Triple Win: Gliding to an effortless win at New York’s Belmont racetrack late yesterday, the three-year-old colt American Pharoah proved that it is still possible to win horse racing’s Triple Crown. It hadn’t been done since 1978.

The crowd roared as jockey Victor Espinoza kept his horse in the lead while also appearing to hold him slightly in check. Pharoah ended up winning by 5 ½ lengths. It was Espinoza’s third shot at a Triple Crown. Twice before he won both the Kentucky Derby and The Preakness only to lose at Belmont.

With the win Pharoah probably becomes the most valuable horse in the world, likely to be set out to pasture to earn hundreds of millions of dollars in stud fees to breed future champions.

Nation: President Obama delivered a moving speech yesterday at the funeral of former Delaware Attorney General Beau Biden, who died of brain cancer. “He was a good man, a man of character, a man who loved deeply and was loved in return,” Obama said.

Obama said sometimes life’s cruelties are random, and the death of Vice President Joe Biden’s oldest son was one of those cruelties. The President said, “Here was a scion of an incredible family who brushed away the possibility of privilege for the harder, better reward of earning his own way.  Here was a soldier who dodged glory, and exuded true humility.  A prosecutor who defended the defenseless.  The rare politician who collected more fans than foes, and the rarer public figure who prioritized his private life above all else.”

World: The President arrived at the G-7 summit in Germany today where he said leaders will be talking about “standing up to Russian aggression.” In normal times Russian President Vladimir Putin would have been there, but Russia was kicked out of what used to be called the G-8 for taking over Crimea and waging war in Ukraine. Putin told an Italian newspaper this past week, “I would like to say — there’s no need to be afraid of Russia.”

Green Mile: Two convicted murderers made their beds with dummies and used power tools to drill their way out of New York’s biggest prison near the Canadian border sometime between Friday night and Saturday morning. Richard Matt, 48, and David Sweat, 34, were discovered missing from their adjacent cells during a 5:30 am bed check. Heavily armed cops with police dogs have flooded the area. Sweat was in prison for killing a police officer and Matt is a two-time murderer who dismembered one of his victims.

The Sports Page: Tampa Bay beat Chicago 4-3 last night at home to even up hockey’s Stanley Cup finals at 1-1.

>Serena Williams beat Lucie Safarova in three sets yesterday at the French Open to win her 20^th Grand Slam tennis singles title. This puts her third behind Margaret Court, with 24, and Steffi Graf, with 22.

The Obit Page: Ronnie Gilbert, the female voice who gave balance to the famous folk quartet The Weavers, has died at age 88. The Weavers, whose most famous member was Pete Seeger, got together in the 1940s and laid the groundwork for the big folk revival of the 1950s and 60s.

The Weavers sang union and labor songs as well as folk standards like “Good Night Irene”, “On Top of Old Smokey”, and Seeger’s “If I Had a Hammer.”

Gilbert said in a documentary about the group, “We sang songs of hope in that strange time after World War II when already the world was preparing for Cold War. We still had the feeling that if we could sing loud enough and strong enough and hopefully enough, it would make a difference.”