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.



Australian Woman Unknowingly Gives Birth to a Stranger's Baby after IVF Error

FILE - Lab staff prepare small petri dishes, each holding several 1-7 day old embryos, for cells to be extracted from each embryo to test for viability at the Aspire Houston Fertility Institute in vitro fertilization lab Tuesday, Feb. 27, 2024, in Houston.  (AP Photo/Michael Wyke, File)
FILE - Lab staff prepare small petri dishes, each holding several 1-7 day old embryos, for cells to be extracted from each embryo to test for viability at the Aspire Houston Fertility Institute in vitro fertilization lab Tuesday, Feb. 27, 2024, in Houston. (AP Photo/Michael Wyke, File)
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Australian Woman Unknowingly Gives Birth to a Stranger's Baby after IVF Error

FILE - Lab staff prepare small petri dishes, each holding several 1-7 day old embryos, for cells to be extracted from each embryo to test for viability at the Aspire Houston Fertility Institute in vitro fertilization lab Tuesday, Feb. 27, 2024, in Houston.  (AP Photo/Michael Wyke, File)
FILE - Lab staff prepare small petri dishes, each holding several 1-7 day old embryos, for cells to be extracted from each embryo to test for viability at the Aspire Houston Fertility Institute in vitro fertilization lab Tuesday, Feb. 27, 2024, in Houston. (AP Photo/Michael Wyke, File)

A woman in Australia unknowingly gave birth to a stranger’s baby after she received another patient's embryo from her in vitro fertilization clinic due to “human error,” the clinic said.
The mix-up was discovered in February when the clinic in the city of Brisbane found that the birth parents had one too many embryos in storage, said the provider, Monash IVF, in a statement supplied Friday. Staff discovered an embryo from another patient had been mistakenly thawed and transferred to the birth mother, The Associated Press quoted a spokesperson as saying.
Australia news outlets reported the baby was born in 2024.
The company, one of Australia’s biggest IVF providers, said an initial investigation had not uncovered any other such errors. Its statement didn’t identify the patients involved or divulge details about the child's custody.
“All of us at Monash IVF are devastated and we apologize to everyone involved,” said CEO Michael Knaap. “We will continue to support the patients through this extremely distressing time.”
The “human error” was made “despite strict laboratory safety protocols being in place,” the statement said. The company said it had reported the episode to the relevant regulator in the state of Queensland.
Monash IVF opened in 1971 and sees patients in dozens of locations throughout Australia. Last year, the firm settled a class action lawsuit from more than 700 patients, making no admission of liability, after claims its clinics destroyed potentially viable embryos.
The clinic paid a settlement of 56 million Australian dollars ($35 million).
Rare cases of embryo mix-ups have been reported before, including in the United States, Britain, Israel and Europe. A woman in the US state of Georgia in February filed a lawsuit against a fertility clinic after she gave birth to a stranger’s baby.
Krystena Murray realized the error after the baby's birth because she and her sperm donor were both white and the child was Black. Murray said she wanted to raise the baby but voluntarily gave the 5-month-old to his biological parents after she was told she would not win a legal fight for his custody.
In Australia, each state makes its own laws and rules governing the use of IVF, which advocates say puts patients at risk of error or oversight failings. Queensland’s parliament passed its first laws regulating the sector in 2024.
The measures will establish a registry for all people conceived at a clinic and made the destruction of donors’ medical histories illegal. The change followed an official report that lambasted the storage of frozen sperm donations in Queensland, finding nearly half of samples checked were at medium or high risk of misidentification and recommending thousands be destroyed.
Australia’s states and territories “need to see if their regulations are up to scratch,” the Minister for Social Services Amanda Rishworth told the Today news program Friday.
“Confidence needs to be brought back and it’s imperative that happens.”