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Kerry visits Brazil on two-day trip to South America to shore up relations
• BRASILIA, Brazil (AP) -- Secretary of State John Kerry will seek to allay the concerns of Brazil's top leaders about U.S. surveillance in their country while highlighting the expanding relationship the U.S. is nurturing with the economic powerhouse in Latin America.
• Kerry will have talks with Brazilian officials, including President Dilma Rousseff, on Tuesday as part of the Obama administration's quest for deeper relations with the region.
• During President Barack Obama's visit to Brazil in 2011, the two nations signed 10 bilateral agreements. Five more were signed when Rousseff visited the United States earlier this year, evidence of enhanced cooperation between the two countries. She has been invited again to Washington in October, when Obama hosts a state visit for Brazil.
• The U.S.-Brazil relationship, however, is not without snags -- the latest prompted by the National Security Agency's controversial surveillance programs.
• The O Globo newspaper reported last month that information released by NSA leaker Edward Snowden showed Brazil is the top target in Latin America for the NSA's massive intelligence-gathering effort, aimed at monitoring communications around the world. U.S. journalist Glenn Greenwald, who lives in Rio de Janeiro and initially broke the Snowden story in the Britain-based Guardian newspaper, sought to explain Brazil's involvement during an interview with O Globo.
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Great Wall not enough to attract tourists put off by China's bad air as numbers sharply fall
• BEIJING (AP) -- China, one of the most visited countries in the world, has seen sharply fewer tourists this year -- with worsening air pollution partly to blame.
• Numbers of foreign visitors have declined following January's "Airpocalypse," when already eye-searing levels of smog soared to new highs.
• Tourists have been put off by news about smog and other problems, said Frano Ilic of travel agency Studiosus in Munich, Germany. He said the number of people booking trips to China through his company has fallen 16 percent this year.
• "You are reading about smog. You are reading about political things," said Ilic. "All the news which is coming from China concerning the non-touristic things are (Continued on page 25)
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