Snigdha Nandipati wins fifth Spelling Bee crown for Indian-Americans

Washington, June 1: Snigdha Nandipati, a 14-year-old Indian American girl, correctly spelled ''guetapens'', French for ambush, to win the 2012 Scripps National Spelling Bee crown and retain the coveted honour for the community for the fifth year in a row.

"It's a miracle," said Nandipati from San Diego, California, as she pipped fellow Indian American Stuti Mishra, 14, of West Melbourne, Florida who stumbled over "schwarmerei", German for extravagant enthusiasm, in the last round of the final at a convention centre outside Washington Thursday night.

Nandipati, an avid reader and coin collector who aspires to become a psychiatrist or neurosurgeon, gets $30,000 in cash, a trophy, a $2,500 savings bond, a $5,000 scholarship, $2,600 in reference works from the Encyclopedia Britannica and an online language course.

Nandipati plays violin and is fluent in Telugu. She is the fifth consecutive Indian-American winner and 10th in the last 14 years.

The Indian-American community's victory run began in 1999 when Nupur Lala captured the crown and was later featured in the documentary "Spellbound".

Anamika Veeramani scored a hat-trick for Indian-Americans by taking the crown in 2010.

With Arvind Mahankali, 12, of Bayside Hills, New York, a finalist for the last two years, the three Indian American kids were the top spellers left in the last round from among the nine who made the finals Thursday.

Forty-one spellers, meanwhile, heard the dreaded bell that signals an incorrect spelling in the semi-finals. Those included one of the favorites, 10-year-old Vanya Shivashankar of Olathe, Kansas. The younger sister of the 2009 champion got the only perfect score in the preliminary rounds.

Breezily confident through the first two semifinal rounds, Shivashankar was flummoxed by "pejerrey", a small fish. She went with "perjere".

Another Indian American fifth-time competitor, Rahul Malayappan, also did not make the finals.

The finals did not include the youngest speller in bee history, six-year-old Lori Anne Madison of Lake Ridge, Virginia, who was eliminated during the preliminary rounds when she misspelled one of her two words -- "ingulvies" (the crop, or craw, of birds) -- and then fell short on her written test.

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In meeting with Zohran Mamdani, Trump repeats claim he stopped India-Pak war

Agencies

November 22,2025

New York/Washington: US President Donald Trump has again claimed to have solved the conflict between India and Pakistan, repeating his assertion during a meeting with New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani in the Oval Office.

Mamdani flew to Washington DC for his first meeting with Trump in the White House on Friday. Trump said he “enjoyed” the meeting, which he described as “great.”

During remarks in the Oval Office, with Mamdani standing next to him, Trump repeated his claim that he solved the May conflict between India and Pakistan.

"I did eight peace deals of countries, including India and Pakistan,” he said.

On Wednesday, Trump had said he threatened to put 350 per cent tariffs on India and Pakistan if they did not end their conflict, repeating his claim that he solved the fighting between the nuclear-armed neighbours and that Prime Minister Narendra Modi had called him to say “we're not going to go to war.”

Since May 10, when Trump announced on social media that India and Pakistan had agreed to a “full and immediate” ceasefire after a “long night” of talks mediated by Washington, he has repeated his claim over 60 times that he “helped settle” the tensions between India and Pakistan.

India has consistently denied any third-party intervention. India launched Operation Sindoor on May 7, targeting terror infrastructure in Pakistan and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir in retaliation for the April 22 Pahalgam attack that killed 26 civilians. India and Pakistan reached an understanding on May 10 to end the conflict after four days of intense cross-border drone and missile strikes.

Mamdani emerged victorious in the closely-watched battle for New York City Mayor, becoming the first South Asian and Muslim to be elected to sit at the helm of the largest city in the US.

He had been the front-runner in the NYC Mayoral election for months and defeated Republican nominee Curtis Sliwa and political heavyweight former New York State Governor Andrew Cuomo, who ran as an independent candidate and was officially endorsed by Trump just hours before the elections.

Indian-descent Mamdani is the son of renowned filmmaker Mira Nair and Columbia University professor Mahmood Mamdani. He was born and raised in Kampala, Uganda and moved to New York City with his family when he was 7. Mamdani became a naturalised US citizen only recently, in 2018.

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