内容摘要：The Stars have had only one playoff series since 2006 that went fewer than six games. That was when they won the Western Conference final in five games over the DeBoer-coached Golden Knights in the 2020 playoffs.

The Stars have had only one playoff series since 2006 that went fewer than six games. That was when they won the Western Conference final in five games over the DeBoer-coached Golden Knights in the 2020 playoffs.

The bee began in 1925 when the Louisville Courier-Journal invited other newspapers to host spelling bees and send their champions to Washington. For the past 14 years, Scripps has hosted the competition at a convention center just outside the nation’s capital, but the bee returns downtown next year to Constitution Hall, a nearly century-old concert venue near the White House.Faizan has been spelling for more than half his life. He competed in the 2019 bee as a 7-year-old, getting in through a wild-card program that has since been discontinued. He qualified again in 2023 and made the semifinals before last year’s second-place finish.

“One thing that differentiates him is he really has a passion for this. In his free time, when he’s not studying for the bee, he’s literally looking up archaic, obsolete words that have no chance of being asked,” Bruhat said. “I don’t think he cares as much about the title as his passion for language and words.”Faizan had no regrets about showing that enthusiasm, even though it nearly cost him.“No offense to Bruhat, but I think he really took the bee a little too seriously,” Faizan said. “I decided to have fun with this bee, and I did well, and here I am.”

The story has been updated to correct the number of consecutive words spelled correctly by six spellers to 26, from 28, and to remove a reference to Nupur Lala being among the past champions who attended.Nuckols has covered the Scripps National Spelling Bee since 2012. Follow his work

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump faces the challenge of convincing Republican senators, global investors, voters and even Elon Musk that he won’t bury the federal government in debt with his

The response so far from financial markets has been skeptical as TrumpOne way to shift the trade in goods would be for Europe to buy more liquefied natural gas by ship from the U.S. To do so, the EU could cut off the remaining imports of Russian pipeline gas and LNG. The commission is preparing legislation to force an end to those purchases -- last year, some 19% of imports — by the end of 2027.

That would push European private companies to look for other sources of gas such as the U.S. However the shift away from Russia is already in motion and that “has obviously not been enough to satisfy,” said Laurent Ruseckas, a natural gas markets expert at S&P Global Commodities Insights Research.The commission doesn’t buy gas itself but can use “moral suasion” to convince companies to turn to U.S. suppliers in coming years but “this is no silver bullet and nothing that can yield immediate results,” said Simone Tagliapietra, an energy analyst at the Bruegel think tank in Brussels.

Europe could buy more from U.S. defense contractors as part of its effort to deter further aggression from Russia after the invasion of Ukraine, says Carsten Brzeski, global chief of macro at ING bank. If European countries did increase their overall defense spending — another of Trump’s demands — their voters are likely to insist that the purchases go to defense contractors in Europe, not America, said Stokes of the German Marshall Fund. One way around that political obstacle would be for U.S. defense companies to build factories in Europe, but “that would take time,’' he said.The EU could also reduce its 10% tax on foreign cars— one of Trump’s long-standing grievances against Europe. “The United States is not going to export that many cars to Europe anyway ... The Germans would be most resistant, but I don’t think they’re terribly worried about competition from America,’' said Edward Alden, senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. ”That would be a symbolic victory for the president.’'