By MARGERY A. BECK, Associated Press

Family and friends of Sarah Milgrim, one of two Israeli Embassy staffers fatally shot last week in an apparently politically motivated ambush in Washington, D.C., gathered for her funeral Tuesday in the Kansas community where she grew up.

Milgrim, a 26-year-old from the Kansas City suburb of Prairie Village, Kansas, was leaving a reception for young diplomats at the Capital Jewish Museum alongside 30-year-old Yaron Lischinsky on May 21 when they were shot to death. A suspect, 31-year-old Elias Rodriguez, was arrested and shouted “Free Palestine” as he was led away. Charging documents said he later told police, “I did it for Palestine, I did it for Gaza.”

Lischinsky had bought an engagement ring before the shooting and was planning to propose to Milgrim in the coming days, those who knew the couple have said.

A funeral procession leaves Congregation Beth Torah after a funeral for Sarah Milgrim, a staffer at the Israeli Embassy who was killed last week outside a Washington Jewish museum, Tuesday, May 27, 2025, in Overland Park, Kan. (AP Photo/Charlie Riedel)

Instead of an upcoming wedding, those close to Milgrim prepared to eulogize her at a private service Tuesday at Congregation Beth Torah in Overland Park, Kansas, the temple she attended through high school with her family.

Milgrim earned a bachelor’s degree in environmental studies from the University of Kansas in 2021. She was remembered as a warm, uplifting presence at Shabbat dinners and holiday gatherings at the Chabad Center for Jewish Life on campus.

“She believed in connections, in building community and bringing people together,” Rabbi Zalman Tiechtel said in the days after her death. He also recalled that she “was filled with so much love.”

FILE – People gather to light candles in a makeshift memorial to honor Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Milgrim who were killed as they left an event at the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington, during a candlelight vigil outside of the White House in Washington, Thursday, May 22, 2025. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana, file)

After graduating, Milgrim worked at at a Tel Aviv-based organization centered on technology training and conflict dialogue for young Palestinians and Israelis, according to her LinkedIn profile. She had been trained in religious engagement and peacebuilding by the United States Institute of Peace, an organization that promotes conflict resolution and was created by the U.S. Congress.

After earning a master’s degree in international affairs from American University in 2023, she went to work at the Israeli Embassy, where her job involved organizing events and missions to Israel.

A vigil held in her hometown last week drew a standing-room only crowd, including her college roommate, Amanda Birger. Birger described Milgrim as an animal lover and a passionate advocate for the environment.

“She was very tactful about how she used her voice, which sometimes came off as cautious,” Birger said. “But when it looked like she wasn’t speaking up, it’s because she was trying to keep the peace.”

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Milgrim would have been teenager when her Kansas community was rocked by another deadly antisemitic attack in 2014. Frazier Glenn Miller Jr., an avowed anti-Semite and white supremacist, fatally shot three people at two Jewish sites in Overland Park in April of that year. At his trial, Miller openly stated that he targeted Jews for death — though none of his victims were Jewish. Miller was convicted in August 2015 and later sentenced to death.

Sheila Katz, CEO of the National Council of Jewish Women, lauded Milgrim as a point person for her organization with women’s groups, LGBTQ communities and multi-faith groups.

“She accomplished so much in her short life, and she deserves to be remembered for all the things she brought to this world,” she said.

Before her work at the embassy, Milgrim was studying whether friendships between Arabs and Israelis could promote peace, Katz said.

“We knew something like this could happen,” she said. “I just don’t think we thought it would happen to her.”

By JOHN LEICESTER, Associated Press

PARIS (AP) — They were just playfighting.

That was French President Emmanuel Macron’s explanation Monday for video images that showed his wife, Brigitte, pushing her husband away with both hands on his face before they disembarked from their plane to start a tour of Southeast Asia this weekend.

The moment quickly made headlines in France, with media trying to decipher the interaction that cameras spotted through the just-opened door of the plane. The headline of a story on the website of the daily Le Parisien newspaper asked: “Slap or ‘squabble’? The images of Emmanuel and Brigitte Macron disembarking in Vietnam trigger a lot of comment.”

Macron later told reporters that the couple — married since 2007 after meeting at the high school where he was a student and she was a teacher — were simply joking around.

“We are squabbling and, rather, joking with my wife,” he said, adding that the incident was being overblown into “a sort of geo-planetary catastrophe.”

In video taken by The Associated Press as the Macrons arrived in Hanoi, Vietnam, on Sunday, a uniformed man can be seen pulling open the plane door and revealing the president standing inside, dressed in a suit and talking to someone who wasn’t visible.

Brigitte Macron’s arms — in red — were seen reaching out and pushing Macron away, with one hand covering his mouth and part of his nose while the other was on his jaw. The French leader recoiled, turning his head away. Then, apparently realizing that he was on camera, he broke into a smile and gave a little wave.

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In subsequent images, Macron and his wife, wearing a red jacket, appeared at the top of the stairs. He offered an arm but she didn’t take it. They walked down the carpeted stairs side by side.

The French leader argued that the images and reaction to them offered a cautionary tale about disinformation in the social media age, noting that in recent weeks, other videos had been used to circulate made-up stories about him.

“Everyone needs to calm down,” he said.

His office also downplayed the interaction.

“It was a moment where the president and his wife were decompressing one last time before the start of the trip by horsing around. It’s a moment of complicity. It was all that was needed to give ammunition to the conspiracy theorists,” his office said.

Brigitte Macron was Brigitte Auzière, a married mother of three children, when they met at his high school. A teacher, she supervised the drama club where Emmanuel Macron, a literature lover, was a member.

He moved to Paris for his last year of high school, but promised to marry Brigitte. She later moved to the French capital to join him and divorced before they finally married.

OXON HILL, Md. — The best young spellers in the English language are competing at the Scripps National Spelling Bee, which celebrates its 100th anniversary this year.

The first bee was held in 1925, when the Louisville Courier-Journal invited other newspapers to host spelling bees and send their champions to Washington. The bee is now held just outside the nation’s capital, at a convention center on the banks of the Potomac River. It starts Tuesday and concludes Thursday night.

This is the 97th bee; it was canceled from 1943 to 1945 because of World War II and again in 2020 because of the COVID-19 pandemic. This year’s champion will be the 110th, because the bee ended in a two-way tie several times and an eight-way tie in 2019.

How can I watch the Scripps National Spelling Bee?

The bee is broadcast and streamed on channels and platforms owned by Scripps, a Cincinnati-based media company.

Tuesday, May 27: Preliminary rounds streamed on Bounce XL, Grit Xtra, Laff More and spellingbee.com from 8 a.m. to 4:40 p.m. EDT.
Wednesday, May 28: Quarterfinals streamed on Bounce XL, Grit Xtra, Laff More and spellingbee.com from 8 a.m. to 12:45 p.m. Semifinals streamed on Bounce XL, Grit Xtra, Laff More and spellingbee.com from 2:30 to 6:30 p.m. Semifinals broadcast on ION on tape-delay from 8-10 p.m.
Thursday, May 29: Finals broadcast on ION from 8-10 p.m.

Who is competing at the Scripps National Spelling Bee?

The bee features 243 spellers, with at least one from each of the 50 states and the District of Columbia; as well as spellers from U.S. territories Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands and the Northern Mariana Islands; and from Canada, the Bahamas, Germany, Ghana, Kuwait and Nigeria.

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)

Faizan Zaki, last year’s runner-up, is back after losing to Bruhat Soma in a lightning-round tiebreaker known as a “spell-off.” He’s a 13-year-old seventh-grader from Allen, Texas. If he falls short again, he would have one more year of eligibility. He has won several online bees that top spellers compete in as preparation, including the Words of Wisdom Spelling Bee and the South Asian Spelling Bee.

Other possible contenders:

Aishwarya Kallakuri, a 14-year-old eighth-grader from Concord, North Carolina, and winner of the SpellPundit National Spelling Bee.
Avinav Prem Anand, a 14-year-old eighth-grader from Columbus, Ohio, who finished second to Faizan in the Words of Wisdom bee.
Vedanth Raju, a 12-year-old seventh-grader from Aurora, Colorado, and the younger brother of 2022 runner-up Vikram Raju.
Harini Murali, a 13-year-old eighth-grader from Edison, New Jersey, a finalist last year and the younger sister of Navneeth Murali, who would have been a top contender in the 2020 bee had it not been canceled because of COVID-19.
Tarini Nandakumar, a 14-year-old eighth-grader from Round Rock, Texas, a previous finalist who is competing for the fifth time.

What are the rules of the Scripps National Spelling Bee?

Spellers qualify by advancing through regional bees hosted by sponsors around the country. In order to compete, spellers must not have advanced beyond the eighth grade or be older than 15.

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Spellers must get through two preliminary rounds, quizzing them on words from a list provided in advance: one spelling round and one multiple-choice vocabulary round.

Those who make it through the preliminaries sit for a written spelling and vocabulary test, with the top 100 or so finishers advancing to the quarterfinals. The words for the test, and for all subsequent rounds, are taken from the Merriam-Webster Unabridged dictionary.

Throughout the quarterfinals and semifinals, spellers are eliminated at the microphone through oral spelling or vocabulary questions.

About a dozen spellers advance to the finals. When only two spellers remain, Scripps has the option to use a lightning-round tiebreaker known as a “spell-off” to determine the champion. However, Scripps has taken away the requirement that the spell-off begin at a specific time, giving bee judges more discretion to let the competition play out.

What are the prizes for the Scripps National Spelling Bee champion?

The winner receives a custom trophy and more than $50,000 in cash and prizes. Here are the prize payouts:

First place: $52,500 in cash, reference works from Encyclopedia Britannica and Merriam-Webster, and a $1,000 contribution to a school of the champion’s choice.
Second place: $25,000.
Third place: $15,000.
Fourth place: $10,000.
Fifth place: $5,000.
Sixth place: $2,500.
All other finalists: $2,000.

Ben Nuckols has covered the Scripps National Spelling Bee since 2012. Follow his work here.

Wave upon wave of fans clad in purple and in a celebratory mood will make their way to Xcel Energy Center on Wednesday evening. In this place where professional men’s teams win championships roughly as often as Halley’s Comet makes an appearance, fans of the local pro women’s hockey club, the Minnesota Frost, will party like it’s 2024 and watch their favorite players hoist the Walter Cup, just like they did a year ago at this time.

All seemed right in the State of Hockey one year ago, as the Frost — then known simply as PWHL Minnesota — took the stage in their home rink, with speeches from coach Ken Klee, general manager Natalie Darwitz and key players in the team’s first title run, which saw Minnesota defeat Boston in five games to claim the league’s inaugural championship.

Klee had joined the Minnesota team just days before their first game when their initial pick for a head coach, Charlie Burggraf, stepped down. Living in Denver, Klee was offered the job by PWHL officials, and a few days after Christmas 2023, he hopped in his pickup truck for the 14-hour drive to St. Paul.

One can only hope that what comes next after the 2025 title celebration is a bit more calm than what happened a year ago.

Just days after that 2024 celebration, Darwitz was ousted from her position with the team, revealing an internal conflict between the former prep, Olympic and Gophers star and Klee, among others behind the scenes. With that drama fresh in everyone’s mind and Minnesota hosting the 2024 PWHL draft in St. Paul, Klee took over as the general manager on a temporary basis. From an optics standpoint, draft night could hardly have gone worse for the local hockey club.

While the league’s five other teams had their first round picks on stage, Frost first rounder Clair Thompson wasn’t there, and she spoke to reporters via Zoom an hour or so after her name was called.

With some fans holding signs in support of Darwitz and booing Klee when he would come on stage, the Frost took controversial Wisconsin standout Britta Curl-Salemme in Round 2. Curl’s on-ice acumen has never been questioned, but her past social media history has drawn the attention of the LGBTQ+ community, and questions were immediately raised about how she would fit in the Minnesota locker room.

In Round 3, the Frost picked Czech standout Klara Hymlarova, who had played collegiately at St. Cloud State. They specifically did not grab former Hill-Murray and Gophers standout Abigail Boreen, who had played a key role in Minnesota’s 2024 PWHL title run, but had to re-enter the draft because she had been signed under a series of 10-day standard player agreements.

Two picks later, Montreal drafted Boreen, prompting another cascade of boos from the Minnesota fans in attendance.

By the time Klee met with reporters in the waning minutes of draft day, it was clear that the Minnesota Frost were now his team, and his alone. While Melissa Caruso was named the Frost’s new general manager in September, the title defense effort was clearly on Klee’s shoulders, with fans expecting nothing less than another lap around the rink with the Walter Cup.

With a week to go in the 2025 regular season, it looked like a failed effort.

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Boreen was one of the top point producers for a Montreal team that was best in the PWHL in the regular season. Meanwhile, in Minnesota, following a 2-0 loss to last-place New York in their home finale on April 27, the Frost were on the outside of the playoff picture. But they went on the road for decisive wins at Ottawa and at Boston to close the regular season, just barely squeaking into the four-team postseason field.

The Frost won a high-scoring, first-round playoffs series with Toronto, then switched gears and won three out of four games versus Ottawa in the championship round with each game ending 2-1 in overtime. Thompson, Curl-Salemme and Hymlarova all made important contributions, with Curl scoring the tying and winning goals in Game 2, all while hearing a cascade of fan derision every time she touched the puck in Ottawa.

In the victorious postgame locker room on Monday, Klee was doused with a tub of water, as has become a standard practice when celebrating a title.

Starting a year ago, the Frost coach tuned out all of the noise from a hockey-mad, and quite provincial, Minnesota fanbase that doesn’t always welcome outsiders, and directed another somewhat improbable title run.

Klee has earned the celebration that follows.