Revelers across the United States braved heat and heavy rain to take part in Fourth of July activities Tuesday — celebrating the nation’s founding with parades, fireworks and hot dog eating contests at a time of lingering political divisions and concerns about the country’s future.

In Boston, Massachusetts, people dodged raindrops to nab a coveted space on the grassy oval in front of the Hatch Shell along the Charles River ahead of the traditional Boston Pops Fireworks Spectacular. Hundreds of thousands of partygoers typically line both sides of the river for the fireworks spectacular that follows a concert.

At another long-standing celebration, fans of competitive eating crowded to watch Nathan’s Famous Fourth of July hot dog eating contest held in the Coney Island section of New York City.

Heavy downpours interrupted the contest, but after the pause, Joey “Jaws” Chestnut swallowed 62 franks and buns in 10 minutes.

“What a roller coaster, emotionally,” Chestnut said. The 39-year-old from Westfield, Indiana, first competed for the title in 2005 and hasn’t lost since 2015.

New York wasn’t the only state where weather factored into events.

The 10-kilometer Atlanta Journal-Constitution Peachtree Road Race that typically draws thousands of runners in humid summer weather was cut short because of possible thunderstorms.

Farther north, a fireworks show in Yankton, South Dakota, was postponed until Wednesday night because lightning prevented crews from setting up the display. In Nebraska, the Omaha Symphony’s Independence Day Celebration that includes a concert and fireworks shows were also postponed until Wednesday night.

New Orleans residents welcomed rain and slightly cooler conditions after days of heat and humidity baked the city. The General Roy S. Kelley fireboat was returning to New Orleans Riverfront for a patriotic water show, sending streams of red, white, and blue water into the air.

The Colorado towns and suburbs of Estes Park, Golden and Highlands Ranch cancelled fireworks celebrations after thunderstorm alerts were issued. Severe weather warnings scuttled Independence Day travel plans at Denver International Airport, where at least 290 flights were delayed and 171 cancelled — among the most flights affected in the nation — according to Flight Aware.

President Joe Biden hosted a barbecue for military families at the White House, which was decked out with red, white and blue bunting and big U.S. flags draped over the columns facing the South Lawn. Biden told the crowd gathered how grateful he was for their service. And he talked about how important it was to work to unify the nation.

“Democracy is never guaranteed,” Biden said. “Every generation must fight to maintain it.”

Later, the Bidens watched fireworks from the White House balcony with thousands of guests on the lawn, as Louis Armstrong’s version of “America the Beautiful” played over loudspeakers.

Vice President Kamala Harris was in her home state of California, where she visited a Los Angeles fire station to pay tribute to first responders who she said risk their lives for their community.

“On this Independence Day, we came by to thank them, and to let them know we think of them all the time,” Harris said.

While the holiday put a spotlight on how Americans carry different views of patriotism, many people embraced the holiday with whimsy and a sense of community.

In Hannibal, Missouri, the hometown of Mark Twain, the Fourth of July weekend coincides with National Tom Sawyer Days. Fence-painting and frog-jumping contests were held.

Altoona, Iowa, dubbed its celebration “CORNival.” In addition to the nod to America’s birthday, the festival marks the 100th anniversary of the first acre of commercial hybrid seed corn, grown and harvested in Altoona in 1923. Twenty 6-foot-high fiberglass corn cob statutes decorated by local artists were being unveiled and will later be placed around the town of 21,000 residents.

In Joppatowne, Maryland, hundreds of people lined up at a Sheetz gas station to pump regular fuel at $1.776 per gallon, WBAL-TV reported. Sheetz set the price per gallon in commemoration of the year the Declaration of Independence was signed, according to a statement posted on the company’s website.

And in the east Tennessee city of Gatlinburg held its annual Independence Day midnight parade early Tuesday. George Hawkins, who created the parade, died Saturday, news outlets reported.

Running events were a feature of many celebrations.

In Lexington, Kentucky, about 2,000 people ran through the city’s downtown. Stephanie Thurman told WKYT-TV that the race had been on her bucket list. “I started these races here in 2019; I turned 50. That was one of the things on my bucket list, so I did that, and ever since then, I was bit by the bug,”

Hundreds participated in Alaska’s Mount Marathon, a grueling mountain race that features steep inclines, loose rock and shale that the top runners seemingly fly over on their way down. It’s an Independence Day tradition in coastal Seward, a town of about 2,500 people south of Anchorage.

Some cities were eschewing firework displays for shows in which drones fitted with lights are coded to create massive, moving shapes in the sky. Los Angeles, Tahoe City, California, Salt Lake City, and Boulder, along with a few other Colorado towns, have opted for the the aerial spectacles that can display an expansive American flag and the year 1776 in red, white and blue. Avoiding explosive fireworks limits the danger of fires in states already devastated by massive burns.

The air pollution agency for Southern California issued an alert for potential health problems caused by high levels of airborne particles from fireworks. The particulate advisory by the South Coast Air Quality Management District is in effect through Wednesday in Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside and San Bernardino counties.

The Chicago suburb of Highland Park, where a shooting at last year’s Fourth of July parade left seven people dead, also held a drone show to avoid the startling noise of fireworks.

Gun violence also marred some of the celebratory atmosphere, as shootings left five dead in Philadelphia and three dead in Texas.

Fireworks also led to at least one death in western Michigan. Nine other people were injured in that fireworks explosion on Monday, the Ottawa County Sheriff’s Department said.
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The U.S. and Russia are discussing a possible new prisoner swap that could involve jailed Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, who is being held in a Moscow prison on espionage charges that he denies, and a Russian detained in the U.S. on cybercrime charges, the Kremlin said Tuesday.

Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told reporters that Russian and U.S. officials have discussed the prisoner exchange that could involve Gershkovich and Vladimir Dunaev, who was extradited from South Korea and is in detention in the U.S. Midwestern state of Ohio.  

On Monday, the U.S. granted consular access to Dunaev for the first time since his 2021 arrest, while Lynne Tracy, the U.S. ambassador to Moscow, visited with Gershkovich for the second time since his late March arrest.

There was no indication that an immediate exchange was in the offing, with a Russian court ruling last week that Gershkovich can be kept in custody until August 30 and Russia often saying that any exchange could not be carried out until a verdict is rendered in his case. No trial date has been set.

Peskov said, “We have said that there have been certain contacts on the subject, but we don’t want them to be discussed in public. They must be carried out and continue in complete silence.”

He didn’t offer any further details, adding that “the lawful right to consular contacts must be ensured on both sides.”

The 31-year-old Gershkovich was arrested in the Russian city of Yekaterinburg while on a reporting trip. He, the Journal and the U.S. government have adamantly denied the espionage charge Russia lodged against him.

A White House official told the Journal on Tuesday, “While we unfortunately do not have a breakthrough to share, we continue to pursue every avenue to secure the release of Evan Gershkovich and fellow American Paul Whelan,” a former U.S. Marine held by Russia on spying charges since 2018.

Even as the U.S. has supplied billions of dollars of arms to Ukraine in its fight against Russia’s 16-month invasion, Moscow and Washington have engaged in prisoner exchange talks and carried out two of them since Russia started the war.

Late last year, U.S. professional basketball star Brittney Griner was swapped for Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout, while earlier in 2022, Trevor Reed, an American who was convicted in Russia of assaulting two police officers, was exchanged for Konstantin Yaroshenko, who had been sentenced to 20 years in prison in 2011 for conspiracy to smuggle cocaine into the U.S.
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Founded by a former refugee, Minnesota-based company Epimonía turns material from life jackets worn by refugees into fashion accessories and other items of clothing. VOA’s Kahli Abdu has the story.
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U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen met with China’s Ambassador to the United States Xie Fang on Monday, ahead of her travel this week to China as part of the Biden administration’s efforts to address strained relations between the two countries. 

“The frank and productive discussion supported ongoing efforts to maintain open lines of communication and responsibly manage the U.S.-China bilateral relationship,” the U.S. Treasury Department said in a statement. 

Managing relations, working on issues of mutual interest, and ensuring tensions do not turn into conflict have been the major themes of talks between senior officials in recent weeks, including U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s visit to Beijing last month. 

In Yellen’s talks with Xie, the Treasury Department said, Yellen “raised issues of concern while also conveying the importance of the two largest economies working together on global challenges, including on macroeconomic and financial issues.” 

Yellen is due to visit China July 6-9 for talks with senior officials. 

A senior Treasury Department official told reporters Sunday that the United States wants a healthy economic relationship with China and that halting trade and investment “would be destabilizing for both our countries and the global economy.”  

Officials also said Yellen plans to discuss U.S. concerns about a new Chinese counter-espionage law.  

Yellen addressed U.S.-China relations during an April speech at Johns Hopkins University, saying it would be healthy to have a relationship that fosters growth an innovation in both countries.    

“A growing China that plays by international rules is good for the United States and the world,” Yellen said. “Both countries can benefit from healthy competition in the economic sphere. But healthy economic competition — where both sides benefit — is only sustainable if that competition is fair.”  

Yellen also said that for the sake of global stability, the United States and China should cooperate “on the urgent global challenges of our day.”  

Some information for this story came from The Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Reuters .
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Maternal deaths across the United States more than doubled over the course of two decades, and the tragedy unfolded unequally. 

Black mothers died at the nation’s highest rates, while the largest increases in deaths were found in American Indian and Native Alaskan mothers. Some states — and racial or ethnic groups within them – fared worse than others. 

The findings were laid out in a new study published Monday in the Journal of the American Medical Association. Researchers looked at maternal deaths between 1999 and 2019 — but not the pandemic spike — for every state and five racial and ethnic groups. 

“It’s a call to action to all of us to understand the root causes — to understand that some of it is about health care and access to health care, but a lot of it is about structural racism and the policies and procedures and things that we have in place that may keep people from being healthy,” said Dr. Allison Bryant, one of the study’s authors and a senior medical director for health equity at Mass General Brigham. 

Among wealthy nations, the U.S. has the highest rate of maternal mortality, which is defined as a death during pregnancy or up to a year afterward. Common causes include excessive bleeding, infection, heart disease, suicide and drug overdose. 

Bryant and her colleagues at Mass General Brigham and the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington started with national vital statistics data on deaths and live births. They then used a modeling process to estimate maternal mortality out of every 100,000 live births. 

Overall, they found rampant, widening disparities. The study showed high rates of maternal mortality aren’t confined to the South but also extend to regions like the Midwest and states such as Wyoming and Montana, which had high rates for multiple racial and ethnic groups in 2019. 

Researchers also found dramatic jumps when they compared maternal mortality in the first decade of the study to the second and identified the five states with the largest increases between those decades. Those increases exceeded: 

— 162% for American Indian and Alaska Native mothers in Florida, Illinois, Kansas, Rhode Island and Wisconsin; 

— 135% for white mothers in Georgia, Indiana, Louisiana, Missouri and Tennessee; 

— 105% for Hispanic mothers in Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Minnesota and Tennessee; 

— 93% for Black mothers in Arkansas, Georgia, Louisiana, New Jersey and Texas; 

— 83% for Asian and Pacific Islander mothers in Georgia, Illinois, Kansas, Michigan and Missouri. 

“I hate to say it, but I was not surprised by the findings. We’ve certainly seen enough anecdotal evidence in a single state or a group of states to suggest that maternal mortality is rising,” said Dr. Karen Joynt Maddox, a health services and policy researcher at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis who wasn’t involved in the study. “It’s certainly alarming, and just more evidence we have got to figure out what’s going on and try to find ways to do something about this.” 

Maddox pointed to how, compared with other wealthy nations, the U.S. underinvests in things like social services, primary care and mental health. She also said Missouri hasn’t funded public health adequately, and during the years of the study hadn’t expanded Medicaid. They’ve since expanded Medicaid — and lawmakers passed a bill giving new mothers a full year of Medicaid health coverage. Last week, Missouri Gov. Mike Parson signed budget bills that included $4.4 million for a maternal mortality prevention plan. 

In neighboring Arkansas, Black women are twice as likely to have pregnancy-associated deaths as white women, according to a 2021 state report. 

Dr. William Greenfield, the medical director for family health at the Arkansas Department of Health, said the disparity is significant and has “persisted over time,” and that it’s hard to pinpoint exactly why there was an increase in the state’s maternal mortality rate for Black mothers. 

Rates among Black women have long been the worst in the nation, and the problem affects people of all socioeconomic backgrounds. For example, U.S. Olympic champion sprinter Tori Bowie, 32, died from complications of childbirth in May. 

The pandemic likely exacerbated all of the demographic and geographic trends, Bryant said, and “that’s absolutely an area for future study.” According to preliminary federal data, maternal mortality fell in 2022 after rising to a six-decade high in 2021 — a spike experts attributed mainly to COVID-19. Officials said the final 2022 rate is on track to get close to the pre-pandemic level, which was still the highest in decades. 

Bryant said it’s crucial to understand more about these disparities to help focus on community-based solutions and understand what resources are needed to tackle the problem. 

Arkansas already is using telemedicine and is working on several other ways to increase access to care, said Greenfield, who is also a professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Arkansas Medical Center in Little Rock and was not involved in the study. 

The state also has a “perinatal quality collaborative,” a network to help health care providers understand best practices for things like reducing cesarean sections, managing complications with hypertensive disorders, and curbing injuries or severe complications related to childbirth. 

“Most of the deaths we reviewed and other places have reviewed … were preventable,” Greenfield said. 
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Nearly two years after the chaotic American military withdrawal from Afghanistan, President Joe Biden’s statement that the Taliban is helping the U.S. push out al-Qaida from the war-torn country is reigniting controversy about the presence of terror groups there and the deal that ended the Afghan war.  

“Remember what I said about Afghanistan? I said al-Qaida would not be there. I said it wouldn’t be there. I said we’d get help from the Taliban,” Biden said Friday. “What’s happening now? What’s going on? Read your press. I was right.”      

The president made the comments in response to a question about a recent State Department report that highlighted shortcomings of the Trump and Biden administrations as key contributors to the frenzied U.S. military withdrawal in August 2021.   

Biden’s remarks sparked immediate controversy. A former Afghan intelligence chief cited them to reiterate long-standing criticisms of the 2020 peace deal between the then-Trump administration and the Taliban that ended the war.  

Rahmatullah Nabil served as head of Afghanistan’s National Directorate of Security from 2010 to 2012. In a Saturday tweet, he mocked Biden’s remarks, joking that they made the Taliban look like a U.S. paramilitary partner, similar to Russia’s Wagner mercenaries.  He said Biden has “made a groundbreaking revelation by exposing the hidden annexes of the Doha deal, shedding light on the true nature of the Taliban as the Wagner Group of the United States in this region.”    

Under the Doha agreement, in return for Washington withdrawing its troops from Afghanistan, the Taliban agreed to prevent the country from becoming a haven for terrorists and to stop attacking U.S. service members.  

Biden’s claims that al-Qaida has retreated from Afghanistan also contradict a February United Nations report that concluded terrorist groups including al-Qaida “enjoy greater freedom of movement in Afghanistan owing to the absence of an effective Taliban security strategy,” and are making “good use of this.”    

Ending the U.S.’s longest war  

Asked to clarify Biden’s comments, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said the president had to make a tough decision to end the nation’s longest war.     

“And he also wanted to — and this is part of what he said at the end, which is he wanted to make sure that we remain vigilant against terrorism,” she said during her press briefing Friday.    

“We took a leader of al-Qaida without having any troops – any troops on the ground,” Jean-Pierre added. She was referring to the killing of Ayman al-Zawahiri by U.S. drone missiles in downtown Kabul, where according to the administration, he was residing as a guest of the Taliban.    

A U.S. official who spoke to VOA on condition of anonymity in order to discuss intelligence matters said that in referencing the Taliban’s “help,” the president was referring to the Taliban operation in April that killed a leader of ISIS-K, also known as Islamic State Khorasan, an affiliate of the terrorist group in Afghanistan. The National Security Council has claimed that the individual planned the deadly 2021 suicide bombing at the Kabul international airport’s Abbey Gate that killed 13 U.S. service members and at least 160 Afghans.    

Biden’s assessment of al-Qaida in Afghanistan highlighted the division between Washington and the United Nations on the presence of terror groups in Afghanistan and the threat they pose to the region.  

A U.N. report released earlier this year concluded that the group is expected to remain in Afghanistan for the near future, keeping the country as “the primary source of terrorist threat for Central and South Asia.”    

“Ties between Al-Qaida and the Taliban remain close,” said the report by the U.N. Analytical Support and Sanctions Monitoring Team, based on member states’ intelligence.    

The administration has dismissed the U.N. report since its release, emphasizing that al-Qaida in Afghanistan is not a threat to the homeland as Washington has relied on “over-the-horizon” capability since the withdrawal. The term is a euphemism for drone strikes and other actions by special operations forces.    

The U.S. official said that the administration assesses the terrorist group “does not have a capability to launch attacks against the U.S. or its interests abroad from Afghanistan.”       

“We have no indication that al-Qaida in Afghanistan individuals are involved in external attack plotting,” the official said. “Of course, we will continue to monitor closely.”    

The Taliban’s foreign ministry spokesperson, Abdul Qahar Balkhi, welcomed Biden’s remarks as “an acknowledgment of reality” that no terrorist entities operated in Afghanistan under the group’s rule.   

Michael Kugelman, deputy director of the South Asia Program at the Wilson Center, is skeptical of such claims.  

The Taliban have gone after their bitter rival, ISIS-K, but have done little to curb the presence of al-Qaida and most other terror groups in Afghanistan, he told VOA.    

“The Taliban isn’t known to turn on its militant allies, so I have no reason to think it’s trying to remove al-Qaida-or what’s left of it from Afghan soil,” Kugelman said.   

Republican criticism      

Republicans including former Vice President Mike Pence, who has announced he is running for president in 2024, have piled criticism on Biden following the State Department report.      

“The blame for what happened here falls squarely on the current commander-in-chief,” said Pence during a television interview with the CBS television network Sunday. He said the “disastrous withdrawal” would never have happened under the Trump administration.      

The report, however, laid the blame on both Biden and his immediate predecessor, Donald Trump. It highlighted how poor planning by officials in both administrations contributed to the chaotic and deadly withdrawal.    

The report concluded that decisions by both Biden and Trump on ending the U.S. military mission in Afghanistan had “serious consequences for the viability of the Afghan government and its security.”     

“Those decisions are beyond the scope of this review, but the AAR (After Action Review) team found that during both administrations there was insufficient senior-level consideration of worst-case scenarios and how quickly those might follow,” it said.   

The report also noted that the State Department, “confronted a task of unprecedented scale and complexity,” in implementing an evacuation with a scope and scale that was “highly unusual, with no comparable situation since the U.S. departure from Vietnam in 1975.”   

Following the rapid takeover of the Afghan capital, Kabul, by the Taliban, the United States evacuated about 125,000 people – including nearly 6,000 U.S. citizens from the city’s Hamid Karzai International Airport.   

The administration said it has helped resettle 88,500 Afghan allies since the withdrawal. Advocates say tens of thousands are still left behind.   

VOA’s Sayed Aziz Rahman and Jeff Seldin contributed to this article. 
…

The U.S. recommended Americans reconsider traveling to China because of arbitrary law enforcement and exit bans and the risk of wrongful detentions.

No specific cases were cited, but the advisory came after a 78-year-old U.S. citizen was sentenced to life in prison on spying charges in May.

It also followed the passage last week of a sweeping Foreign Relations Law that threatens countermeasures against those seen as harming China’s interests.

China also recently passed a broadly written counterespionage law that has sent a chill through the foreign business community, with offices being raided, as well as a law to sanction foreign critics.

“The People’s Republic of China (PRC) government arbitrarily enforces local laws, including issuing exit bans on U.S. citizens and citizens of other countries, without fair and transparent process under the law,” the U.S. advisory said.

“U.S. citizens traveling or residing in the PRC may be detained without access to U.S. consular services or information about their alleged crime,” it warned.

The advisory also said that Chinese authorities “appear to have broad discretion to deem a wide range of documents, data, statistics, or materials as state secrets and to detain and prosecute foreign nationals for alleged espionage.”

It listed a wide range of potential offenses from taking part in demonstrations to sending electronic messages critical of Chinese policies or even simply conducting research into areas deemed sensitive.

Exit bans could be used to compel individuals to participate in Chinese government investigations, pressure family members to return from abroad, resolve civil disputes in favor of Chinese citizens and “gain bargaining leverage over foreign governments,” the advisory said.

Similar advisories were issued for the semi-autonomous Chinese regions of Hong Kong and Macao. They were dated Friday and emailed to journalists on Monday.

The U.S. had issued similar advisories to its citizens in the past, but those in recent years had mainly warned of the dangers of being caught in strict and lengthy lockdowns while China closed its borders for three years under its draconian “zero-COVID” policy.

China generally responds angrily to what it considers U.S. efforts to impugn its authoritarian Communist Party-led system. It has issued its own travel advisories concerning the U.S., warning of the dangers of crime, anti-Asian discrimination and the high cost of emergency medical assistance.

China had no immediate response to the travel advisory on Monday.

Details of the accusations against the accused spy John Shing-Wan Leung are not available, given China’s authoritarian political system and the ruling Communist Party’s absolute control over legal matters. Leung, who also holds permanent residency in Hong Kong, was detained in the southeastern city of Suzhou on April 15, 2021 — a time when China had closed its borders and tightly restricted movement of people domestically to control the spread of COVID-19.

The warnings come as U.S.-China relations are at their lowest in years, over trade, technology, Taiwan and human rights, although the sides are taking some steps to improve the situation. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken made a long-delayed visit to Beijing last week and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen is making a much-anticipated trip to Beijing this week. China also recently appointed a new ambassador to Washington, who presented his credentials in a meeting with President Joe Biden at the White House.

Other incidents, however, have also pointed to the testiness in the relationship. China formally protested last month after Biden called Chinese leader Xi Jinping a “dictator,” days after Blinken’s visit.

Biden brushed off the protest, saying his words would have no negative impact on U.S.-China relations and that he still expects to meet with Xi sometime soon. Biden has also drawn rebukes from Beijing by explicitly saying the U.S. would defend self-governing Taiwan if China, which claims the island as its own territory, were to attack it.

Biden said his blunt statements regarding China are “just not something I’m going to change very much.”

The administration is also under pressure from both parties to take a tough line on China, making it one of the few issues on which most Democrats and Republicans agree.

Along with several detained Americans, Two Chinese-Australians, Cheng Lei, who formerly worked for China’s state broadcaster, and writer Yang Jun, have been held since 2020 and 2019 respectively without word on their sentencing.

Perhaps the most notorious case of arbitrary detention involved two Canadians, Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor, who were detained in China in 2018, shortly after Canada arrested Meng Wanzhou, Huawei Technologies’ chief financial officer and the daughter of the tech powerhouse’s founder, on a U.S. extradition request.

They were charged with national security crimes that were never explained and released three years later after the U.S. settled fraud charges against Meng. Many countries labeled China’s action “hostage politics.”
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U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen is due to travel Thursday to China to meet with senior officials in the latest effort to address strained relations between the two countries. 

The Treasury Department said in a statement Sunday that Yellen’s visit would take place from July 6-9 and follows a directive from President Joe Biden to deepen communications on issues such as financial developments and the global macroeconomy.

“While in Beijing, Secretary Yellen will discuss with PRC officials the importance for our countries — as the world’s two largest economies — to responsibly manage our relationship, communicate directly about areas of concern, and work together to address global challenges,” the statement said. 

A senior Treasury Department official told reporters Sunday that the United States wants a healthy economic relationship with China and that halting trade and investment “would be destabilizing for both our countries and the global economy.” 

Yellen’s visit follows Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s trip to China last month in which he and President Xi Jinping agreed to stabilize U.S.-China relations and ensure that areas of disagreement do not turn into conflict. 

A senior treasury official said Yellen plans to discuss U.S. concerns about a new Chinese counter-espionage law. 

“We have concerns with the new measure, and how it might apply, that it could expand the scope of what is considered by the authorities in China to be espionage activity,” the official said, citing possible spillovers to the broader investment climate and the economic relationship. 

Yellen addressed U.S.-China relations during an April speech at Johns Hopkins University, saying it would be healthy to have a relationship that fosters growth an innovation in both countries. 

“A growing China that plays by international rules is good for the United States and the world,” Yellen said. “Both countries can benefit from healthy competition in the economic sphere. But healthy economic competition — where both sides benefit — is only sustainable if that competition is fair.” 

Yellen also said that for the sake of global stability, the United States and China should cooperate “on the urgent global challenges of our day.” 

Some information for this story came from The Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Reuters.
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As the nation prepares to celebrate 247 years of the country’s independence, smaller U.S. towns are marking holiday with their own traditions. VOA’s Saqib Ul Islam takes us to one small Virginia town that celebrated ahead of the July Fourth holiday.
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Cole Custer was hanging out in his pit box when he won the NASCAR Xfinity Series race Sunday. 

The whole moment was pretty strange. 

“It’s like how excited can you be, because it didn’t feel like we did anything today,” he said. 

Custer was declared the winner of the first Xfinity stop in downtown Chicago after persistent rain flooded the street course. 

The race started Saturday but was suspended after 25 laps because of a lightning strike in the area. NASCAR had planned to resume it Sunday morning, but it scuttled that idea because of the rain and the scheduled Cup Series race. 

“With standing water and flooding a significant issue at the racetrack and throughout the city, there was no option to return to racing prior to shifting to NASCAR Cup Series race operations,” NASCAR said in a statement. 

Returning on Monday “was an option we chose not to employ,” NASCAR said in its statement, citing its partnership with the city and the fact that nearly half of the Xfinity race had been completed. 

NASCAR also canceled concerts by Miranda Lambert and Charley Crockett because of flooding in Lower Hutchinson Field. 

The first Cup Series race on a street course is scheduled to begin at 4:05 p.m. 

Custer led each of the first 25 laps in his No. 00 Stewart-Haas Racing Ford before Saturday’s weather delay. John Hunter Nemechek was second, followed by Justin Allgaier, Brett Moffitt and Austin Hill. 

The race was supposed to be 55 laps and 121 miles (194 km). 

“Today, I mean we definitely wish we could have run all the laps. … We don’t want to win it this way,” Custer said. “But at the end of the day we have a really fast car. I think everybody knew that.” 

Custer earned his second Xfinity Series victory this season and No. 12 for his career. He also won on the road course at Portland International Raceway on June 3. 

“It’s definitely one of the weirdest wins (I’ve) ever been a part of, for sure,” he said. “But we’ll take it. I mean, you know, we’re racers and you take it as it comes. So we’re proud of it.” 
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U.S. President Joe Biden is leaving in a week on a five-day, three-nation trip to Europe, the White House said Sunday, with the key stop at the annual NATO summit in Vilnius, Lithuania, where Western leaders plan to discuss their latest efforts to bolster Ukraine’s fight against Russia.

Biden is heading first to London next Sunday on the July 9-13 trip, where over two days he is planning to meet with King Charles and Prime Minister Rishi Sunak “to further strengthen the close relationship between our nations,” the White House said.

The U.S. leader then heads to Lithuania for two days of NATO meetings where leaders of the 31-nation Western military alliance will discuss the state of Ukraine’s counteroffensive to recapture territory in the southeastern part of the country that Russia took in the earliest stages of 16 months of fighting.

NATO countries, led by the United States, have sent billions of dollars of armaments to Ukraine, but Russian aerial bombardments have continued to kill dozens of Ukrainian civilians even as Kyiv’s forces have shot down hundreds of incoming missiles. The ones that have landed have proved devastating, killing people and destroying their residential buildings.

After the NATO summit, Biden is heading to Helsinki, the Finnish capital, to commemorate Finland recently joining the military alliance created in the aftermath of World War II, and to meet with Nordic leaders.

Biden did not attend Charles’s coronation in London in May, instead sending first lady Jill Biden to represent the U.S. Biden last month hosted Sunak at the White House.

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg also met with Biden at the White House last month, where the two leaders pledged their continued support of Ukraine in its war against Russia.

“The NATO allies have never been more united. We both worked like hell to make sure that happened. And so far, so good,” Biden said as he sat alongside Stoltenberg.

Finland joined NATO in April, effectively doubling Russia’s border with the world’s biggest security alliance. Biden has characterized the strengthened NATO alliance as a sign of Moscow’s declining influence.

Sweden is also seeking entry into NATO, although alliance members Turkey and Hungary have yet to endorse the move. Biden is hosting Sweden’s prime minister, Ulf Kristersson, at the White House on Wednesday as a show of support for its bid for NATO membership.

Turkey President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said Sweden is too lax on terrorist groups and security threats, while Stoltenberg has said Sweden has met its obligations for NATO membership by toughening anti-terrorist laws and other measures. Hungary’s reasons for opposing Sweden have been less defined, complaining about Sweden’s criticism of democratic backsliding and the erosion of the rule of law.

All NATO nations have to ratify the entry of new member countries.

Some material in this report came from The Associated Press.
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The only break much of America can hope for soon from eye-watering, dangerous smoke from fire-struck Canada would be brief bouts of shirt-soaking, sweltering heat and humidity from a deadly, Southern heat wave, forecasters say.

And then the smoke will likely return to the Midwest and East.

Here’s why: Neither the 235 out-of-control Canadian wildfires nor the weather pattern that’s responsible for this mess of meteorological maladies are showing signs of relenting for the next week or longer, according to meteorologists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Weather Prediction Center.

First, the weather pattern made abnormally hot and dry conditions for Canada to burn at off-the-chart record levels. Then it created a setup where the only relief comes when low pressure systems roll through, which means areas on one side get smoky air from the north and the other gets sweltering air from the south.

Smoke or heat.

“Pick your poison,” said prediction center forecast operations chief Greg Carbin. “The conditions are not going to be very favorable.

“As long as those fires keep burning up there, that’s going to be a problem for us,” Carbin said. “As long as there’s something to burn, there will be smoke we have to deal with.”

Take St. Louis. The city had two days of unhealthy air Tuesday and Wednesday, but for Thursday “they’ll get an improvement of air quality with the very hot and humid heat,” said weather prediction center meteorologist Bryan Jackson. The forecast is for temperatures that feel like 42.8 degrees Celsius (109 degrees Fahrenheit) — with 38.3 degrees Celsius (101 degrees Fahrenheit) heat and stifling humidity.

On Wednesday, the low pressure system was parked over New England and because winds go counter-clockwise, areas to the west – such as Chicago and the Midwest – get smoky winds from the north, while areas east of the low pressure get southerly hot winds, Jackson said.

As that low pressure system moves on and another one travels over the central Great Plains and Lake Superior, the Midwest gets temporary relief, Jackson said. But when low pressure moves on, the smoke comes back.

“We have this, this carousel of air cruising around the Midwest, and every once in a while is bringing the smoke directly onto whatever city you live in,” said University of Chicago atmospheric scientist Liz Moyer. “And while the fires are ongoing, you can expect to see these periodic bad air days and the only relief is either when the fires go out or when the weather pattern dies.”

The weather pattern is “awfully unusual,” said NOAA’s Carbin who had to look back in records to 1980 to see anything even remotely similar. “What gets me is the persistence of this.”

Why is the weather pattern stuck? This seems to be happening more often — and some scientists suggest that human-caused climate change causes more situations where weather patterns stall. Moyer and Carbin said it’s too soon to tell if that’s the case.

But Carbin and Canadian fire scientist Mike Flannigan said there’s a clear climate signal in the Canadian fires. And they said those fires aren’t likely to die down anytime soon, with nothing in the forecast that looks likely to change.

Nearly every province in Canada has fires burning. A record 80,000 square kilometers (30,000 square miles) have burned, an area nearly as large as South Carolina, according to the Canadian government.

And fire season usually doesn’t really get going until July in Canada.

“It’s been a crazy, crazy year. It’s unusual to have the whole country on fire,” said Flannigan, a professor at Thompson Rivers University in British Columbia. “Usually, it’s regional … not the whole shebang at once.”

Hotter than normal and drier air made for ideal fire weather, Flannigan said. Warmer weather from climate change means the atmosphere sucks more moisture out of plants, making them more likely to catch fire, burn faster and hotter.

“Fires are all about extremes,” he said.

And where there’s fire, there’s smoke.

High heat and smoky conditions are stressors on the body and can present potential challenges to human health, said Ed Avol, a professor emeritus at the Keck School of Medicine at University of Southern California.

But Avol added that while the haze of wildfire smoke provides a visual cue to stay inside, there can be hidden dangers of breathing in harmful pollutants such as ozone even when the sky looks clear. He also noted there are air chemistry changes that can happen downwind of wildfire smoke, which may have additional and less well-understood impacts on the body.

It’s still only June. The seasonal forecast for the rest of the summer in Canada “is for hot and mostly dry” and that’s not good for dousing fires, Flannigan said. “It’s a crazy year and I’m not sure where it’s going to end.”
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