Nation briefs

FLORIDA

Plane hits parachute cords

A plane became entangled in the strings of a skydiver's parachute, sending both crashing to the ground near Tampa, with the pilot and jumper hospitalized. Polk County Sheriff's Office spokeswoman Carrie Eleazer says pilot Shannon Trembley, 87, was doing takeoff and landing maneuvers yesterday in his Cessna at the South Lakeland Airport in Mulberry. On his third landing pass, the wing of his plane became entangled in the strings of 49-year-old sky diver John Frost's parachute about 75 feet above the ground. Eleazer says neither sustained serious injury.

MISSOURI

5th-grader wins spelling bee

A marathon spelling bee between two Kansas City-area students who exhausted the initial word list last month ended after 29 more rounds yesterday when the eventual runner-up stumbled over the word "stifling." For more than an hour, seventh-grader Kush Sharma and fifth-grader Sophia Hoffman went toe-to-toe in the continuation of the Jackson County Spelling Bee, which began two weeks ago but had to be extended after the two breezed through the word list provided by the Scripps National Spelling Bee, then 20 more words picked out of the dictionary. After being given his final, winning word, "definition," Kush drew chuckles from spectators when he asked for the definition.

TEXAS

Assange speaks on NSA

Speaking over Skype from the Ecuadorean embassy in London, fugitive WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange said his living situation is a bit like prison -- with a more lenient visitor policy. He also hinted that new leaks are coming from WikiLeaks, though he gave no specifics. Assange discussed government surveillance, journalism and the situation in Ukraine yesterday in a streaming-video interview beamed to an audience of 3,500 attendees of the South By Southwest Interactive festival in Austin. Assange blasted President Barack Obama's administration, saying it was not taking fellow secret leaker Edward Snowden's revelations about the NSA's surveillance activities seriously. The five-day conference will host Snowden in a similar remote interview tomorrow.