Soft-spoken but brimming with confidence, Dev Shah asked precise questions about obscure Greek roots, rushed through his second-to-last word and rolled to the Scripps National Spelling Bee title Thursday night.
Dev, a 14-year-old from Largo, Florida, had his spelling career interrupted by the pandemic, then didn't make it out of his regional bee last year. He got through his highly competitive regional this year for his third and final try at the national title, and he ended up holding the trophy over his head as confetti fell.
His winning word was “psammophile,” a layup for a speller of his caliber.
“Psammo meaning sand, Greek?” he asked. “Phile, meaning love, Greek?”
He soaked up the moment by asking for the word to be used in a sentence, something he described a day earlier as a stalling tactic. Then he put his hands over his face as he was declared the winner.
Charlotte Walsh, a 14-year-old from Arlington, Virginia, was the runner-up.
Americans across the country this weekend celebrated Juneteenth, marking the relatively new national holiday with cookouts, parades and other gatherings as they commemorated the end of slavery after the Civil War.
Alina Hauptman of Best Friends Animal Society highlights some new pets up for adoption and gives some pointers on how to keep pets safe from wildfire smoke.
If you thought getting older meant slowing down, we want to introduce you to a group that's proving you're never too old to soar through the skies. News 12 visited an airport in Danbury, Connecticut to meet a hobbyist group called the United Flying Octogenarians.
Nat and Alex Wolff, the New York-native brother duo, both of whom started out on the Nickelodeon hit series "The Naked Brothers Band," joined Cheddar News to discuss their new album, "Table for Two."
All major social media platforms do poorly at protecting LGBTQ+ users from hate speech and harassment — especially those who are transgender, non-binary or gender non-conforming, the advocacy group GLAAD said Thursday. But Twitter is the worst.
