Nation Andworld / IN BRIEF
Americans should rethink travel to China
BEIJING — The U.S. is recommending Americans reconsider traveling to China because of arbitrary law enforcement, exit bans and the risk of wrongful detentions.
No specific cases were cited, but a U.S. citizen was sentenced to life in prison in a spying case in May.
The advisory also follows the passage last week of a sweeping Foreign Relations Law that threatens countermeasures against those seen as harming China interests.
China also recently passed a broadly written counterespionage law that has sent a chill through the foreign business community, as well as a law to sanction foreign critics.
The U.S. has issued similar advisories in the past, but those in recent years mainly focused on the risks of being subject to COVID-19 lockdowns.
UA gets a handle on canceled flights
Air travel is getting a bit easier, thanks to a break in storms that have pummeled the East Coast.
The number of canceled and delayed flights on Monday was running well below Sunday’s rate.
Besides the better weather, airlines are running lighter schedules a day ahead of the July 4 holiday.
Wednesday figures to be the next big test for the system. That’s when airlines have about 50,000 flights scheduled.
Travel is fully recovered from the pandemic. Nearly 2.9 million people were screened at U.S. airports on Friday. That’s the highest number since the Transportation Security Administration started keeping track.
8 dead in Israel strike on West Bank
JENIN, West Bank — Israel has launched its most intense military operation in the occupied West Bank in nearly two decades.
The raid on Monday included a series of drone strikes and the deployment of hundreds of troops on an open-ended mission into a militant stronghold.
At least eight Palestinians were killed and dozens wounded.
The crackdown in the Jenin refugee camp was reminiscent of Israeli military tactics during the second Palestinian uprising in the early 2000s.
It also came at a time of growing domestic pressure for a tough response to recent attacks on Israeli settlers, including a shooting last month that killed four Israelis.
NATO plans readied to defend Ukraine
BRUSSELS — A top NATO military officer says Russia’s armed forces are bruised but by no means beaten in the war in Ukraine.
NATO Military Committee Chair Admiral Rob Bauer says on Monday Russia’s army is depleted by the war but that it still has a strong navy and air force and a nuclear arsenal.
He says these things are being taken into account as NATO readies the biggest revamp of its military plans since the Cold War to deal with any Russian invasion.
Bauer says Russia’s armed forces “might not be 11 feet tall, but they are certainly not 2 feet tall.” U.S. President Joe Biden and his NATO counterparts will endorse the plans at a July 1112 summit in Lithuania.
Man missing in 2015 found alive
HOUSTON — Police say a Texas man who went missing as a teenager in 2015 after last being seen walking his dogs in Houston has been found alive.
Houston police spokesman John Cannon said Monday that officers and firefighters found Rudolph “Rudy” Farias IV around 10 p.m. Thursday after getting a call of a person being down in front of a church in southeast Houston.
It was not immediately known where Farias had been the last eight years.
In a statement, Farias’ mother says her son has not been able to communicate but is receiving care.
Farias was 17 years old when he was reported missing in March 2015.
Shooting suspects sought in Baltimore
BALTIMORE — Police are searching for suspects who opened fire during a holiday weekend block party in Baltimore that killed two people, wounded 28 others. Authorities say many of the shooting victims were under 18.
Charlene Bowie jumped into action after she found a wounded teenage girl on her doorstep.
Bowie says she ran inside to get a rag and applied a makeshift tourniquet to the girl’s leg.
The circumstances leading up to the shooting early Sunday remained under investigation Monday.
Acting Police Commissioner Richard Worley says it wasn’t clear if the shooting was targeted or random.
Amazonians are leaving rainforest
ATALAIA DO NORTE, Brazil — Thousands of Amazon Indigenous are leaving their rainforest villages in a migration to urban areas that is reshaping their lives, their villages and their new cities.
Some of the migrants are seeking a better education than they can get in village schools that they say are in shambles from poor maintenance and lack of government oversight.
Others may have found themselves ensnared in a city after traveling long distances to collect a federal welfare benefit.
One tribe in the western Amazon, the Matis, says almost half its people now live in the impoverished Brazilian city of Atalaia do Norte.
Tribal leaders worry that their villages and culture will wither while their people are mired in a new urban poverty.