed and delighted his guest, a warm connection on display.

“I think it will go down as a very important moment in history. And maybe more than anything else, a great moment of respect,” Trump reflected during an interview with Fox News.

Iran war loomed over visit

Ahead of talks, expectations were high that the American president could push his Chinese counterpart to help resolve the Iran conflict.

China is a close diplomatic partner of Iran and the top purchaser of its oil – and has framed itself as proponent of peace throughout the war. The topic was part of the more than two hours of discussions between the two leaders Thursday, but Trump departed without a clear sign from Beijing that it’s willing to press Tehran to work with US demands.

Instead, comments from both sides so far suggest the summit hasn’t moved the needle.

Trump told Fox News that Xi offered to help resolve the conflict and pledged not to provide Iran with military equipment. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, in a separate interview with NBC News Thursday, said the US did not ask for China’s help resolving the conflict.

A readout released by the White House also said the two countries agreed that the Strait of Hormuz must remain open and that Iran can never have a nuclear weapon.

It also said Xi “made clear China’s opposition to the militarization of the Strait and any effort to charge a toll for its