Zaila Avant-Garde, 14, Wins Spelling Bee with 'Murraya'

Zaila Avant-garde, 14, from New Orleans, Louisiana, holds up her trophy after winning the 2021 Scripps National Spelling Bee Finals at the ESPN Wide World of Sports Complex at Walt Disney World Resort in Lake Buena Vista, Florida, US July 8, 2021.
Zaila Avant-garde, 14, from New Orleans, Louisiana, holds up her trophy after winning the 2021 Scripps National Spelling Bee Finals at the ESPN Wide World of Sports Complex at Walt Disney World Resort in Lake Buena Vista, Florida, US July 8, 2021.
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Zaila Avant-Garde, 14, Wins Spelling Bee with 'Murraya'

Zaila Avant-garde, 14, from New Orleans, Louisiana, holds up her trophy after winning the 2021 Scripps National Spelling Bee Finals at the ESPN Wide World of Sports Complex at Walt Disney World Resort in Lake Buena Vista, Florida, US July 8, 2021.
Zaila Avant-garde, 14, from New Orleans, Louisiana, holds up her trophy after winning the 2021 Scripps National Spelling Bee Finals at the ESPN Wide World of Sports Complex at Walt Disney World Resort in Lake Buena Vista, Florida, US July 8, 2021.

Zaila Avant-garde, 14, became the first African American to win the 90-year-old Scripps National Spelling Bee on Thursday by correctly spelling “Murraya,” a genus of plants, staying cool after a near miss with a botanical word in a previous round.

Televised live on ESPN, complete with play-by-play commentary and interviews with the participants, the competition finals returned after being cancelled last year because of the coronavirus pandemic. It was once again held before a live audience at the Walt Disney World Resort near Orlando.

Avant-garde, from New Orleans, is the first Black contestant to win since Jody-Anne Maxwell of Jamaica in 1998. The winner is also an accomplished basketball player, with several Guinness World Records to her name for dribbling multiple basketballs at a time.

Avant-garde claimed the $50,000 top prize after appearing relaxed and bantering with the judges and moderators, despite her struggle with “Nepeta,” a word for another plant genus.

Pausing at the unstressed sound in the middle of word, she collected herself, started again, and nailed the second “e”, jumping for joy on stage when told she was correct.

Chaitra Thummala, 12, of San Francisco, came in second after mis-spelling “neroli oil,” but still takes home $25,000.

Bhavana Madini, 13, of New York finished third with the $15,000 prize, after being eliminated on “athanor,” a type of furnace.

In a competition that has been dominated by contestants of Indian heritage, Avant-garde is sure to be celebrated for her ground-breaking victory.

She told the Associated Press in an interview before the finals she hoped to inspire other African Americans, who she said might not have the money to pay for the tutorials needed to be competitive.

This year’s competition added rules meant to avoid multiple co-winners, like the eight who shared the title in the “octo-champs” contest in 2019.



Sicily’s Mount Etna Erupts in a Fiery Show of Smoke and Ash Miles High

 Smoke billows from Mount Etna volcano, Italy, Monday, June 2, 2025. (AP)
Smoke billows from Mount Etna volcano, Italy, Monday, June 2, 2025. (AP)
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Sicily’s Mount Etna Erupts in a Fiery Show of Smoke and Ash Miles High

 Smoke billows from Mount Etna volcano, Italy, Monday, June 2, 2025. (AP)
Smoke billows from Mount Etna volcano, Italy, Monday, June 2, 2025. (AP)

Sicily’s Mount Etna put on a fiery show Monday, sending a cloud of smoke and ash several kilometers (miles) into the air, but officials said the activity posed no danger to the population.

The level of alert due to the volcanic activity was raised at Catania airport, but no immediate interruptions were reported. An official update declared the ash cloud emission had ended by the afternoon.

Italy’s INGV National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology said the spectacle on Europe’s most active volcano was caused when part of the southeast crater collapsed, resulting in hot lava flows. It was the 14th eruptive phase in recent months.

The area of danger was confined to the summit of Etna, which was closed to tourists as a precaution, according to Stefano Branca, an INGV official in Catania.

Sicily’s president, Renato Schifani, said lava flows emitted in the eruption had not passed the natural containment area, “and posed no danger to the population.”

The event was captured in video and photos that went viral on social media. Tremors from the eruption were widely felt in the towns and villages on Mount Etna's flanks, Italian media reported.

Video showed tourists running along a path on the flank of the vast volcano with smoke billowing some distance in the background. Excursions are popular on Etna, which is some 3,300 meters (nearly 11,000 feet) high, with a surface area of some 1,200 square kilometers (about 460 square miles).