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NANTES, France — Dieudonne Boutrin is a descendant of people enslaved in the Caribbean. Pierre Guillon de Prince's ancestors, from Nantes, were ship-owners transporting those enslaved. Although contrasting, their families' histories are linked. They met in 2021 in Nantes, which was France's largest port for transatlantic slavery, and have since been working together to raise awareness about the past and its legacy in today's society. Originally from the Caribbean island of Martinique, 59-year-old Boutrin moved to Nantes in the 1980s. It was only then that he fully learned about the true extent of slavery. From the 15th to the 19th century, at least 12.5 million Africans were kidnapped and forcibly transported by mostly European ships and sold into slavery. Researchers estimate at least 2 million people died in the grueling "Middle Passage" voyage across the Atlantic. France trafficked an estimated 1.3 million people to the Americas, including the Caribbean. "The more I got into the story, the more anger there was," Boutrin said. "(So) I decided to put all my energy into paying tribute to these men and women." Boutrin is the president of the Nantes-based Coque Nomade-Fraternité, an association that wants to "break the silence" around slavery through education. In 2001, France officially recognized transatlantic slavery as a crime against humanity but, according to the French Foundation for the Remembrance of Slavery, racism persists. Several cases of police using excessive force against Black people in recent years have highlighted accusations of systemic racism in the French police by human rights groups. Boutrin's association is raising funds to finish a 2018 project to build a replica of a 18th century ship that transported captive Africans enslaved by people such as Guillon de Prince's ancestors. The replica will work as a learning center. "People will be able to understand the conditions the captives lived in," he said. Through the association, Boutrin joined forces with Guillon de Prince, 83, to give guided tours that explore Nantes' links to slavery. One of the stops is the city's slavery memorial. Guillon de Prince has always known his ancestors were involved in slavery as ship-owners, but he made the decision to look deeper into the past in 2015. They are now encouraging other descendants to join a group they have created to continue what they have described as "memory work." "I feared this would be forgotten so I wanted to pass it down to my grandchildren," Guillon de Prince said. "We will not solve issues of racism if the two (descendants of enslaved and enslavers) do not talk to each other."

RABAT, Morocco — When Morocco 's King Mohamed VI visited Havana in 2017, Cuban-American gallery owner Alberto Magnan impressed him with a "full immersion" in the Caribbean island's art and culture, drawing a line between the cultural and historical themes tackled by Cuban artists and those from across Africa. Seven years after that encounter, one of the first exhibitions of Cuban art at an African museum is showing at Morocco's Mohammed VI Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art. It's part of an effort to give visitors a view beyond the European artists who often remain part of the school curriculum in the North African nation and other former French colonies, museum director Abdelaziz El Idrissi said. "The Moroccan public might know Giacometti, Picasso or impressionists," El Idrissi said. The museum has shown them all. "We've seen them and are looking for other things, too." The Cuba show contains 44 pieces by Wifredo Lam — a major showing of the Afro-Cuban painter's work more than a year before New York City's Museum of Modern Art will honor him with a career retrospective show in 2025. "We're kind of beating MoMA to the punch," Magnan said. The Morocco show also marks the first time that the work of another luminary, Jose Angel Toirac, is being displayed outside Cuba. Previously, his paintings depicting the country's late anti-capitalist president Fidel Castro in the iconography of American advertisements and consumer culture were not allowed off the island. Other works in Cuban Art: On the other side of the Atlantic — open until June 16 — show prevalent themes in Cuban art ranging from isolation and economic embargo to heritage and identity. In Cuba, almost half of the population identifies as mixed race and more than 1 million people are Afro-Cuban. The island's diversity is a recurring subject for its painters and artists, including Lam. That's why it was important to show his work — including paintings of African-inspired masks and use of vibrant color — in Africa, Magnan said. Morocco is among countries that have shown new interest in Cuban art since the United States restored diplomatic ties with Cuba in 2014 and Castro died in 2016. American art dealers and major museums flocked to the previously difficult-to-visit island. But the intrigue was curbed by the COVID-19 pandemic and former U.S. President Donald Trump's decision to redesignate the country as a "state sponsor of terrorism," Magnan said. Meanwhile, Morocco has increased funding for arts and culture in an effort to boost its "geopolitical soft power" in North Africa and beyond. In both Morocco and Cuba, 20th century artists responded to political transition — decolonization in Morocco, revolution in Cuba — by drawing from history and engaging in trends shaping contemporary art worldwide. But the current show does not touch on Moroccan-Cuban diplomatic relations, which were restored following King Mohamed VI's 2017 visit to Cuba. The countries had cut ties decades ago over Cuba's position on the disputed Western Sahara, which Morocco claims. Cuba has historically trained Sahrawi soldiers and doctors and backed the Polisario Front's agenda at the United Nations. 

paris — The universe is still expanding at an accelerating rate, but it may have slowed down recently compared with a few billion years ago, early results from the most precise measurement of its evolution yet suggested Thursday. The preliminary findings are far from confirmed, but if they hold up, it would further deepen the mystery of dark energy - and likely mean there is something important missing in our understanding of the cosmos. These signals of our universe's changing speeds were spotted by the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI), which is perched atop a telescope at the Kitt Peak National Observatory in the U.S. state of Arizona. Each of the instrument's 5,000 fiber-optic robots can observe a galaxy for 20 minutes, allowing astronomers to chart what they have called the largest-ever 3D map of the universe. "We measured the position of the galaxies in space but also in time, because the farther away they are, the more we go back in time to a younger and younger universe," Arnaud de Mattia, a co-leader of the DESI data interpretation team, told AFP. Just one year into its five-year survey, DESI has already drawn up a map that includes 6 million galaxies and quasars using light that stretches up to 11 billion years into the universe's past. The results were announced at conferences in the United States and Switzerland on Thursday, ahead of a series of scientific papers being published in the Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics. DESI is on a mission to shed light on the nature of dark energy - a theoretical phenomenon thought to make up roughly 70 percent of the universe. Another 25 percent of the universe is composed of the equally mysterious dark matter, leaving just 5 percent of normal matter - such as everything you can see. An inconstant constant? For more than a century, scientists have known that the universe started expanding after the Big Bang, 13.8 billion years ago. But in the late 1990s, astronomers were shocked to discover it has been expanding at an ever-increasing rate. This was a surprise because gravity from matter - both normal and dark - was thought to have been slowing the universe down. But obviously something was making the universe expand at ever-faster speeds, and the name "dark energy" was given to this force. More recently, it was discovered that the acceleration of the universe significantly sped up around 6 billion years after the Big Bang. In the push-and-pull between matter and dark energy, the latter certainly seems to have the upper hand, according to the leading model of the universe called the Lambda CDM. Under this model, the quickening expansion of the universe is called the "cosmological constant," which is closely linked to dark energy. DESI director Michael Levi said that so far, the instrument's early results were showing "basic agreement with our best model of the universe." "But we're also seeing some potentially interesting differences, which could indicate that dark energy is evolving with time," Levi said in a statement. In other words, the data seem to show "that the cosmological constant Lambda is not really a constant," because dark energy would be displaying "dynamic" and changing behavior, De Mattia said. Slowing down in old age This could suggest that - after switching into high gear 6 billion years after the Big Bang - the speed at which the universe has been expanding has been "slowing down in recent times," DESI researcher Christophe Yeche said. Whether dark energy does in fact change over time would need to be verified by more data from DESI and other instruments, such as the space telescope Euclid. But if it was confirmed, our understanding of the universe will likely have to be changed to accommodate for this strange behavior. For example, the cosmological constant could be replaced by some kind of field linked to some as-yet-unknown particle. It could even necessitate updating the equations of Einstein's theory of relativity "so that they behave slightly differently on the scale of large structures," De Mattia said. But we are not there yet. The history of science is full of examples in which "deviations of this type have been observed then resolved over time," De Mattia said. After all, Einstein's theory of relativity has withstood more than a century of scientific poking and prodding and still stands stronger than ever.

gaza — Before the Israel-Hamas war erupted, the tiny enclave run by the Palestinian militant group Hamas was impoverished and densely populated, but full of life — restaurants, shops, makeshift soccer pitches, universities and hospitals. Six months after the conflict began, Reuters cameramen rode bicycles along its ruined streets to gauge the destruction left by Israeli air strikes that have killed more than 33,000 people in retaliation for Hamas's October 7 attack on Israel. Few signs of life The same scene played out on one road after another — pile after pile of rubble on each side in the strip, home to 2.3 million people who lack medicine, medical care and food in a deepening humanitarian crisis. Many live in shelters or tent cities after moving from one part of the enclave to another to try to escape the relentless bombardment. Movement along its quiet streets is limited. There are few signs of life. Men drive by on a motorbike. A young boy pushes a wheelbarrow along a dirt road past obliterated buildings through clouds of dirt. A mosque was not spared destruction. On another, a man walks along with a sack of flour on his shoulder. Food is scarce in Gaza where Palestinians say attempting to secure supplies is a life-or-death scramble like the one that cost more than 100 Palestinians their lives in February trying to get food from an aid convoy. Israel said many were trampled to death in the chaos, while Gaza's health authorities say Israeli troops opened fire on crowds. Famine looms Israel is carrying out the offensive in retaliation for a Hamas attack on southern Israel on October 7 in which 1,200 people were killed and more than 200 people were taken hostage, according to Israeli tallies. The United Nations has warned of a looming famine and complained of obstacles to getting aid in and distributing it throughout Gaza. The United States also says famine is imminent. Israeli officials say they have increased aid access to Gaza, are not responsible for delays, and that the aid delivery inside Gaza is the responsibility of the U.N. and humanitarian agencies. Israel also has accused Hamas of stealing aid, a charge Hamas denies. Underscoring the chaos in Gaza, citizens from Australia, Britain and Poland were among seven people working for celebrity chef Jose Andres' World Central Kitchen who were killed in an Israeli airstrike in central Gaza on Monday, the nongovernmental organization said. For now, Palestinians can walk only on streets lined with debris and watch the wasteland grow with each airstrike. The cameramen on bicycles saw little signs of life in a sea of rubble. Two women walked with a young child. A few people sat under a colorful umbrella. Men moved along with a donkey on a cart. Burned-out cars sat on the edge of streets.

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Washington — Ukrainian officials are cultivating closer ties with India, pursuing mutual economic benefits while hoping to nudge the Asian giant away from its historic close ties with Kyiv’s war enemy, Russia. Ukrainian Foreign Affairs Minister Dmytro Kuleba visited India on March 28-29, the first visit of a top Ukrainian diplomat to the country in seven years. Days before that, the countries’ presidents spoke by phone. The primary task for Kuleba`s visit — Ukrainian Ambassador to India Oleksandr Polishchuk said in an interview with VOA — was to restore high-level political cooperation. The parties agreed that a high-ranking Indian official will participate in a Global Peace Summit set for this summer in Switzerland with the goal of supporting Ukraine. India will also work on a possible visit to Ukraine by its external affairs minister and organize other top-level mutual visits, he said. The parties also agreed to resume the work of the India-Ukraine Inter-Governmental Commission, inactive since 2018. The two countries “agreed to restore the level of cooperation between our countries that existed prior to the full-scale war launched by Russia," Kuleba wrote on X. "Our immediate goal is to get trade back to earlier levels," wrote his Indian counterpart Subrahmanyam Jaishankar. In an interview with the Financial Times (FT), Kuleba said that India could greatly benefit from expanding trade and technological ties with Ukraine and participate in post-war reconstruction. Kuleba noted that India's close ties with Russia are based on a "Soviet legacy" that is "evaporating." One such legacy is India's imports of Russian weapons, the share of which dropped from 76% in 2009-13 to 36% in 2019-2023, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. Polishchuk said that since Russia cannot fulfill all of its obligations to supply new equipment and spare parts, India is trying to establish its own military production based on Western standards. "Ukraine can partially meet the needs of the Indian armed forces, particularly the navy, since many warships use gas turbine engines produced in Ukraine," said the ambassador. In an interview with The Times of India newspaper, Kuleba also softened Ukraine's position toward India's import of Russian oil, saying that Ukraine doesn’t object to it because the deal was structured in a way that Russia can't invest the profit “in the production of tanks, missiles, and weapons." Paradoxes of India-Ukraine relations Mridula Ghosh, a lecturer at the Ukraine National University of Kyiv-Mohyla and a native of India, pointed to two paradoxes in the relations between the two countries. First, she told VOA, that ties between India and Ukraine are strengthening while the U.S. Congress is unable to approve aid to Ukraine and the U.S. and some European countries use the assistance to Ukraine as a bargaining chip in electoral politics. In India, she said, foreign policy is not part of the electoral debates because it is of little interest to the voters. Second, the warming of relations between the two countries on the highest level happened while Russia increased its propaganda and influence on Indian society. "When the full-scale war began, society was ready to condemn this aggression. The authorities, on the contrary, reacted restrainedly. Now, many people in power and intellectual circles clearly and correctly understand what is happening in Ukraine. But the media began actively disseminating Russian propaganda," Ghosh explained. Mediator between Russia and Ukraine? In New Delhi, Kuleba called on India to play a more active role in the peace process. "With India's more active involvement in this process, we expect that the number of countries looking at India and its role in this process will also grow," Polishchuk said. However, observers doubt that India could mediate between Ukraine and Russia or influence Moscow to end the war. While India leaned closer to the U.S. and the West in recent years, it "will not undertake steps that would significantly affect Russia strategically, just as Russia would not take an adverse position to affect India strategically in favor of China or Pakistan," said Nandan Unnikrishnan, a distinguished fellow at the Delhi-based Observer Research Foundation to the South China Morning Post. Former U.S. Consul General to India Katherine Hadda doubts that India would act as a mediator in a peace process where one of the parties is absent — Russia does not participate in summits based on the peace formula proposed by Ukraine. "India has stressed that it will serve as a mediator [only] at both sides’ request," said Hadda in the same article. In a column for the Indian NDTV news outlet, Harsh V. Pant, a professor of international relations at King's College London, writes that achieving peace in Eurasia is not India’s job. "New Delhi would like to see a resolution to the Russia-Ukraine war soon. But ultimately, it is for the main protagonists in this conflict — Russia, Ukraine, and the West — to decide what kind of Eurasian security architecture they can live with." Since the beginning of the full-scale aggression, India has not condemned Russia's actions, gas abstained from voting for Ukrainian initiatives at the U.N. and has not joined the sanctions against Russia. Still, Ghosh believes India is moving away from Moscow. "The Indian elephant is slow but steady in reacting. At the beginning of the full-scale war, it was reluctant to make strong positional statements, but now it is reviewing many things. There is a decoupling from Russia."  

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BANGKOK — Observers are expressing concern that deliveries of aid under Thailand’s new humanitarian aid program for war-torn Myanmar will be misused because of the role of the junta-run Myanmar Red Cross – which is distinct from the International Committee of the Red Cross. U.N. agencies say fighting since the February 2021 coup has displaced some 2.4 million people and that a quarter of them are at risk of acute food insecurity. In a country of 54 million, the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs says 18.6 million need aid. Myanmar’s military has been accused of "brazen" war crimes and crimes against humanity in its war against the resistance, and researchers estimate it has killed thousands of civilians. The 10 Association of Southeast Asian Nations countries endorsed Thailand’s proposal for a "humanitarian corridor" to deliver aid to Myanmar through Thailand in January and the first convoy of 10 trucks,  bearing 4,000 aid packages of mostly food and water crossed into Myanmar on March 25 at the Thai border town of Mae Sot, where the Thai Red Cross handed the shipment over to its Myanmar counterpart. Thai officials said at the handover ceremony the packages would reach some 20,000 people displaced around three towns in eastern Myanmar’s Karen state and that the program could expand to other areas if the first delivery went well. However, aid groups and experts say relying on the military regime and affiliates, including the Myanmar Red Cross, to distribute aid to victims of the fighting puts the aid program at risk. "This organization is handpicked and instructed by the military regime, so it is not a good idea [for them] to hand over the assistance to ... the victims of the military regime," said Sann Aung, executive director of the New Myanmar Foundation, a charity on the Thai-Myanmar border that helps families that have fled the fighting. Thailand’s Foreign Affairs Ministry, which is spearheading the program, refused VOA’s requests for an interview. Its reliance on the Myanmar Red Cross to dispense the deliveries inside Myanmar has many aid experts worried. Adelina Kamal, a former head of ASEAN’s aid agency, the ASEAN Coordinating Center for Humanitarian Assistance, said any aid outfit run by Myanmar’s military regime could not be trusted to dispense the aid fairly. "In a conflict and crisis like Myanmar, how the aid is being given and who is behind the aid are often much more important than the aid itself. And if it is actually delivered by the one who initiated the crisis in the first place, there is a big probability that it is actually used as a tool in gaining popularity or ... showing that they’re trying to help the population that they’ve tried to kill," she said. Kamal and others fear the junta may also "weaponize" the aid by directing it to communities it favors and away from those it does not. Many if not most of the displaced have taken shelter in parts of the country under the control of the armed groups the junta is fighting. "When we talk about weaponization of aid, it can actually come in various forms ... for example blocking access for aid, which actually was done by the military after Cyclone Mocha hit Rakhine state, or selecting who actually should receive the aid or targeting how and where the aid should be actually provided," Kamal said. A month after Cyclone Mocha slammed into western Myanmar’s Rakhine state in May of last year, the U.N. said the regime abruptly cut off humanitarian access to the area, "crippling life-saving aid distributions to affected communities." Sann Aung agreed that Myanmar’s Red Cross lacks the independence needed to ensure the aid will reach those who need it most. "Humanitarian assistance ... must be sent to the targeted areas without bias, without preference to any organization or anybody. But the Burma Red Cross, they are biased, they have to follow the instructions of the military regime," he said, calling Myanmar by its former name. "So, we are very afraid that humanitarian assistance can be used, for example, [for] the people that are supporting the military regime or ... cronies," he added. Thailand has said ASEAN’s aid agency would monitor the deliveries to ensure the aid is doled out fairly. Kamal, though, who ran the agency for four years until 2021, said it is ill-equipped for the role by design. She said the agency is geared toward responding to natural disasters, not political crises like the one in Myanmar. Having ASEAN state officials on the agency’s governing board, including officials from Thailand and Myanmar’s junta, she said, means it is unlikely to be critical if significant problems arise. Thailand says its aims for the aid corridor include encouraging peace talks between the junta and resistance. Both sides have rejected any compromise to date, and the key role of the Myanmar Red Cross in the aid corridor is unlikely to turn the thinking of the resistance around, said Surachanee Sriyai, a visiting fellow at Singapore’s ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute based in Thailand. "They’re saying this is for humanitarian purposes, for humanitarian assistance. But when you do that and working with the Myanmar Red Cross — which everybody knows by now that this is part of the junta-controlled apparatus — how are you going to facilitate trust from the ethnic groups or what you would now call the resistance ... forces?" she said. "That trust cannot be created and it cannot be forced by external actors," she added. Myanmar’s so-called National Unity Government, a shadow government mainly including political leaders ousted by the coup and aiming to oust the junta, said in a statement to VOA that they "truly appreciate" Thailand’s new aid corridor. However, lasting peace will come to Myanmar only when most of the population’s "fundamental grievances against military dictatorship are credibly addressed," the NUG’s Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs added. It did not suggest kicking the Myanmar Red Cross out of the aid corridor entirely but proposed a "parallel" plan involving the full cooperation of resistance groups as well to make sure the aid is distributed based strictly on need. Aid groups and experts have echoed the need to involve the NUG, armed resistance and nongovernment charities on both sides of the border to ensure the aid reaches the most desperate and vulnerable. 

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Give us 5 minutes, and we'll give you the world. Around the clock, Voice of America keeps you in touch with the latest news. We bring you reports from our correspondents and interviews with newsmakers from across the world.

washington — U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen is on a five-day visit to China, where she expressed concern to Chinese officials Friday about state subsidies that fuel manufacturing overcapacity in industries such as electric vehicles, solar panels and semiconductors. U.S. officials and economists have warned that China's overcapacity — when its production ability significantly exceeds what is needed in markets — will further drive down prices and cost jobs, especially if China seeks to offload excess production through exports instead of domestic consumption. U.S. President Joe Biden, in a phone call with Chinese President Xi Jinping Tuesday, said China's "unfair" trade policies and "non-market" practices harm the interests of American workers and families. China's Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin gave reporters at a regular briefing Wednesday a rundown of the conversation the two leaders had on trade, according to Beijing. He said "the U.S. has adopted a string of measures to suppress China's trade and technology development and is adding more and more Chinese entities to its sanctions lists. This is not 'de-risking,' but creating risks." So, when is an industry at overcapacity? Gary Clyde Hufbauer, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, said that for capital-intensive industries such as steel, oil refining and semiconductors, when capacity utilization is below 75% for an extended period of time, most observers would label that excess capacity. Hufbauer told VOA that China's massive government-stimulated and bank-financed investment has resulted in almost all the country's capital-intensive manufacturing industries having overcapacity. "If China does pursue a massive export 'solution,' that will hurt manufacturing firms in Japan, the E.U., Korea and other industrial countries. But low prices will be welcome in many developing countries in Latin America, Africa and Asia," he said. A report last week by the New York-based Rhodium Group, which researches the Chinese market, shows that the utilization rate of China's silicon wafer capacity dropped from 78% in 2019 to 57% in 2022. In 2022, China's lithium-ion battery production reached 1.9 times the domestic installation volume, showing that the problem of overcapacity in clean energy fields is emerging. China's exports of electric vehicles, solar cells and lithium batteries have increased even more significantly. Data shows that in 2023, China's electric vehicle export volume was seven times that of 2019, while its solar cell export volume in 2023 was five times that of 2018, an increase of 40% from 2022. The report notes that while temporary overcapacity may be harmless and a normal part of the market cycle, it becomes a problem when it is perpetuated by government intervention. The Rhodium Group's report says that China's National People's Congress in March focused on industrial policies that benefit high-tech industries, while there is little financial support for household consumption. "This policy mix will compound the growing imbalance between domestic supply and demand," says the report. "Systemic bias toward supporting producers rather than households or consumers allows Chinese firms to ramp up production despite low margins, without the fear of bankruptcy that constrains firms in market economies." Overcapacity a decade ago China's structural overcapacity problem is not a new phenomenon. Rhodium Group's report says the last time China had large overcapacity issues was from 2014 to 2016, a few years after the government launched a massive stimulus package in response to the global financial crisis that began in 2008. The stimulus package centered on infrastructure and real estate construction, triggering major capacity build-up in a range of associated industries. In 2014, as the demand for real estate and infrastructure construction weakened, there was obvious overcapacity in heavy industrial products such as steel and aluminum. "Ultimately, China's excess capacity is due to state interference in the market," said Derek Scissors, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. "Genuinely private participants can't sustain excess capacity for long because it causes losses. But state support for production of some goods and services, called "strategic" or something like that, enables companies to survive despite these losses." Scissors said China's overcapacity in the new energy sectors of electric vehicles, solar panels and batteries concerns the Biden administration as it wants to expand those sectors in the U.S. "The U.S. has raised concerns about Chinese overproduction for years," he told VOA. "What's changed is there is now emerging American industrial policy clashing with long-standing and widespread Chinese industrial policy." The Rhodium Group's report says China's surge in exports of new energy products over the past few years could be devastating for market-constrained producers in advanced economies such as the U.S. Beijing's policy planning will exacerbate the growing imbalance between domestic supply and demand, it reads, putting China on the road to trade confrontation with the rest of the world. Adrianna Zhang contributed to this report.

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washington — U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen called on China Friday to address its industrial overcapacity, reform its trade practices and create a "healthy economic relationship" with the United States. "The United States seeks a healthy economic relationship with China that benefits both sides," Yellen said in remarks in the industrial southern Chinese city of Guangzhou. "But a healthy relationship must provide a level playing field for firms and workers in both countries." Yellen also met with Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng and other high-level central bank officials Friday. During the meeting, Yellen told Chinese officials that their industrial overcapacity, particularly in green energy sectors, threaten American production of electric vehicles and solar panel parts. China has supported its solar panel and EV makers through subsidies, building production capacity far beyond the domestic market's demand and exporting its products globally. Although this production has massively cheapened prices for these green products — crucial in efforts to fight climate change — American and European governments worry that Chinese products will flood the market and put their own domestic production at risk. During a meeting Friday with Guangdong province Governor Wang Weizhong, Yellen said the U.S. and China must communicate regarding areas of disagreement, including green industrial policy. "This includes the issue of China's industrial overcapacity, which the United States and other countries are concerned can cause global spillovers," she said. China has sought to downplay these concerns, with Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin noting earlier this week that China's green production is a positive in global efforts to reduce carbon emissions. Wang said U.S. reluctance to export technology to China, a policy related to U.S. fears of industrial overcapacity, meddles with global supply and demand. "As for who is doing nonmarket manipulation, the fact is for everyone to see," he said. "The U.S. has not stopped taking measures to contain China's trade and technology. This is not 'de-risking,' rather, it is creating risks." Beyond addressing overcapacity, Yellen also expressed concerns about Chinese trade practices. Yellen said China has pursued "unfair economic practices, including imposing barriers to access for foreign firms and taking coercive actions against American companies." She urged Chinese officials to reform these policies. "I strongly believe that this doesn't only hurt these American firms," Yellen said in a speech at an event hosted by the American Chamber of Commerce in Guangzhou. "Ending these unfair practices would benefit China by improving the business climate here." Yellen's visit to China, her second, marks the first visit by a senior U.S. official to China since November meetings between U.S. President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping. Both He and Yellen said the U.S. and China need to, in He's words, "properly respond to key concerns of the other side" to form a more cooperative economic relationship. Yellen said, "It also remains crucial for the two largest economies to seek progress on global challenges like climate change and debt distress in emerging markets in developing countries and to closely communicate on issues of concern such as overcapacity and national security-related economic actions." She added that U.S. efforts to push Chinese policies are geared toward reducing global risk. "This is not anti-China policy," she said. "It's an effort for us to mitigate the risks from the inevitable global economic dislocation that will result if China doesn't adjust its policies."

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Israel opens more aid routes and delivery access to Gaza, a day after U.S. President Joe Biden’s call with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu threatening a shift in U.S. policy towards Israel unless it reduced harm to civilians in Gaza. Former U.S. Ambassador to Israel Edward P. Djerejian, Senior Fellow for the Harvard Kennedy Belford Center’s Middle East Initiative gives his take on what he believes needs to happen. The deaths of seven World Central Kitchen staffers have shaken the humanitarian community as groups now weigh the safety risks of their own workers. Janti Soeripto, President and CEO of Save the Children who just returned from Gaza talks about the serious impacts even a short pause in aid would mean for millions of starving civilians. Tensions heat up as Iran accuses Israel of carrying out an airstrike in Syria that killed some of its top military commanders and threatens to retaliate.

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Following Thursday's meetings in Brussels, NATO's 32 member states are getting to work on an expanded role in providing military aid to Ukraine. At the session marking the 75th anniversary of the alliance, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg pledged NATO's support for Ukraine, now and for the long haul. Myroslava Gongadze visits a Ukrainian air base to see how military aid has already strengthened the country's air force. Camera: Yuriy Dankevych

Decisions by Florida’s high court this week opened the way for both tighter restrictions on abortion and the ability of Florida voters to decide this November whether to undo those restrictions. Reproductive rights are an important issue in this year’s presidential election. VOA Correspondent Scott Stearns reports.