Ice cream trucks are to summer what apple pie is to America. But residents of Scottsdale, Ariz. haven't heard the tell-tale sign of summer since the 1970s, when the city council banned the trucks.

Many people think of the seedless watermelons popping up at grocery stores and markets everywhere in the last few years as a marvel of modern scientific technology. In fact, more than 60 percent of watermelon shoppers seek this smoother pink flesh, and the numbers are increasing every year, according to a recent survey done for the National Watermelon Promotion Board.

President Obama's national security adviser visited China this week, just as Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney was attacking the administration's approach to that country.

"The cheating must finally be brought to a stop," Romney said Tuesday in a speech to the Veterans of Foreign Wars in Reno, Nev. "The president hasn't done it and won't do it, and I will."

China is the world's largest economy after the United States. It is one of the most important — and complicated — foreign relationships the U.S. has.

Ben Gibbard of Death Cab for Cutie is a lifelong Seattle Mariners fan, and such an Ichiro Suzuki devotee he wrote a song about the outfielder. Though he wrote it years ago, he decided this week — when Suzuki was traded to the New York Yankees — was the right time to release "Ichiro's Theme."

U.S.gymnast McKayla Maroney will compete in the London Summer Games, despite the lingering effects of a broken toe. Maroney, a gold medal contender, is the reigning world champion in the vault. Early reports suggested that Maroney broke her toe in London. But it appears that she merely tweaked an earlier injury.

On Twitter, NBC producer Alexa Ainsworth clarified that Maroney's toe "was broken before Classic and she just aggravated that here."

The Obama administration is enlisting new allies to fight health care fraud: insurers.

Today the Departments of Health and Human Services and Justice announced a partnership with more than a dozen health insurers and industry groups to nip fraudulent schemes in the bud, instead of tracking down bad guys after the fact.

At the time of singer-songwriter Sonya Kitchell's first Mountain Stage appearance, recorded in June 2005, she was only 16 — and had released her first album, Words Come Back to Me, just a year earlier. In this archived performance, Kitchell visits Mountain Stage in support of that album, and shows off what host Larry Groce calls "unusual charm and maturity." Her set begins solo before the Mountain Stage band joins her to close out the show.