Meyer-Landrut, who turned 19 during the competition in Norway, sang the upbeat, dance-floor friendly “Satellite,” which was one of the favorites to win.

This is the second time that Germany has won in the songfest’s 55-year history. It will host next year’s contest.

This year’s competition was overshadowed by the continent’s financial woes, with four countries pulling out for lack of funds.

The contest is decided by a panel of judges and telephone voting by the 39 participating countries.

Also known as the “King of Herrings,” the dead fish was picked up by a west coast resident who found it floating near the shore over the weekend. It was handed over to The House of the Sea aquarium in the town of Lysekil, where expert Roger Jansson says it’s being kept pending a decision on what to do with it.

Johansson said Wednesday the Giant Oarfish can grow up to 36 feet (11 meters), and is believed to live in deep waters. He says the last recorded discovery in Sweden was in 1879.

Travis, who was from West Bloomfield, Michigan, also was a supporter of the Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS fundraising organization and appeared often in its Easter Bonnet Competition.

She continued to work long after her Follies days ended, with annual appearances on Broadway, a small role in a Jim Carrey movie and a memoir, “The Days We Danced: The Story of My Theatrical Family From Florenz Ziegfeld to Arthur Murray and Beyond.”

Interest in the 5-foot-2 centenarian piqued after a 1997 reunion with four other Ziegfeld Follies Girls for the reopening of the New Amsterdam Theatre, where she danced about 80 years earlier.

“I was the only one who could still dance,” she said then.

That led to her involvement in the Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS benefit, where she caught the eye of Carrey and director Milos Forman, who were making the movie “Man on the Moon,” about the life of comedian Andy Kaufman.

She played an actress who was no longer popular.

“I had to ride a stick horse and faint and then get resuscitated,” Travis recalled in 2006, laughing as she did a fake gallop.

Even after more than 90 years as a hoofer, dancing still came easy to Travis, who appeared in the extravagant Ziegfeld Follies show that enchanted Broadway from 1907 into the 1930s.

“I’m the last of the Ziegfeld Follies Girls now,” she said when she was 102. “It’s an honor in a way. I certainly didn’t think that would happen.” 

Travis, who owned several dance studios in Michigan and operated a horse ranch in Oklahoma, had a few wrinkles and white curly hair that framed her eyes of blue. She enrolled at Oklahoma University and earned a bachelor’s degree in history at age 88. She credited her longevity to her ongoing love affair with dancing and not drinking or smoking.

Travis was born March 14, 1904, one of seven children to newspaper linotype operator Charles Eaton and his wife, Mary, in Norfolk, Virginia.

Some of the children, who became known as The Eatons of Broadway, got their first break when a stock company production of “Blue Bird” appeared in Washington, D.C., in 1911. Travis and her sisters, Pearl and Mary, had only small roles, but it led to steady work in other local plays.

By then, the Ziegfeld Follies had become an entertainment staple. Inspired by the Folies Bergeres in Paris, Ziegfeld Follies was part Broadway show, part Vaudeville, featuring top entertainers such as W.C. Fields, Eddie Cantor, Fanny Brice and Will Rogers. Juicing up the show were beautiful female dancers who performed elaborate chorus numbers composed by Irving Berlin and who wore costumes by Art Deco designer and illustrator Erte.

Pearl Eaton nabbed a part in the chorus of the “Ziegfeld Follies of 1918,” and Travis became the youngest Ziegfeld Follies Girl when she was hired at age 14. She became a principal dancer in 1920.

She turned to silent movies with “At the Stage Door” and “The Broadway Peacock” in 1920 and “Tell Your Children” in 1922. But she never really got into film.

Travis’ love of dancing and musical theater was shaken when the stock market crash of 1929 ushered in the Depression and an end to many theaters.

At a friend’s suggestion, she applied for a job as a tap dance instructor at the Arthur Murray Dance Studios in New York. She got the job and branched into social dance. She eventually opened a Murray franchise in Michigan and began a second career.

Murray gave her a list of people who had taken lessons or paid for some and hadn’t completed them, and one of the first people she contacted was Paul H. Travis, whom she married in 1949. He died in 2000, a few days before his 100th birthday.

In a statement on behalf of the family, her nephew Joe Eaton Jr. said Tuesday she always loved Broadway.

“She adored dancing with the young dancers,” he said, “seeing new shows and the incredible response from the Easter Bonnet audience and Broadway community.”

The executive director of BC/EFA, Tom Viola, said Broadway Cares loved Travis, whom he first met when she was 94 and was appearing at the 12th Easter Bonnet Competition.

“When the stage lights hit Doris,” he said, “she was instantly and forever young.”

He said Broadway, which planned to dim its lights Wednesday night in her honor, would “miss her forever.”

Funeral arrangements are private. A memorial service in West Bloomfield will be announced later.

When London-based betting agency Boylesports released the first set of betting odds in late March, Safura, the 17-year old winner of Azerbaijani Idol, was the odds-on favorite at 7:2. Germany was listed fourth highest at 14:1. In subsequent weeks, however, Lena has narrowed that gap significantly and the two now stand in a virtual deadlock atop the table.

Voters will have to decide whether they prefer Lena’s quirkiness or Safura’s theatrics. On stage, Lena comes off as likable, if a bit kooky. She can’t dance, but doesn’t seem to care, and her natural awkwardness transforms into something endearing. You get the sense she wants to be a singer, not a pop star. As in her preview video, she’ll likely appear on stage in Oslo alone, sparing us the bare-chested backup dancers and trapeze swings Eurovision fans have grown accustomed to.

Safura, on the other hand, desperately wants to position herself as mainstream. In her song Drip Drop she tells the story of a woman done wrong by her philandering other half — a tired theme taken straight from R&B. Azerbaijan has hired JaQuel Knight, Beyonce’s choreographer and the man behind the Single Ladies video, to craft Safura’s stage performance. It promises to be sleek and over-the-top, but that could drain it of soul and sincerity.

Other factors work in Lena’s favor, too. Germany, Britain, France and Spain make up the Big Four group of nations that bypass the semi-finals and automatically receive places in the final. That special status stems from their significant financial contributions to Eurovision. Because Lena debuts her song in the final, Satellite will sound fresh and novel. Lastly, Lena’s appeal cuts across generations. She’s young and edgy but keeps her cleavage to herself. Elderly voters in the Bulgarian countryside and housewives in Macedonia will respond more favorably to that than Safura’s high-octane sexuality.

What Europe’s youngins will prefer remains a mystery.

At the end of judging that evening, Bra vibrationer took the third-place slot with 103 points. Finland and Norway both awarded Sweden 12 points that night.

Sung in contemporary schlager music style, the singer relates her strong emotions upon falling in love with a man with whom she had just met. She is concerned about things moving too fast, but in the end, she feels good vibrations and is very happy with what has transpired.

After Eurovision, the song was placed at #12 on the Swedish charts, and it stayed in the top 50 for eight weeks.

Ann-Kristin “Kikki” Danielsson (born 10 May 1952 in Osby, Sweden) is a Swedish country, dansband and pop singer. Sometimes, she also plays the accordion and she has also written some lyrics. She is also famous for yodeling in some songs. Kikki Danielsson gained her largest popularity in the Nordic region from the late 1970s until the late 1990s. She also gained popularity at the US country stage during the 1980s. In 1986, she had the “Kikki i Nashville” TV show.

“There’s no need to worry, guys. There will be plenty of our beer for all the fans during this period,” said Norman Adami, managing director of South African Breweries, the local arm of global drinks giant SABMiller.

The company, which produces roughly nine of every ten bottles of beer drunk in South Africa, is predicting a 5 percent increase in sales during the tournament starting on June 11.

However, it will be able to meet the extra demand — equivalent to 30 million bottles — because the southern hemisphere winter is normally its slowest sales period, Adami said.

“It depends on a range of factors including the weather, the number of foreign visitors who actually do arrive and even the performance of our team,” he told a news conference.

Organisers are predicting 373,000 foreigners for the tournament, less than initial expectations of 450,000 due mainly to the impact of last year’s global economic slowdown.

And there are fears South Africa’s weak team will be the first hosts not to qualify for the second round of the finals.

Budweiser, owned by SABMiller rival Anheuser-Busch InBev and an official FIFA partner, is the only authorised supplier inside stadiums.

SAB will be allowed to sell beer at 10 FIFA fan parks in the World Cup cities, but only in unmarked bottles to avoid breaching FIFA’s jealously guarded rights rules.

The organizers said the fair, which was held in Milan on May 8-9, aimed to help divorcing people start a new, happier life.

“Smiling is key to this fair, which also offers serious, practical advice for often dramatic situations,” Franco Zanetti, who created the event, told Reuters.

The services include divorce planning, anti-stalking help, and “new look” tips, the organizers said.

Echoing similar initiatives in the United States and elsewhere in Europe, visitors will also be able to subscribe to divorce gift lists at department stores in Milan.

A growing number of Italian couples file for divorce every year, according to Italy’s statistics agency ISTAT.

More than 130,000 couples split or got divorced in Italy in 2007, up more than 3 percent from the previous year, ISTAT said.

On the other side, the number of marriages nearly halved since 1972 to around 246,000 in 2008.

Police said Nathaniel Lindgren and his mom, 41-year-old Jean Pinko, accosted the man after he came to their New Kensington home. Police say the man left his cell phone as collateral while he went to his friend’s car to get $90 to pay the suspects for the drugs.

But before he could get the money, police arrested the friend on an outstanding theft warrant and began to tow his car away. Frightened, the man threw the drugs into the weeds and returned to get his cell phone.

Police said Lindgren and Pinko thought the man was lying and made him strip to prove he didn’t have the drugs. Lindgren was charged with aggravated assault and weapons charges; Pinko was charged with conspiracy and other crimes. Neither has a listed phone.

Orgad Holdings, the company that owns franchise rights to Burger King in Israel and is full owner of the Burger Ranch, announced the change on Sunday. 

Brothers Eli and Yuval Orgad, owners of the company, said taste tests and various trials conducted over recent months have shown unequivocally that the “Burger Ranch Bull” is the preferred brand in Israel. 

“We were very excited to learn that, for many Israelis, Burger Ranch is not just a hamburger, sauces and vegetables, but is also large bites of nostalgia. And for this, credit goes to the chain’s founders, who nurtured this brand with so much talent over so many years,” the Orgad brother said in a statement. 

As part of their future plans for the merged chain, the Orgad brothers are examining the launching of a concept restaurant which would offer premium Burger Ranch products. 

The company is also examining the possibility of expanding the chain’s activity to a number of European countries.

Burger Ranch CEO Moshe Gabay said in a statement: “We will complete the conversion of the Burger King restaurants to Burger Ranch restaurants by the end of this August. The first restaurant to be converted is the Burger King restaurant on Allenby Street in Tel Aviv. 

“During the conversion process, the restaurants will be renovated and rebranded at the cost of NIS 6 million (roughly $1.5 million). The restaurants will also be equipped with advanced plasma screens and play areas for the children.”