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Episode Date: July 29, 2026

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Live from NPR News, I'm Gail Snyder. President Trump spoke Tuesday at the funeral of South Carolina Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, calling Graham one of the great figures in Senate history. Lindsey quickly became a master at maneuvering in one of the world's great legislative bodies. He secured record funding for our military as a budget committee chairman. He delivered the largest investment in border security and history in last year. He shepherded the passage of the largest tax cuts in American history, the great, big, beautiful bill. Following Senator Graham's funeral service at Washington National Cathedral,

the Senate took the first steps toward passing a new Russia sanctions bill that Graham had long championed. The Senate advanced the bill on an 86 to 12 vote with the visiting Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky in the chamber. Zelensky had attended Graham's funeral and met with President Trump. Trump earlier in the day. South Dakota Governor Larry Rodin has won the Republican nomination for governor, according to a race call by the Associated Press. South Dakota Public Broadcasting's Jackson Dirk's reports on Rodin's runoff victory over a populist challenger. Rodin was lieutenant governor and moved into the state's top seat when Governor Kristy Noem joined the Trump administration last year. Rodin's opposed abortion pills, pledged to reform the state's prison system, and pass legislation to lower

property taxes by raising sales taxes. He was challenged for the nomination by business executive Toby Dodin, who was backed by the right-wing turning point organization founded by the late Charlie Kirk. The self-described political outsider ran on eliminating homeowner property taxes. In a state where a Democrat hasn't been governor since the 70s, the GOP nominee has into the fall as the frontrunner and faces former state legislator Democrat Dan Allers. For NPR News, I'm Jackson Dirk's and Aberdeen, South Dakota. Now to Southern Europe. where wildfires continue to burn, the European Union is mobilizing resources to help France and Spain battle the blazes. From Brussels, Terry Schultz reports more than three dozen countries are pitching in.

With wildfires straining French and Spanish national firefighting capacity, the EU has activated its civil protection mechanism or CPM at the request of French President Emmanuel Macron. This mechanism coordinates emergency assistance across the 27 EU states and 10 additional participants. countries. Speaking in Brussels, European Commission spokesperson Anakaisa Itkonen underscored the bloc's ability to amplify its assistance with the CPM. No country can maintain alone all the resources that are needed to tackle every possible natural or other disaster and crisis. This is where the strength of the European system comes to play. At the moment, seven other nations are supporting France and three are contributing to Spain with planes, vehicles and personnel. For NPR News, I'm

Terry Schultz in Brussels. And you're listening to NPR. news. Back and forth, attacks appear to have ended a brief pause in fighting between the U.S. and Iran. The U.S. military says Iran launched multiple missiles that American forces in the Middle East, but that all of them were successfully intercepted. U.S. and Saudi forces, meanwhile, struck sites in Iraq used by Iranian-backed militias to carry out attacks. The artist Betty Sara has died. Her work tackled stereotypes about black identity. Her gallery says she died in her sleep in Los Angeles Day shy of her 100th birthday, MPR's Chloe Veltman reports. Betty Sarr's career-defining 1972 work, The Liberation of Aunt Jemima,

centres on a grinning black mammy figure in a knotted headscarf, posing against a wall of vintage jemima pancake mixed labels. She holds a broom in one hand and... A rifle in the other. Saar was a pioneer of assemblage art, the practice of creating 3D artworks using found objects and everyday items. She told NPR in 2006, Aunt Jemper... Mimer inspired her to focus on creating art that reclaimed negative images of black people. I had a great deal of anger about the segregation and the racism in this country, and so this series sort of evolved. Betty Saar was born in Los Angeles in 1926. She continued to create art

well into her late 90s. Chloe Valtman, NPR News. The financial markets in Asia mostly lower in Wednesday trading emitted ongoing sell-off and shares of chipmakers. South Korea's benchmarked down more than he's. 11% of Routon chip stocks led by a plunging chip maker, H.J. Hynix and Samsung Electronics, it triggered a 20-minute trading halt. I'm Trial Snyder, NPR News.