ST. LOUIS (AP) — The St. Louis Blues went the distance, and then some, to get the jump on the defending Stanley Cup champions.

NEW YORK (AP) — Near the end of the first half of Thursday's 25th Anniversary Rain Forest benefit concert at Carnegie Hall, chairwoman Trudie Styler introduced a man that recently found out he was going to be a grandfather, and out came former President Bill Clinton.

Gabriel Garcia Marquez, the Nobel-winning Colombian author whose "magical realism" told epic stories of love, family and dictatorship in Latin America, has died at the age of 87. Known affectionately as "Gabo," the author of "One Hundred Years of Solitude" and "Love in the Time of Cholera" was one of the world's most popular Latin American novelists and the godfather of a literary movement that witnessed a continent in turmoil. The longtime journalist was a colorful character who befriended Cuban leader Fidel Castro, was once punched by fellow Nobel laureate Mario Vargas Llosa and joked that he wrote to make his friends love him. "The world has lost one of its greatest visionary writers," US President Barack Obama said.