Latest news with #Texas
Reuters
20 minutes ago
- Entertainment
- Reuters
Faizan Zaki, 13, crowned US National Spelling Bee champion
May 29 (Reuters) - Faizan Zaki, a 13-year-old boy from the Dallas area, won the 97th Scripps National Spelling Bee on Thursday, swiftly nailing the French-derived word "eclaircissement," synonymous with enlightenment, in the 21st round of the contest finals. He edged out 14-year-old Sarvadnya Kadam, from Visalia, California, who finished in second place after misspelling "Uaupes," a tributary of the Rio Negro in South America, in the 20th round. Zaki, who was last year's runner-up, had correctly spelled "Chaldee," a dialect of the Biblical Aramaic language, in the 20th round. But under spelling bee rules, Zaki needed to land one more word in a solo round to claim the trophy. He did so in round 21 by instantly and precisely spelling "eclaircissement" - defined as a clearing up of something obscure. He surprised the audience by giving his answer without taking the customary pause afforded contestants to ask the judges for more information about the word's origins, meaning and pronunciation. He was crowned champion in a hail of confetti before being joined on stage by his parents and other relatives, and will receive $50,000 in prize money. Asked what he would do next, Zaki replied, "I'm probably going to stay up the entire night or something." Zaki, a resident of Allen, Texas, had nearly been eliminated in round 18 when he rushed, and stumbled over, the spelling of "commelina," a genus for some 200 species of dayflowers. But his two fellow finalists at that point, including Kadam, likewise fumbled their words, leading to a 19th round in which all three boys returned, but only two - Zaki and Kadam - survived to face off in the decisive 20th round. Sarv Dharavane, an 11-year-old boy from Tucker, Georgia, finished in third place after misspelling "eserine," the antidote of choice for many poisons, with one "s" too many. Thursday's total roster of nine finalists emerged from three days of competition at a convention center outside Washington, D.C., among 243 contestants aged eight to 14 who advanced from regional competitions across the country. Challenged with some of the most difficult and least-used words that English has to offer, many young competitors amazed spectators with their ability to produce the correct spellings with poise and precision. The Scripps media group has sponsored the event since 1925, with three years off during World War Two and one more for the COVID pandemic in 2020. Most competitors were from the United States, coming from all 50 states. Other spellers came from Canada, the Bahamas, Germany, Ghana, Kuwait, Nigeria, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands.
Reuters
32 minutes ago
- Business
- Reuters
Junior Caminero (6 RBIs), Rays blow out Astros
May 30 - Junior Caminero notched a career-high six RBIs, highlighted by a three-run, opposite-field homer that capped a five-run seventh inning, as the Tampa Bay Rays throttled the host Houston Astros 13-3 on Thursday in the opener of a four-game series. A half-inning after the Astros completed a rally from a three-run deficit, the Rays responded when the first six batters in the top of the seventh reached safely against reliever Bryan King (3-1). King entered his 26th appearance third in the majors with a 23.7 hard-hit percentage. The Rays immediately challenged his standing, starting with a leadoff single from Josh Lowe that produced an exit velocity of 99.4 mph. King hit Brandon Lowe and surrendered an RBI single to Yandy Diaz that snapped the 3-3 deadlock. Jonathan Aranda produced an RBI double with a 96.8 mph exit velocity that upped the lead to 5-3. Caminero followed with the decisive blow, a 385-foot blast to right-center at 103.5 mph that scored Diaz and Aranda and built the lead to 8-3. Caminero and Brandon Lowe share the team lead with 11 home runs. King, who recorded only one out, had allowed four earned runs all season before the Rays tagged him with five runs on five hits. Tampa Bay improved to 8-1 over its last nine games while Houston fell to 7-2 over its last nine home games. Caminero added a two-run double in the Rays' five-run eighth, his third hit. Diaz, Aranda and Jose Caballero recorded two hits each for Tampa Bay, which totaled 14 hits. The Rays jumped to a 3-0 lead courtesy of a Diaz sacrifice fly in the first off starter Ryan Gusto, a throwing error by Yainer Diaz that allowed Chandler Simpson to score in the fourth and a Caminero RBI single that plated Aranda with two outs in the fifth. Yainer Diaz led the charge back with a 430-foot blast to center off Rays starter Shane Baz, his sixth home run keying a two-run fifth. Jose Altuve blasted his ninth homer in the sixth off Baz, a leadoff shot that knotted the score at 3-3. Over 5 2/3 innings, Baz yielded three runs on seven with no walks and three strikeouts. Edwin Uceta (4-1) relieved Baz and worked out of a first-and-third situation to end the inning. Gusto gave up two runs on four hits, walked three and struck out four in 3 2/3 innings. --Field Level Media
New York Times
38 minutes ago
- Entertainment
- New York Times
By pulling Jake Oettinger, Pete DeBoer tried to spark the Stars. Instead, he burned them
DALLAS — Casey DeSmith, his legs already splayed in the crease, was fighting with all he had. There was no way he was giving up on this play, no matter how many Edmonton Oilers bodies were converging on him. With Adam Henrique on the doorstep, DeSmith made a dramatic and downright balletic move to stop him — flinging his left arm behind him for balance and furiously stabbing the right side of the crease with his right pad. His head was on a swivel, looking left and right, right and left. Advertisement DeSmith was battling, man. One problem: Jeff Skinner's shot from the other side already had skittered between DeSmith's knees, ticked off his inner right thigh, and found the back of the net. Like a full second earlier. Hell, Skinner already was celebrating while DeSmith was kicking at a phantom puck. So, yeah, benching Jake Oettinger seven minutes into an elimination game didn't work. Dallas Stars coach Pete DeBoer panicked. There's no other way to look at this. Oettinger gave up two goals on the first two shots he faced in Game 5 of the Western Conference final on Thursday, and DeBoer — staring down a third straight third-round loss, and a second straight third-round loss to the Edmonton Oilers — got desperate. Benching Mavrik Bourque for one of the most careless high-sticking penalties you'll ever see, one that led directly to Corey Perry's game-opening power-play goal, wouldn't have done much. Benching Esa Lindell or Cody Ceci, two of his best defensemen, for letting Mattias Janmark get behind him for a breakaway goal less than five minutes later, might not have resonated, either. So, DeBoer called timeout and started barking at his team. And then he sent DeSmith over the boards for the first time in more than a month, calling a bewildered Oettinger back to the bench just as he was skating toward his net. Oettinger, the Stars' soothing safety net. Oettinger, their best player in this postseason — the ice-cold-for-a-second-time-in-these-playoffs Mikko Rantanen very much included. Oettinger, who had given up goals on a point-blank power-play one-timer and a breakaway, neither of which could be pinned on him. 'It's unacceptable for us to hang him out like that,' Robertson said of Oettinger. 'The whole playoffs he's been our guy, the whole season. Just unacceptable from us.' Advertisement DeBoer hardly absolved Oettinger after the game, which the Stars lost 6-3. In fact, he came awfully close to throwing him under the Oilers' team bus. 'We had talked endlessly in this series about trying to play with a lead, and obviously we were in a 2-0 hole right away,' DeBoer said. 'I didn't take that lightly and I didn't blame it all on Jake, but the reality is, if you go back to last year's playoffs, he's lost six of seven games to Edmonton. And we give up two goals on two shots in an elimination game. So it was partly to spark our team and wake them up. And partly knowing that status quo had not been working, and that's a pretty big sample size.' That comment was almost as stunning as the decision. It's one thing to send a message to your team, to try to wake them up, to try to defibrillate them with as powerful a shock as you can muster. It's quite another to remove their security blanket seven minutes into the biggest game of the year. DeBoer felt like he had to try something. He just tried the wrong thing. None of this is meant to be a dig on DeSmith, a perfectly adequate backup goaltender in whom the Stars have plenty of confidence. And none of this is to say that, if Oettinger were still in net, Connor McDavid wouldn't have scored the goal that ultimately sunk the Stars' season, a breathtaking breakaway late in the second period off a Mattias Ekholm blocked shot to give Edmonton a 4-2 lead. Roope Hintz, miraculously, kept up with McDavid at full speed, and was all over him, defending the most talented player in the history of the game as well as anyone possibly could have. McDavid scored anyway. That's what McDavid does. That's who McDavid is. Maybe that soft Skinner shot finds its way through Oettinger, too. Maybe Evander Kane's soul-crushing bank shot off Esa Lindell's foot less than three minutes after Robertson's second goal of the game in the opening minute of the third period eludes Oettinger, as well. It's not as if Oettinger hasn't been victimized by some fluky bounces and own-goals in this postseason, after all. Advertisement But he probably stops one of those, right? Or both? Maybe even all three? He's one of the best goaltenders in the world. A clutch one, at that, one who has historically gotten better as the games have gotten bigger. But we'll never know, because DeBoer cut off his nose to spite his face. He tried to light a fire under his team and instead set the whole season on fire. As they might say deep in the heart of Texas, you dance with the one who brung you, and nobody had done more to bring the Stars this far than Oettinger. To remove him from the game after seven minutes was simply coaching malpractice. But let's not pin another third-round failure on one decision by DeBoer. Because there's plenty of blame to go around. The Stars' vaunted depth failed them. Rantanen's spectacular six-game heater was the only time this team looked truly dangerous. Robertson, who missed the first round with a leg injury and who was invisible in the second round as he worked his way back up to game speed, gave the Stars too little, too late, with four goals in his last three games after scoring zero in his first eight. Heck, Corey Perry's power-play goal to open the scoring was his seventh of the postseason — that's as many as Robertson, Matt Duchene, Jamie Benn, Evgenii Dadonov and Mason Marchment had combined over 18 games. And Perry is 40 years old. 'I'm just upset I wasn't able to do it earlier,' Robertson said of his late-series surge. The Stars' toughness failed them. Where was Benn, their leader and roughneck captain, when Evan Bouchard gave Hintz a dirty slash on the top of his foot — in the exact same place Darnell Nurse injured him and cost him a game and a half — in Game 4? If ever there was 'intent to injure,' it was that very intentional Bouchard chop far behind the play. The Stars did nothing in response. Absolutely nothing. You don't have to go around retaliating with cheap shots, but you do have to push back, throw a hit, say, 'Hey, we saw that and we didn't like it.' All we got from Dallas was mealy mouthed platitudes. DeBoer merely said it was the officials' job to do something. Lindell and other Stars players said that scoring goals was the best response. And then they didn't score any. Benn started throwing his weight around a bit in Game 5, but it was far too late to be meaningful. And, yes, the Stars' coaching failed them. DeBoer is an excellent coach, there's no denying it. He's been in the Western Conference final six times in the last eight seasons with three different teams. It's a remarkable run that speaks to his deft hand and interpersonal skills. The 9-0 record in Game 7s doesn't hurt, either. But he couldn't coax any offense out of his team all postseason, other than Rantanen's run. He couldn't do anything to stave off the Oilers' brilliant power play. And in the biggest game of the season, he panicked and made the absolute wrong decision, removing his best player from the game with 52 minutes and 51 seconds left to play. Advertisement The Stars' calling card under DeBoer has been their poise, their unflappability. We heard it a dozen times over the last six weeks, from Rantanen when he was struggling and Rantanen when he was soaring, from Oettinger early in series and Oettinger late in series, from DeBoer after another Game 1 loss and DeBoer after another Game 7 win. But on Thursday night, in the biggest game of the season, that poise abandoned them. As did reason, logic, common sense. To lose a series to the Edmonton Oilers is nothing to be ashamed about. To lose with a willing and able Jake Oettinger on your bench is.
Al Jazeera
an hour ago
- Politics
- Al Jazeera
Musk says 50-50 chance of uncrewed Starship to Mars by late 2026
Elon Musk has said that he believes there is a 50 percent chance that his Mars spacecraft will make its first uncrewed voyage to the red planet at the end of 2026, just two days after the latest test-flight setback for his SpaceX firm. Musk presented a detailed Starship development timeline in a video posted online by his Los Angeles area-based rocket company on Thursday. The South African-born billionaire and SpaceX owner said his latest timeline for reaching Mars depended on whether the craft can complete several challenging technical feats during testing, specifically a post-launch refuelling manoeuvre in Earth's orbit. In a video on social media platform X, which he also owns, Musk said his Starbase industrial complex and rocket launch facility in Texas was the 'gateway to Mars'. 'It is where we are going to develop the technology necessary to take humanity and civilisation and life as we know it to another planet for the first time in the four and a half billion year history of Earth,' he said. The end of 2026 is when a slim window opens offering the closest trip between Earth and Mars, as the planets align around the sun once every two years. This shorter distance would take seven to nine months to transit by spacecraft. The first flight to Mars would carry a simulated crew consisting of Tesla-built humanoid Optimus robots. Human crews would then follow in the second or third landings. In the video, Musk said he believed there was a 50-50 chance SpaceX would meet the 2026 deadline for the first mission. He added that if Starship was not ready by that time, SpaceX would wait another two years before trying again. Musk's announcement comes just a day after he confirmed his departure from the administration of United States President Donald Trump, following a tumultuous few months in which his various businesses – including SpaceX and electric car maker Tesla – have come under growing strain. Musk's unofficial role leading Trump's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has placed him in the crosshairs, as he has faced intense criticism for overseeing what has been decried as haphazard cuts to government programmes. Faced with plunging stock prices and shareholder concern – most notably at Tesla – Musk said this week he would scale back his government role to focus on his private ventures. In 2016, Musk said he wanted to send an uncrewed SpaceX vehicle to Mars as early as 2018, while he was targeting 2024 to launch the first crewed mission there. But the mercurial entrepreneur's ambitions for interplanetary exploration have been beset by repeated setbacks over recent years. Most recently, on Tuesday, Musk was due to deliver a live webcast from the company's Starbase in Texas following a ninth test flight of Starship that evening. But the speech was cancelled without notice after Starship spun out of control and disintegrated about 30 minutes after launch, roughly halfway through its flight path, failing to achieve some of its most important test goals. The mega-rocket re-entered the Earth's atmosphere earlier than planned on Wednesday after a fuel leak triggered uncontrollable spinning in space, according to the Reuters news agency. Posting on X after the failed flight, Musk said the test produced a lot of 'good data to review' as he promised a faster launch 'cadence' for the next several attempts. There was also a failed launch in January – when the craft blew up moments after liftoff, raining debris over parts of the Caribbean and forcing commercial jetliners to change course – as well as in March. Musk, who has spent billions of dollars on Starship's development, says the initiative is part of SpaceX's plan to colonise Mars. The firm is also working with US government agency NASA to return humans to the Moon in 2027 onboard Starship, more than half a century since astronauts last walked on the lunar surface in 1972. These efforts are a stepping stone towards launching NASA astronauts to Mars sometime in the 2030s.
Associated Press
an hour ago
- Entertainment
- Associated Press
Junior Caminero's 6 RBIs power Rays past Astros, ending Houston's 4-game win streak
HOUSTON (AP) — Junior Caminero homered and drove in a career-high six RBIs to lead the Tampa Bay Rays to a 13-3 win over the Houston Astros on Thursday night. The game was tied 3-all with no outs and two on in the seventh when Yandy Díaz's RBI single put the Rays on top. Tampa Bay made it 5-3 when Jonathan Aranda reached and Díaz scored on a fielding error by first baseman Victor Caratini. Caminero then connected off Bryan King (3-1) on his 11th homer this season to push the lead to 8-3. The 21-year-old Caminero, who finished a triple shy of the cycle, drove in two more runs on a double in Tampa Bay's five-run eighth that made it 13-3. Jose Altuve and Yainer Diaz hit solo homers for the Astros, whose four-game winning streak was halted. Altuve tied it at 3 with his shot to left-center field off Shane Baz with no outs in the sixth. It's the third home run in three games for Altuve, who went deep twice Tuesday night. The Rays took an early lead when Díaz drove in a run on a sacrifice fly in the first inning. Simpson walked to start the fourth and stole second base. He swiped third after a strikeout by Kameron Misner and scored on the play on a throwing error by Diaz, making it 2-0. The Rays extended the lead to 3-0 on an RBI single by Caminero with two outs in the fifth. Diaz homered with one out in the bottom of the inning before a double by Cam Smith. There were two outs in the inning when Mauricio Dubón drove in Smith with a single to cut the lead to 3-2. Houston starter Ryan Gusto allowed four hits and two runs with four walks in 3 2/3 innings. Utility player César Salazar pitched the ninth for the Astros after they used five relievers following Gusto's early exit. He hit one batter in a scoreless inning. Baz yielded seven hits and three runs in 5 2/3 innings. Edwin Uceta (4-1) got the last out of the sixth for the win. Key moment The three-run homer by Caminero that broke the game open in the seventh. Key stat The Rays had five stolen bases Thursday to give them an MLB-leading 81 this season. Three were by Simpson to bring his season total to 19, which ranks third in the majors. Up next Houston LHP Framber Valdez (4-4, 3.39 ERA) opposes RHP Ryan Pepiot (3-5, 3.55) when the series continues Friday night. ___ AP MLB:
