As the U.S. attempts to strike an asylum deal with Guatemala, many of the Central American country’s own rural residents continue to flee the country at alarming rates. President Donald Trump told VOA in response to a question on Tuesday that the U.S. was “close” to reaching a safe third-country agreement with Guatemala.

ON THIS DAY IN AMERICAN HISTORY On June 26, 1948, the United States begins the Berlin Airlift just two days after the Soviet Union blocked car and rail access to West Berlin. While some in the administration of President Harry S. Truman preferred a military response, there was little appetite for another war so soon after World War II. The first planes took off from England and West Germany loaded with food and medicine for nearly 2 million West Berliners. Operating around the clock, the Berlin Airlift lasted for nearly a year when the Soviet Union realized cutting off West Berlin was a diplomatic loss. During the airlift, 200,000 flights delivered nearly 1.5 million tons of vital supplies.

VIDEO: With U.S. and Chinese leaders set to meet this week on the sidelines of the G20 Summit in Japan, there is a glimmer of hope progress will lead to an end to the trade war between the two largest economies in the world. Fears of the U.S. slapping more tariffs on Chinese goods have rattled companies in both countries, deepening worries that positions are hardening.

The NATO-led security alliance in Afghanistan says two U.S. soldiers were killed in an ambush in the eastern part of the country, bringing to nine the number of fatalities the U.S. military has suffered since the beginning of the year.

VIDEO: The Medal of Honor is the U.S. military’s highest award for courage in combat. Several troops died earning that honor in the Iraq War, but on Tuesday, for the first time, President Trump presented a Medal of Honor to a living veteran of the Iraq conflict. It was November 10, 2004, Army Staff Sgt. David Bellavia’s 29th birthday, when he risked his life to save his comrades in an abandoned house in the heart of Fallujah.

The United States has condemned efforts by China at the U.N. Human Rights Council to justify its incarceration of a reported million Uighurs and other ethnic minorities in ‘re-education’ camps in western Xinjiang Province.