内容摘要：this year’s spring show at the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute, will be launched as usual by the

this year’s spring show at the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute, will be launched as usual by the

at a convention center outside Washington. Mastering them can require an out-of-fashion skill: rote memorization.Avinav Prem Anand, 14, of Columbus, Ohio, competes in the first preliminary round of the Scripps National Spelling Bee, Tuesday, May 27, 2025, in Oxon Hill, Md. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)

Avinav Prem Anand, 14, of Columbus, Ohio, competes in the first preliminary round of the Scripps National Spelling Bee, Tuesday, May 27, 2025, in Oxon Hill, Md. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)“Geographical words can be super hard sometimes because there’s no roots to break it down or sometimes you don’t get a language of origin. It will say ‘unknown origin’ or the dictionary doesn’t say,” said Avinav Prem Anand, a 14-year-old from Columbus, Ohio, who’s competing this year for the fourth and final time. “Basically, you have to memorize them because that’s the only thing you can do.”Avinav put his preparation to use in Tuesday’s preliminary rounds when he breezed through Sapporo, the capital of the northern Japanese island of Hokkaido. Others were not so fortunate:

of Fergus Falls, Minnesota, heard the dreaded bell because he was unfamiliar with Terre Haute, the western Indiana city. He went with “terrahote.”Last year, the Randhawa family of Corona, California, saw its decade-long spelling journey end when Avi misspelled Abitibi, the name of a shallow lake in northeastern Ontario and western Quebec.

“It’s beyond the pale of what anybody would consider a reasonable geographical word, a small lake in Canada that not even my Canadian friends had heard of. Not even a top-50 size lake in Canada,” Rudveep Randhawa said. “It’s just bizarre. In all the years with geographical words, we had seen words of some significance, they may be capitals of smaller countries, or they may be some port city that had significance, things of that nature.”

Participants stand up as they compete during the first preliminary round of the Scripps National Spelling Bee at the Gaylord National Resort & Convention Center, Tuesday, May 27, 2025, in Oxon Hill, Md. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)In the past few years, Nepal’s LGBTQ+ community made rapid advancements in securing their rights. The nation became one of the first in Asia to

. The constitution adopted in 2015 explicitly stated there can be no discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.The U.S. was among the biggest donors for the LGBTQ+ rights campaign.

Over the years, USAID and others stepped in and partnered with help centers to support initiatives like HIV prevention and care and safe-sex counselling. The U.S. funds were vital for running the centers and clinics that helped with distributing free condoms, screenings and follow-up treatment for people with HIV. Now the USAID office in Nepal is closed.With most of that funding gone, those gains are at risk.