Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido on Thursday issued an emotional plea to political and business leaders at Davos, saying he needed their international help as he could not achieve change alone.Guaido is recognized as Venezuela’s interim president by the United States and 50 other countries but has so far failed to shift President Nicolas Maduro from power despite months of struggle and ongoing economic crisis.”We are facing an international criminal conglomerate and we need your help,” he told the World Economic Forum (WEF), adding that Venezuela was experiencing an “unprecedented tragedy.””Alone, we are not going to get there,” he added.Guaido has defied a travel ban issued by Maduro’s administration to go on an international charm offensive aimed at ensuring continued diplomatic support for his bid to oust Maduro.The parliament speaker first headed to his chief ally and arch Maduro foe Colombia, then Britain and EU headquarters in Brussels, before traveling to Davos.It was in Davos last year that several heads of state recognized Guaido as interim Venezuela president. But despite presiding over the economic collapse of his oil rich nation, Maduro is still in charge, defying a growing list of U.S. and EU sanctions. 
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Nine parents who were deported as the Trump administration separated thousands of migrant families landed back into the U.S. late Wednesday to reunite with children they had not seen in a year and a half.The group arrived at Los Angeles International Airport from Guatemala City in a trip arranged under the order of a federal judge who found the U.S. government had unlawfully prevented them from seeking asylum. An asylum advocate confirmed the nine parents were all aboard the flight.Some of the children were at the airport to greet them, including David Xol’s 9-year-old son Byron.David fell to one knee and tearfully embraced Byron for about three minutes, patting the back of his son’s head.“He was small,” David said after rising to his feet. He looked at his attorney — who accompanied him on the flight — raised his hand about chest-high and said, “He grew a lot.”David, Byron and his attorney, Ricardo de Anda, then embraced in a three-way hug and exchanged words in their huddle. Byron was all smiles. Father, son, attorney and family sponsor eagerly left the airport for their hotel.The reunion was a powerful reminder of the lasting effects of Trump’s separation policy, even as attention and outrage has faded amid impeachment proceedings and tensions with Iran. But it also underscored that hundreds, potentially thousands, of other parents and children are still apart nearly two years after the zero-tolerance policy on unauthorized border crossings took effect.“They all kind of hit the lottery,” said Linda Grimm, an attorney who represents one of the parents returning to the U.S. “There are so many people out there who have been traumatized by the family separation policy whose pain is not going to be redressed.”More than 4,000 children are known to have been separated from their parents before and during the official start of zero tolerance in spring 2018. Under the policy, border agents charged parents en masse with illegally crossing the U.S.-Mexico border, then placed their children in government facilities, including some “tender-age shelters” set up for infants.The U.S. has acknowledged that agents separated families long before they enforced zero tolerance across the entire southern border, its agencies did not properly record separations, and some detention centers were overcrowded and undersupplied, with families denied food, water or medical care.In June 2018, U.S. District Judge Dana Sabraw ordered the government to stop separating families and reunite parents and children.At least 470 parents were deported without their children. Some of the kids were held in U.S. government facilities and ultimately placed with sponsors. Others were deported to their home countries.Accounts emerged of many parents being told to sign paperwork they couldn’t read or understand or being denied a chance to request asylum in ways that violated federal law.The U.S. Department of Homeland Security referred a request for comment to the Justice Department, which did not respond.The American Civil Liberties Union, which brought the original family separation lawsuit before Sabraw, asked the judge to order the return of a small group of parents whose children remained in the U.S. In September, Sabraw required the U.S. to allow 11 parents to come back and denied relief to seven others.ACLU attorney Lee Gelernt said Sabraw made clear he would only order the return of people “who were misled or coerced into giving up their asylum rights.” That will leave other parents who fled violence, poverty and persecution to decide whether to have their children return to their home countries or remain in the U.S. without them.“Many are going to make the decision that generations of immigrant parents have made — to leave their child in the U.S. and endure the hardship of separation, but to do it for their child’s own safety,” Gelernt said.Xol said that after he and his then-7-year-old son, Byron, crossed the border, they were taken to a U.S. Border Patrol processing center in South Texas. Xol was charged with illegal entry on May 19, 2018.Two days later, Xol said an officer told him to sign a document that would allow him and Byron to be deported together. If he didn’t sign, Byron would be given up for adoption and Xol would be detained for at least two years.Xol signed the document, only to have Byron taken away and then get deported to Guatemala. Byron was placed in government facilities for 11 months.The family’s attorney, Ricardo de Anda, persuaded a federal court to force the U.S. to let a Texas family take in Byron. Since May 2019, Byron has lived with Holly and Matthew Sewell and their two children, with regular video calls to his family.Holly Sewell brought Byron, now 9, to meet his father at the airport. They planned to go back to Texas to pack and prepare for Byron to move in with his father once Xol is settled in California. Before the reunion, Byron kept asking Sewell, his caretaker, when his father would clear immigration authorities.“They’re almost here, you’re doing great,” she said. “Count to 1,000.”“999,” Byron responded.She said she was thrilled Byron could see his dad again but sharply criticized the U.S. government’s treatment of asylum-seekers.Esvin Fernando Arredondo was expected to be on the plane. The father from Guatemala was separated from one of his daughters, Andrea Arredondo — then 12 years old and now 13, after they turned themselves in on May 16, 2018, at a Texas crossing and sought asylum legally, according to Grimm, his lawyer. He failed an initial screening and agreed to go back to Guatemala.According to Sabraw’s ruling, the government deported Arredondo even after the judge had ordered families reunited and subsequently prohibited U.S. officials from removing any parent separated from their child. He’s now being given a second chance at asylum under the court order.Andrea was separated from all family for about a month, living in a shelter as the government struggled to connect children with their parents because they lacked adequate tracking systems. She was finally reunited with her mother, who had turned herself in at the Texas crossing with the other two daughters four days earlier than her husband, on May 12, 2018.She and her two daughters passed the initial screening interview for asylum, unlike her husband, even though they were fleeing for the same reason. Their son Marco, 17, was shot and killed by suspected gang members in Guatemala City.Arredondo’s wife, Cleivi Jerez, 41, arrived at LAX less than an hour before the flight landed with their three daughters in tow, ages 17, 13 and 7.“Lots of nerves, last night I couldn’t sleep,” she said in Spanish in an interview after the flight landed.Jerez said she planned to stay up late catching up with her husband. She planned to rest at their Los Angeles home tomorrow as well, catching up on their 17 months apart before he has to report to an ICE office Friday in San Diego. Alison Arredondo, 7, said she missed going to the park with her father and she wanted to go to one with him in LA.While the U.S. has stopped the large-scale separations, it has implemented policies to prevent many asylum-seekers from entering the country. Under its “Remain in Mexico” policy, more than 50,000 people have been told to wait there for weeks or months for U.S. court dates. The Trump administration also is ramping up deportations of Central Americans to other countries in the region to seek asylum there.“People want to make this a heartwarming story, but it’s not. It’s devastating,” Sewell said. “There is just no good reason why we had to do this to this child and this family. And he symbolizes thousands of others who have been put in this exact same position.”
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Hundreds of Central American migrants who entered southern Mexico in recent days have either been pushed back into Guatemala by Mexican troops, shipped to detention centers or returned to Honduras, officials said Tuesday. An unknown number slipped past Mexican authorities and continued north.
The latest migrant caravan provided a public platform for Mexico to show the U.S. government and migrants thinking of making the trip that it has refined its strategy and produced its desired result: This caravan will not advance past its southern border.
What remained unclear was the treatment of the migrants who already find themselves on their way back to the countries they fled last week.
“Mexico doesn’t have the capacity to process so many people in such a simple way in a couple of days,” said Guadalupe Correa Cabrera, a professor at George Mason University studying how the caravans form.
The caravan of thousands had set out from Honduras in hopes Mexico would grant them passage, posing a fresh test of U.S. President Donald Trump’s effort to reduce the flow of migrants arriving at the U.S. border by pressuring other governments to stop them.
Mexican Foreign Secretary Marcelo Ebrard said 2,400 migrants entered Mexico legally over the weekend. About 1,000 of them requested Mexico’s help in returning to their countries. The rest were being held in immigration centers while they start legal processes that would allow them to seek refuge in Mexico or obtain temporary work permits that would confine them to southern Mexico.
On Tuesday afternoon, Jesus, a young father from Honduras who offered only his first name, rested in a shelter in Tecun Uman, Guatemala, with his wife and their baby, unsure of what to do next.
“No country’s policy sustains us,” he said in response to hearing Ebrard’s comments about the situation. “If we don’t work, we don’t eat. (He) doesn’t feed us, doesn’t care for our children.”
Honduran officials said more than 600 of its citizens were expected to arrive in that country Tuesday by plane and bus and more would follow in the coming days.
Of an additional 1,000 who tried to enter Mexico illegally Monday by wading across the Suchiate river, most were either forced back or detained later by immigration agents, according to Mexican officials.
Most of the hundreds stranded in the no-man’s land on the Mexican side of the river Monday night returned to Guatemala in search of water, food and a place to sleep. Late Tuesday, the first buses carrying Hondurans left Tecun Uman with approximately 150 migrants heading back to their home country.
Mexican authorities distributed no water or food to those who entered illegally, in what appeared to be an attempt by the government to wear out the migrants.
Alejandro Rendon, an official from Mexico’s social welfare department, said his colleagues were giving water to those who turned themselves in or were caught by immigration agents, but were not doing the same along the river because it was not safe for workers to do so.
“It isn’t prudent to come here because we can’t put the safety of the colleagues at risk,” he said.
Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said Tuesday that the government is trying to protect the migrants from harm by preventing them from traveling illegally through the country. He said they need to respect Mexican laws.
“If we don’t take care of them, if we don’t know who they are, if we don’t have a register, they pass and get to the north, and the criminal gangs grab them and assault them, because that’s how it was before,” he said. “They disappeared them.”
Mexican Interior Minister Olga Sanchez Cordero commended the National Guard for its restraint, saying: “In no way has there been an act that we could call repression and not even annoyance.”
But Honduras’ ambassador to Mexico said there had been instances of excessive force on the part of the National Guard. “We made a complaint before the Mexican government,” Alden Rivera said in an interview with HCH Noticias without offering details. He also conceded migrants had thrown rocks at Mexican authorities.
An Associated Press photograph of a Mexican National Guardsman holding a migrant in a headlock was sent via Twitter by acting U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Ken Cuccinelli with the message: “We appreciate Mexico doing more than they did last year to interdict caravans attempting to move illegally north to our southern border.”
“They absolutely must be satisfied with (Mexico’s) actions because in reality it’s their (the United States’) plan,” said Correa Cabrera, the George Mason professor. “They’re congratulating themselves, because in reality it wasn’t Lopez Obrador’s plan.”
She said it is an complicated issue for Mexico, but the National Guard had no business being placed at the border to handle immigration because they weren’t trained for it. The government “is sending a group that doesn’t know how to and can’t protect human rights because they’re trained to do other kinds of things,” she said.
Mexico announced last June that it was deploying the newly formed National Guard to assist in immigration enforcement to avoid tariffs that Trump threatened on Mexican imports.
Darlin Rene Romero and his wife were among the few who spent the night pinned between the river and Mexican authorities.
Rumors had circulated through the night that “anything could happen, that being there was very dangerous,” Romero said. But the couple from Copan, Honduras, spread a blanket on the ground and passed the night 20 yards from a line of National Guard troops forming a wall with their riot shields.
They remained confident that Mexico would allow them to pass through and were trying to make it to the northern Mexican city of Monterrey, where his sister lives.
They said a return home to impoverished and gang-plagued Honduras, where most of the migrants are from, was unthinkable.       
 
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An extradition proceeding under way in Canada could lead to Chinese tech giant Huawei’s chief financial officer being transferred to the United States to face charges related to sanctions violations.Prosecutors are asking a British Columbia court to determine if charges against Meng Wanzhou are a case of “double criminality,” which means they are crimes in both Canada and the United States. For someone to be extradited from Canada to the U.S., the charges would have to be recognized by both countries.Meng was arrested by Canadian officials at the request of the U.S. and is accused of misleading U.S. banks and attempting to circumvent American sanctions against Iran while serving as the chief financial officer of Huawei, which was founded by her father.Prosecutors allege the charges amount to fraud, which is illegal in both Canada and the United States.Meng’s defense says the accusations allege a violation of U.S. sanctions against Iran. Canada currently has no sanctions against doing business in Iran, and lawyers argue Meng could not be extradited based solely on violating U.S. sanctions.Huawei chief financial officer Meng Wanzhou attends her extradition hearing in British Columbia Supreme Court in Vancouver, British Columbia, Jan. 21, 2020, in this courtroom sketch by Jane Wolsak.If the court finds the charges are only about violating sanctions, the 47-year-old executive could be free to return to China.If, instead, the court rules the charges amount to fraud, Meng could remain free on $7.7 million bail in one of her two mansions in Vancouver. Meng’s next scheduled appearance would then take place in June. At that time, her defense attorneys would argue that Canadian authorities participated in an improper “covert criminal investigation” when she was arrested at Vancouver International Airport on Dec. 1, 2018, while transiting to Mexico.Any decision in the case is subject to multiple levels of appeals.Longtime Vancouver immigration lawyer and policy analyst Richard Kurland, who is not involved in the case, attended the hearing. Speaking outside the courthouse, he said those appeals can go on for years.   “Don’t forget these cases are complex in law and in fact,” Kurland said. “The Canadian system traditionally has appeals and, (in) extraditions where the litigants can afford it, that (can) run to 10 years and longer.”A decision on the current stage of the extradition proceedings may be announced at the end of this week or may be “reserved” for a later date.
 
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Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido was in London on Tuesday as part of a surprise international trip to revive support for forcing the resignation of the country’s authoritarian leader, Nicolas Maduro.  One year ago, Guaido was recognized by the U.S. and over 50 countries as Venezuela’s interim president after Maduro blocked opponents in the last presidential election. However, VOA’s Brian Padden reports that tough U.S. sanctions and diplomatic pressure imposed a year ago have not succeeded to break the socialist president’s hold on power.
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Brazilian prosecutors on Tuesday accused U.S. journalist Glenn Greenwald of involvement in hacking the phones of officials involved in a corruption investigation, but said court rulings protecting free speech prevent them from bringing charges.A prosecutor in the Federal District, Wellington Divino Marques de Oliveira, said the journalist helped a group of six people who hacked into phones of hundreds local authorities.Greenwald’s The Intercept Brasil published excerpts from conversations involving Justice Minister Sérgio Moro, saying they showed the then-judge was improperly coordinating with prosecutors at the time he was a judge overseeing a vast corruption investigation. The probe led to the imprisonment of former President Luis Inácio Lula da Silva on corruption charges.While many Brazilians hail Moro as a hero, others believe he unfairly targeted da Silva and other top leftist figures. Moro is now a key member of far-right President Jair Bolsonaro’s cabinet.Greenwald’s attorneys said in a statement that the prosecutors’ allegations are “bizarre” and that they challenge the top court ruling protecting the journalist and freedom of press in Brazil.“Their objective is to disparage journalistic work,” the lawyers said.FILE – U.S. journalist Glenn Greenwald (L) walks with his partner David Miranda in Rio de Janeiro’s International Airport, August 19, 2013.Prosecutors said in a statement that an unreleased audio links Greenwald to the group of hackers as they broke the law, terming it “auxiliary participation in the crime” and saying he was “seeking to subvert the idea of protection of a journalistic source into immunity to guide criminals.”Brazil’s top court last year said that “the constitutional secrecy” around journalistic sources prevented the Brazilian state from using “coercive measures” against Greenwald. Because of that, a judge would have to authorize any attempt by prosecutors to formally investigate Greenwald or bring charges.Greenwald, an attorney-turned-journalist who lives in Brazil, has frequently come under criticism by Bolsonaro.Moro has not acknowledge the veracity of the reports by The Intercept Brasil, saying they come from “criminal invasion” of the phones of several prosecutors. Many others involved in the leaked messages or mentioned in them have confirmed their content.   
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Prince Harry has reunited with his wife Meghan in Canada as he steps back from royal duties.
Video from Sky News shows Harry landing at Victoria’s airport on Vancouver Island late Monday. The prince, Meghan and their 8-month-old son Archie were reportedly staying at a mansion on the island off Canada’s Pacific coast. The video shows Harry stepping off a small passenger plane and getting into a SUV on the tarmac.
Buckingham Palace said Tuesday it would not comment on private matters.
The palace announced Saturday that the prince and his wife will give up public funding and try to become financially independent. The couple, who were named the Duke and Duchess of Sussex on their wedding day, are expected to spend most of their time in Canada while maintaining a home in England near Windsor Castle in an attempt to build a more peaceful life.
A photographer spotted a smiling Meghan on a hike with Archie and her two dogs, trailed by her security detail, on Vancouver Island on Monday.
Sky News and the BBC reported that the Duke and Duchess of Sussex have issued a legal warning over paparazzi photographs that appeared in The Sun newspaper. They reported that the photographs were taken by photographers hiding in the bushes and spying on her.
The couple spent the holiday season on the island, but it’s unclear where in Canada they will settle. Meghan worked for seven years in Toronto, where she filmed the TV series “Suits.”
It is also unclear who would pay for their personal security and what the immigration and tax status would be for the couple. Harry’s grandmother, the queen, is technically head of state in Canada, a Commonwealth nation.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has spoken warmly about Harry and Meghan, but has said there are questions to be addressed.
“Discussions are continuing and I have no update at this time,” Trudeau said Tuesday.
The country’s leading newspaper, The Globe and Mail, wrote in an editorial last week that senior royals were welcome to visit Canada but should not stay because a royal living in Canada does not accord with the longstanding nature of the relationship between Canada and Britain, and Canada and the Crown.
The paper said it would break an “unspoken constitutional taboo.” But The Globe and Mail published another editorial on Monday that said while a senior member of the Royal Family setting up shop in Canada “doesn’t accord with what Canada has become,” Harry is no longer a royal so the problem is solved.  
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Hundreds of Central American migrants were stranded in a sort of no-man’s land on the river border between Guatemala and Mexico after running up against lines of Mexican National Guard troops deployed to keep them from moving en masse into the country and on north toward the U.S. Naked children played amid the sand and trash Monday evening as clothing and shoes hung from the trees to dry along the Suchiate River, normally a porous waterway plied all day by rafts ferrying people and goods across. Men grilled a fish over a small fire below the border bridge, and migrants bedded down under blankets on the banks or dry sections of the riverbed without knowing what might come next. The path forward was blocked Monday by Mexican troops with riot shields, and about 100 National Guard agents continued to form a barrier with anti-riot gear into the night. But a return home to impoverished and gang-plagued Honduras, where most of the migrants are from, was unthinkable. “We are in no-man’s land,” said Alan Mejia, whose 2-year-old son was cradled in his arms clad only in a diaper as his wife, Ingrid Vanesa Portillo, and their other son, 12, gazed at the riverbanks. Mejia joined in five previous migrant caravans but never made it farther than the Mexican border city of Tijuana.”They are planning how to clear us out, and here we are without water or food,” said a desperate Portillo. “There is no more hope for going forward.” Unlike was often the case with previous caravans, there was no sign of humanitarian aid arriving for those stuck at the river. Throngs waded across the Suchiate into southern Mexico on Monday hoping to test U.S. President Donald Trump’s strategy to keep Central American migrants away from the U.S. border. The push also challenged Mexico’s ramped-up immigration policing that began last year in response to threats of economic tariffs from Trump, a change that effectively snuffed out the last caravan in April.Some scuffled with National Guard troops on the riverbank while others slipped through the lines and trudged off on a rural highway, with most taken into custody later in the day. Still others were taken into custody on the spot or chased into the brush. Some migrants hurled rocks at the police, who huddled behind their plastic shields and threw some of the rocks back. Most of the migrants, however, stayed at the river’s edge or stood in its waters trying to decide their next move after being blocked earlier in the day from crossing the bridge linking Tecun Uman, Guatemala, with Ciudad Hidalgo, Mexico. “We never thought they would receive us like that,” said Melisa Avila, who traveled from the Honduran capital of Tegucigalpa with her 12-year-old son and was resigning herself to the prospect of spending the night outdoors. “They treated us like dogs.” In an approach that developed after the first migrant caravan in late 2018, Mexican officials seem to be succeeding in their effort to blunt large-scale incursions by breaking up the mass of people repeatedly and into increasingly smaller groups. Over the weekend, government officials convinced about 1,000 people they should enter legally via the bridge.The National Immigration Institute issued a statement saying it would detain any migrants in the country illegally, hold them in detention centers and deport those who did not legalize their status. Any who made it through and continued north could expect a gauntlet of highway checkpoints.As feared, children suffered in the chaos. On the Mexican bank an unconscious 14-year-old girl was carried away for medical attention Monday.Later along the highway, a mother sobbed after realizing her youngest daughter had been separated when migrants tried to escape authorities. Another migrant who had been helping her by carrying the 5-year-old ran in another direction when the migrants scattered and she hadn’t been able to locate them.Back at the river, Avila, who had befriended the woman at a shelter in Tecun Uman, walked along the bank showing everyone a picture of the daughter. “Have you seen this little girl?” Avila asked other migrants. “Blue pants, beige shirt and little pink shoes.”The Guatemalan government issued new data saying that 4,000 migrants had entered that country through the two primary crossings used by the migrants last week, and over the weekend nearly 1,700 entered Mexico at two crossings. It said 400 had been deported from Guatemala. The Immigration Institute said late Monday in a statement that about 500 migrants had entered irregularly and announced the “rescue” of 402 of them — using the term it frequently employs to describe migration detentions; It said the latter were taken to holding centers and offered medical care. The institute said five National Guard troops were hurt but did not give details. While Mexico says the migrants are free to enter if they do so through official channels — and could compete for jobs if they want to stay and work — in practice, it has restricted such migrants to the impoverished southernmost states while their cases are processed by a sluggish bureaucracy. When the rocks began flying at the river Monday, Elena Vasquez, , fearful for the safety of her two wailing sons, bolted back to the Guatemalan side where she would later spend the night. Exhausted after a week on the road, the 28-year-old from Olancho, Honduras, vowed to endure and hoped Mexican authorities would have a change of heart. “I am going to wait as long as necessary. God will open the gates for us,” Vasquez said. “Necessity forces one day more on us,” she continued. “We will have to wait and see what happens.” 
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A Mexican human rights organization on Monday urged authorities to investigate the disappearance of an environmental activist dedicated to protecting the famed monarch butterfly, suggesting the case may be linked to illegal logging in the area.Homero Gomez, who manages a butterfly sanctuary in the western Mexican state of Michoacan, disappeared Jan. 13, according to the Human Rights State Commission of Michoacan.The organization has asked the attorney general’s office to determine if Gomez’s disappearance is linked to his role in defending Mexico’s forests, commission official Mayte Cardona told Reuters.”He was probably hurting the (business) interests of people illegally logging in the area,” Cardona said.Illegal logging and trafficking is rife in Michoacan, a state plagued by organized crime.”The investigation is ongoing,” a source with the state prosecutor said.Environmentalists say illegal logging hurts the habitat of the monarch butterfly, which migrates thousands of kilometers from Canada across the United States to reproduce in Mexico.
 
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The first stage of an extradition hearing for a senior executive of Chinese telecom giant Huawei begins Monday in a Vancouver courtroom, a case that has infuriated Beijing,  caused a diplomatic uproar between China and Canada and complicated trade talks between China and the United States.
    
Canada’s arrest of chief financial officer Meng Wanzhou, the daughter of Huawei’s legendary founder, in late 2018 at America’s request shocked Beijing.
    
Huawei represents China’s progress in becoming a technological power and has been a subject of U.S. security concerns for years. Beijing views Meng’s case as an attempt to contain China’s rise.
    
China’s foreign ministry complained Monday the United States and Canada were violating Meng’s rights and called for her release.
    
“It is completely a serious political incident,`” said a ministry spokesman, Geng Shuang. He urged Canada to “correct mistakes with concrete actions, release Ms. Meng Wanzhou and let her return safely as soon as possible.”
    
Washington accuses Huawei of using a Hong Kong shell company to sell equipment to Iran in violation of U.S. sanctions. It says Meng, 47, committed fraud by misleading the HSBC bank about the company’s business dealings in Iran.
    
Meng, who is free on bail and living in one of the two Vancouver mansions she owns, left her home dressed in a black dress and black coat in a black SUV surrounded by security. She waved at reporters as she arrived at court.
    
Meng denies the allegations. Her defense team says comments by President Donald Trump suggest the case against her is politically motivated.
    
Meng was detained in December 2018 in Vancouver as she was changing flights _ on the same day that Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping met for trade talks.
    
Prosecutors have stressed that Meng’s case is separate from the wider China-U.S. trade dispute, but Trump undercut that message weeks after her arrest when he said he would consider intervening in the case if it would help forge a trade deal with Beijing.
    
China and the U.S. reached a “Phase 1” trade agreement last week, but most analysts say any meaningful resolution of the main U.S. allegation that Beijing uses predatory tactics in its drive to supplant America’s technological supremacy, could require years of contentious talks. Trump had raised the possibility of using Huawei’s fate as a bargaining chip in the trade talks, but the deal announced Wednesday didn’t mention the company.
    
Huawei is the biggest global supplier of network gear for cellphone and internet companies. Washington is pressuring other countries to limit use of its technology, warning they could be opening themselves up to surveillance and theft.
    
James Lewis at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies said the U.S. wanted to send a message with Meng’s arrest. There is good evidence that Huawei willfully violated sanctions, he said.
    
“The message that you are no longer invulnerable has been sent to Chinese executives,” Lewis said. “No one has held China accountable. They steal technology, they violate their WTO commitments and the old line is, ‘Oh, they are a developing economy, who cares.’ When you are the second-largest economy in the world you can’t do that anymore.”
    
The initial stage of Meng’s extradition hearing will focus on whether Meng’s alleged crimes are crimes both in the United States and Canada. Her lawyers filed a a motion Friday arguing that Meng’s case is really about U.S. sanctions against Iran, not a fraud case. Canada does not have similar sanctions on Iran.
    
The second phase, scheduled for June, will consider defense allegations that Canada Border Services, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and the FBI violated her rights while collecting evidence before she was actually arrested.
    
The extradition case could take years to resolve if there are appeals. Nearly 90 percent of those arrested in Canada on extradition requests from the U.S. were surrendered to U.S. authorities between 2008 and 2018.
    
In apparent retaliation for Meng’s arrest, China detained former Canadian diplomat Michael Kovrig and Canadian entrepreneur Michael Spavor. The two men have been denied access to lawyers and family and are being held in prison cells where the lights are kept on 24-hours-a-day. That's mafia-style pressure, Lewis said.
    
China has also placed restrictions on various Canadian exports to China, including canola oil seed and meat. Last January, China also handed a death sentence to a convicted Canadian drug smuggler in a sudden retrial
     
“Canada is fulfilling the terms of its extradition treaty but is paying an enormous price,” said Roland Paris, a former foreign policy adviser to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. “This is the kind of world we’re living in now, where countries like Canada are at risk of getting squeezed in major power contests.”
 
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Secretary of State Mike Pompeo says the Untied States will start doing more to support Venezuela’s opposition leader and self-proclaimed president, Juan Guaido.Pompeo and Guaido met with reporters Monday on the sidelines of a regional counterterrorism meeting in Bogota, Colombia.Guaido, head of the National Assembly, declared himself Venezuelan president one year ago, after ruling that President Nicolas Maduro’s re-election was illegitimate.The Trump administration and about 50 other countries recognize Guaido as Venezuela’s true president.”I want you to know that your president is a great leader who wants to take your country in the right direction — the direction of freedom, democracy, to restore economic prosperity,” Pompeo said in remarks directed at the Venezuelan people. He said the U.S. will do everything to ensure they get that opportunity.FILE – Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro delivers his annual state of the nation speech during a special session of the National Constituent Assembly, in Caracas, Venezuela, Jan. 14, 2020.Guaido’s initial momentum and popular uprising against Maduro has appeared to wane over the past year. But Guaido told reporters the fight for democracy “finds alternatives, different pathways, and reinforced mechanisms.”He said getting rid of Maduro is a “long-term strategy.””The dictators won’t want to give up the power they’ve taken. … We’re much more like Syria than like Cuba … in terms of migration, access to services, the inflation. There’s no vaccines for our children. They are dying because of lack of food,” Guaido said through an interpreter.Venezuela’s ruling Socialist Party Vice President Diosdado Cabello dismissed Guaido on Monday as ineffective.”It is totally irrelevant for us that a lackey has gone to meet his masters in Colombia. He hasn’t achieved anything he promised,” Cabello said at a press conference.U.S. ‘actions’ unclearPompeo did not specify what “further actions” the U.S. would take to back Guaido. It has already imposed sanctions on a number of senior Venezuelan politicians and on the Venezuelan oil sector. U.S. military action against Venezuela has never been taken off the table.The U.S. accuses the Maduro regime of having links to Colombian rebel groups and the Lebanese-based Hezbollah terrorists.Pompeo would not say if the U.S. is planning to designate Venezuela a state sponsor of terrorism, telling reporters it is “constantly evaluating” who belongs on the list.Guaido heads to the World Economic Forum in Davos this week. He leaves Venezuela at great personal risk because the Venezuelan Supreme Court has barred him from leaving the country, and he may not be allowed to return home.Millions of Venezuelans have fled the country in the past two years after failed socialist policies, corruption, and the drop in world energy policies wrecked the oil-rich country’s economy. Gasoline, medicine, and many basic foods are in short supply or priced out of reach because of hyperinflation.Maduro has said he is ready to hold direct talks with the United States.
 
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The Honduran government has formally declared Iranian-backed Lebanese group Hezbollah a terrorist organization, a top security official said on Monday.”We declare Hezbollah a terrorist organization and will include it in the registry of persons and institutions linked to acts of terrorism and its financing,” said Luis Suazo, Honduras’
deputy security minister.
Heavily armed Hezbollah, a Shia-dominated group, has also been designated a terrorist organization by the U.S. government.
Last week, Guatemala’s new president, Alejandro Giammattei, also signaled he would label Hezbollah a terrorist group, in addition to keeping the Guatemalan Embassy in Israel in the city
of Jerusalem.
Both moves were seen as aligning Guatemala’s foreign policy more closely with that of U.S. President Donald Trump.
  
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Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido will come to Brussels on Wednesday to hold talks with the European Union’s foreign policy chief Josep Borrell Borrell told a news conference.Recognized as Venezuela’s president by more than 50 countries including the United States and most European Union members, Guaido has already defied a travel ban by going on Sunday to Colombia where he is set to meet U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo at a regional conference.
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A large caravan of Central Americans was preparing to cross the Guatemalan border into Mexico on Monday, posing a potential challenge to the Mexican government’s pledge to help the United States contain mass movements of migrants.The migrants were massed on a bridge connecting the two countries early on Monday morning in what appeared to be a tense standoff with Mexican migration officials and soldiers.U.S. President Donald Trump has threatened to punish Mexico and Central American countries economically if they fail to curb migrant flows, resulting in a series of agreements aimed at taking pressure off the United States in absorbing the numbers.Migrants crossed into Mexico in small groups during the weekend after Mexican security officials blocked an effort by some Central Americans to force their way through the border.The bulk of at least 2,000 migrants remained in the Guatemalan border town of Tecun Uman, opposite the Mexican town of Ciudad Hidalgo, with some saying they planned to set off for Mexico en masse early on Monday, believing that they stood a better chance of making progress in a large caravan.Mexico has offered migrants work in the south, but those who do not accept it or seek asylum will not be issued safe conduct passes to the United States, the interior ministry said.The ministry said in a statement on Sunday afternoon that Mexican authorities had received nearly 1,100 migrants in the states of Chiapas and Tabasco and set out various options to them in accordance with their migration status.”However, in the majority of cases, once the particular migration situation has been reviewed, assisted returns will be carried out to their countries of origin, assuming that their situation warrants it,” the ministry said.According to Guatemala, at least 4,000 people have entered from Honduras since Wednesday, making for one of the biggest surges since three Central American governments signed agreements with the Trump administration obliging them to assume more of the responsibility for dealing with migrants.Mexico has so far controlled the border at Tecun Uman more successfully than in late 2018, when a large caravan of migrants sought to break through there. Many later crossed into Mexico via the Suchiate River dividing the two countries. 
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The first stage of an extradition hearing for a senior executive of Chinese telecom giant Huawei begins Monday in a Vancouver courtroom, a case that has infuriated Beijing, set off a diplomatic furor and raised fears of a brewing tech war between China and the United States.  Canada’s arrest of chief financial officer Meng Wanzhou, the daughter of Huawei’s legendary founder, in late 2018 at America’s request shocked Beijing.   Huawei represents China’s ambitions to become a technological power, but has been the subject of U.S. security concerns for years. Beijing views Meng’s case as an attempt to contain China’s rise.  “This is one of the top priorities for the Chinese government. They’ve been very mad. They will be watching this very closely,” said Wenran Jiang, a senior fellow at the Institute of Asian Research at the University of British Columbia.  Washington accuses Huawei of using a Hong Kong shell company to sell equipment to Iran in violation of U.S. sanctions. It says Meng, 47, committed fraud by misleading HSBC Bank about the company’s business dealings in Iran.   In this file photo taken on Nov. 6, 2019, the logo of Chinese telecom giant Huawei is pictured during the Web Summit in Lisbon.Meng, who is free on bail and living in one of the two Vancouver mansions she owns, denies the allegations. Meng’s defense team has pointed to comments by U.S. President Donald Trump they say suggest the case against her is politically motivated.  Meng was detained in December 2018 by Canadian authorities in Vancouver as she was changing flights — the same day that Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping met for trade talks.  Prosecutors have stressed that Meng’s case is separate from the wider trade dispute, but Trump undercut that message weeks after her arrest when he said he would consider intervening in the case if it would help forge a trade deal with Beijing.   China and the U.S. reached a “Phase 1” trade agreement last week, but most analysts say any meaningful resolution of the main U.S. allegation — that Beijing uses predatory tactics in its drive to supplant America’s technological supremacy — could require years of contentious talks. Trump had raised the possibility of using Huawei’s fate as a bargaining chip in the trade talks, but the deal announced Wednesday didn’t mention the company.   Huawei is the biggest global supplier of network gear for cellphone and internet companies. Washington has pressured other countries to limit use of its technology, warning they could be opening themselves up to surveillance and theft.  “I think this is the beginning of a technological war along ideological fronts,” said Lynette Ong, an associate professor at the University of Toronto. “You are going to see the world divided into two parts. One side would use Chinese companies and the other side would not use Chinese companies because they are weary of the political implications of using Chinese platforms.”James Lewis at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies said the U.S. wanted to send a message with Meng’s arrest and that there is good evidence that Huawei willfully violated sanctions.  “The message that you are no longer invulnerable has been sent to Chinese executives,” Lewis said. “No one has held China accountable. They steal technology, they violate their WTO commitments and the old line is, ‘Oh, they are a developing economy, who cares.’ When you are the second-largest economy in the world you can’t do that anymore.”  The initial stage of Meng’s extradition hearing will deal with the issue of whether Meng’s alleged crimes are crimes both in the United States and Canada. Her lawyers filed a a motion Friday arguing that Meng’s case is really about U.S. sanctions against Iran, not a fraud case. Canada does not have similar sanctions on Iran.   The second phase, scheduled for June, will consider defense allegations that Canada Border Services, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and the FBI violated her rights while collecting evidence before she was actually arrested.  The extradition case could take years to resolve if there are appeals. Virtually all extradition request from Canada to the U.S. are approved by Canadian judges.   In apparent retaliation for Meng’s arrest, China detained former Canadian diplomat Michael Kovrig and Canadian entrepreneur Michael Spavor. The two men have been denied access to lawyers and family and are being held in prison cells where the lights are kept on 24-hours-a-day. “That’s mafia-style pressure,” Lewis said.   China has also placed restrictions on various Canadian exports to China, including canola oil seed and meat. Last January, China also handed a death sentence to a convicted Canadian drug smuggler in a sudden retrial.   “Canada is fulfilling the terms of its extradition treaty but is paying an enormous price,” said Roland Paris, a former foreign policy adviser to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. “This is the kind of world we’re living in now, where countries like Canada are at risk of getting squeezed in major power contests.”
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The bridge spanning the Suchiate River between Mexico and Guatemala was open again for business Sunday, but few migrants crossed after a failed attempt by thousands of Central Americans to barge through the previous day.More than 2,000 migrants spent the night in Tecun Uman, on the Guatemalan side of the border, uncertain of their next steps. Many got that far by traveling in caravan for greater safety and, they hoped, success in reaching the United States.Mexico, pressured by the U.S. to halt the northward flow of migrants, is offering those who turn themselves over to authorities temporary jobs in southern Mexico, likely in agriculture or construction. But many of the migrants would rather pass through the country to try to start a new life in the U.S.Volunteers spooned out a hot breakfast of beans, eggs, tortillas and coffee on Sunday to a line of migrants that stretched around the Senor de las Tres Caidas church, a blue and white Spanish colonial-style structure with a bell perched on top that’s in the heart of Tecun Uman.“We improvised this shelter because the other one was crowded,” said Alfredo Camarena, vicar of the Catholic church.Camarena estimated that more than 2,000 migrants spent the night in his church, in shelters or on the streets, and that several hundred more would arrive in the coming days.Mexican national guardsmen on Saturday slammed shut a metal fence that reads “Welcome to Mexico” to block the path of thousands of Central American migrants who attempted to push their way across the Rodolfo Robles Bridge.Beyond the fence, on the Mexican side of the border, Mexican troops in riot gear formed a human wall to reinforce the barrier as the crowd pressed forward.Mexican Gen. Vicente Hernandez stood beyond the green bars, flanked by guardsmen, with an offer: Turn yourselves over to us, and the Mexican government will find you jobs.“There are opportunities for all,” he promised.Migrants looking for permission to stay in Mexico passed through in groups of 20. As the day wore on, around 300 turned themselves over to Mexican immigration.At a less frequently used border crossing called El Ceibo, nestled among national parks near the city of Tenosique in Mexico’s Tabasco state, Guatemala’s human rights defender’s office reported Sunday that around 300 people opted to turn themselves over to Mexican authorities for processing.Mexico’s offer of employment, and not just legal status, represents a new twist in the country’s efforts to find humane solutions to the mostly Central American migrants who are fleeing poverty and violence in their home countries.Under threat of trade and other sanctions from the U.S., Mexico has stepped up efforts in recent months to prevent migrants from reaching their desired final destination: the U.S. Over the weekend, Mexican immigration officials deployed drones to look for migrants trying to sneak into the country. The National Guard presence was also heavier than usual.As the latest caravans approached Mexico on Friday, President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador suggested that Mexico might be able to accommodate the migrants longer-term.“We have more than 4,000 jobs available there along the southern border, and of course shelters and medical attention — everything — but on offer is work in our country,” he said during a morning press briefing.The offer of jobs to foreigners rankles some in Mexico, a country in which half the population lives in poverty and millions are unemployed.Lopez Obrador was quick to add Friday that “the same goes for our nationals, there’s a way for them to have work.”Despite the offer, distrust ran high among the migrants congregating just south of the Mexican border with Guatemala. Some feared they would be swiftly deported if they handed themselves over to Mexican authorities.A few, relying on unfounded rumors swirling among the migrants, said they suspected a more selfish motive behind Mexico’s reinforcement of its southern border.“We’ve heard that the president of the United States has opened the doors and that he even has work for us, and that the Mexicans don’t want to let us pass because they want to keep all the work,” said Carlos Alberto Bustillo of Honduras as he bathed in the Suchiate River.The Suchiate has sometimes been a point for standoffs, as migrants group together for strength in numbers, hoping that they can force their way across the bridge, or wade across the river, to avoid immigration checks in Mexico.The water levels of the river have been low enough this weekend to allow those who dare to simply trudge across. National Guardsmen lined the banks to warn against such undertakings, with interactions that resemble a high-stakes game of chicken.Honduran Darlin Mauricio Mejia joined a dozen other migrants for a splash on the banks of the Guatemalan side of the river early Sunday.Playfully, he shouted out to the guardsmen: asking if they could cross into Mexico to grab some mangos to eat.One of the guardsmen responded, curtly: “Let’s go to immigration and they’ll help you there.” 
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The Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights is appealing for $375.5 million to support its efforts to promote and protect human rights in dozens of countries around the world at a time of great turbulence and erosion of fundamental rights.Human rights is one of the three main pillars of the United Nations, along with peace and security and development. And, yet the office established to be the world’s human rights watchdog is seriously short of cash.Barely half of last year’s record $321.5 million appeal was funded. The U.N. High Commissioner’s Office hopes this year’s appeal will receive more generous support from the international community.Human Rights spokesman, Jeremy Laurence, said a great deal of work lies ahead. These include monitoring nations compliance with human rights law, protecting people with disabilities, promoting gender and women’s rights, preventing conflicts, grievances and discrimination of all kinds.”This year, we aim to strengthen efforts in five key frontier areas that are having an increasing impact on fundamental human rights. These are climate change, digital technologies, inequalities, corruption and people on the move.”Laurence told VOA much of the work ahead this year will involve Africa. He said his agency will supply the resources, technical assistance and other support to help vulnerable areas improve the human rights of their people.”This year, we are establishing a new office in Sudan and we are looking at strengthening our programs in Ethiopia. We also will be looking to enhance the benefit of those countries’ political transitions on their economies and societies. And, we are also further expanding our work in the Sahel, including through our country office in Niger,” said Laurence.In the Americas, Laurence said the High Commissioner’s office will reinforce technical cooperation and protection in Venezuela. Another big project, he said will entail work to calm the situation in Bolivia, which is experiencing instability triggered by the ousting of former President Evo Morales.He said human rights officials will seek to establish a genuine and inclusive dialogue between the government and civil society to defuse the crisis. 
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Canada’s federal government will help Newfoundland on the Atlantic coast dig out in the wake of a massive winter blizzard that buried cars and left thousands without power, a Cabinet minister said Saturday.The storm dumped as much as 76.2 cm (30 inches) of snow on St. John’s, the capital of Newfoundland, and packed wind gusts as high as 130 km per hour (81 mph). The snowfall was an all-time record for the day for St. John’s International Airport.St. John’s Mayor Danny Breen said earlier that a state of emergency declared Friday remained in effect. Businesses were closed, as was the international airport.Natural Resources Minister Seamus O’Regan said military reservists might be called in, but details of the assistance had yet to be worked out. The immediate priority will be snow removal and clearing roads to the snowbound hospital, he said.A man is pictured in a snowy street in St. John’s, Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada, Jan. 17, 2020.”We have a real issue right now with access to the hospital,” O’Regan told reporters in Winnipeg, Manitoba, where Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government is meeting for two days in what it has called a retreat.Commenting on the scale of the blizzard, O’Regan said: “It’s snow and a hurricane, and snow and a hurricane shuts down a city.”The public safety and defense ministers, who were en route to Winnipeg, would be able to provide more details later, O’Regan said. Earlier, the provincial premier asked the government for support, including “mobilizing the Canadian Armed Forces.”Thousands remained without power, and social media showed people had begun to literally dig out of their homes after snowdrifts blocked their doorways.The Canadian Broadcasting Corp (CBC) confirmed a report of an avalanche slamming into a home in St. John’s Battery neighborhood, which sits at the entrance to the city’s harbor on the slopes of a steep hill.A picture of the home on Twitter showed the living room filled with snow. The CBC also said a 26-year-old man has been reported missing after having set out to walk to a friend’s house on Friday during the blizzard.”Help is on the way,” Trudeau tweeted.
 
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The World Food Program is appealing for $62 million to provide life-saving food assistance over the next six months to 700,000 people suffering from severe hunger in the Caribbean island of Haiti.Millions of Haitians still lack proper shelter, food and other basic necessities 10 years after a devastating earthquake killed 300,000 people and displaced one-and-one-half-million.The World Food Program says one in three Haitians need urgent food assistance in both rural and urban areas.  It says one million of them are suffering from severe hunger, causing rates of acute malnutrition to rise.  Homes are seen in the Taba Isa earthquake survivor camp in Port au Prince, Haiti. (Renan Toussaint/VOA Creole)WFP spokeswoman Elizabeth Byrs says her agency is scaling up its operation to provide emergency food aid to hundreds of thousands of the most vulnerable people.  “Ten years after the earthquake, WFP is still concerned about a decline in food security, with 3.7 million people severely food insecure and affected also by rising prices, drop in agricultural production, and social unrest, of course, which has heavily disrupted economic activity in Haiti,” Byrs said.Anti-government riots last year disrupted the ability of humanitarian agencies to bring food and other aid to people in the impoverished country.   Byrs says the WFP responded to this emergency by providing food to more than 230,000 of the most vulnerable.  She says it also furnished 300,000 school children with daily food, including hot meals.Byrs says donors have contributed $5 million since WFP launched its emergency appeal in December.  That means the agency still needs $57 million to continue its life-saving operation for the next six months.  She notes 80 percent of the 700,000 beneficiaries are women and children, many of whom can barely manage to find enough food for one meal a day.
 
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More than a thousand Central American migrants on Saturday surged onto a bridge spanning the Suchiate River between southern Mexico and Guatemala as Mexican National Guardsmen attempted to impede their journey north.Mexican officials allowed several dozen migrants to enter the country via the bridge, while a voice over a loudspeaker warned that migrants may not be granted asylum in the U.S., even if they make it there.Tecun UmanNearby, hundreds of guardsmen lined the river to prevent migrants from crossing into Mexico clandestinely. The voice on the loudspeaker warned, over and over, that those crossing the river “are entering Mexico illegally.”Mexico’s government has said migrants entering the country without registering will not be allowed to pass from its southern border area. But those seeking asylum or other protections will be allowed to apply and legalize their status in Mexico.Guatemalan officials have counted more than 3,000 migrants who registered at border crossings to enter that country in recent days and there were additional migrants who did not register.The bridge to Mexico was closed on Saturday after being open on the previous day. Migrants who had wanted to cross and request asylum or seek to regularize their status and find work could do so.But the migrants were wary of a trap. Mexico’s offer of legal status and potential employment carries a stipulation that would confine them to southern Mexico, where wages are lower and there are fewer jobs than elsewhere in the country.Meanwhile, Guatemala’s human rights defender’s office said there were more than 1,000 migrants gathering at another point on the Mexican border far to the north in the Peten region and there were reports that Mexican forces were gathering on the other side of the border there.In the Mexican border town of Ciudad Hidalgo, Francisco Garduño, commissioner of Mexico’s National Immigration Institute, was emphatic that migrants who try to enter the country irregularly would go no farther.“They cannot enter because it would be in violation of the law,” he told The Associated Press. He declined to talk specifics about border reinforcements, but said there were “sufficient” troops to keep things orderly.
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Honduras and the Organization of American States failed to reach an agreement Friday to extend the mandate of an anti-corruption mission that had upset a number of national lawmakers by uncovering misuse of public funds.The mandate of the Mission to Support the Fight against Corruption and Impunity in Honduras was set to expire Sunday.“We did not reach a consensus on signing a new covenant between Honduras and the Organization of American States secretary general,” the Honduran government said in a statement.The government said it was important to take into consideration the complaints from some economic and political sectors about the behavior of some of the mission’s members. Their complaints included allegations of “excesses” by the commission and charges that it “trampled their rights and constitutional guarantees,” the statement said.Presidential minister Ebal Díaz, who participated in negotiations with the OAS, said in a video message that the government remained committed to combating corruption.But the OAS said in a statement the insurmountable hurdle was the Honduran government’s insistence that the mission stop collaborating with a special hand-selected and trained unit within the Attorney General’s Office bringing the public corruption cases.OAS Secretary General Luis Almagro considers the end of the commission’s work “a negative event in the fight against corruption and impunity in the country,” the statement said.The announcement of the resignation of the mission’s interim leader, Ana María Calderón, earlier this week amplified concerns that the body’s days were numbered.In December, Honduras’ legislature voted to recommend that the commission not continue past its original four-year mandate.President Juan Orlando Hernández invited the OAS to form the group in 2015 as public demands for his resignation arose from revelations that the country’s social security system had been bilked of millions of dollars.Composed of international lawyers and investigators, the commission set out to strengthen Honduras’ justice institutions and help them carry out investigations of public corruption. But it never had the clout or resources of a U.N.-sponsored effort in neighboring Guatemala that brought three former presidents to trial. Still, it was building capacity among a select group of Honduran prosecutors and making public officials uncomfortable.Among its achievements, the commission uncovered networks of legislative and non-profit front organizations that moved public monies back into lawmakers’ pockets.Honduran lawmakers responded by impeding its investigations and threw up hurdles to prevent the country’s prosecutors from advancing the cases. They also reduced legal sentences for corruption-related crimes and essentially blocked the Attorney General’s Office from investigating improper use of public funds for up to seven years.On Friday, congress asserted that even a renewal of the commission’s mandate without material changes would require lawmakers’ approval. Others had said it could be done with a simple exchange of letters between the government and OAS.The U.S. State Department had urged Honduras to renew the commission without changes, but analysts say Hernández may have felt emboldened to drop it as White House priorities in the region shifted to slowing migration.Honduras signed an asylum cooperation agreement and finalized implementation steps last week that would allow the U.S. to send asylum seekers from other countries to Honduras to apply for protection there. The U.S. was expected to begin shipping asylum seekers to Honduras in the coming weeks.Omar Rivera, head of the Association for a More Just Society, the Honduran chapter of Transparency International, told local press that the end of the commission was disappointing. “The worst thing we could do is lower our arms in front of delinquents, criminals and the corrupt,” he said.Adriana Beltran, director of citizen security at the Washington Office on Latin America, an advocacy organization for human rights in Latin America, said the commission was “a critical instrument to combating entrenched corruption and widespread impunity in Honduras, and because of this it enjoyed the support of the population.”“Its work threatened powerful sectors that sought to undermine its work to protect themselves from being held accountable,” Beltran added.Hernández already suffered from low approval ratings after overcoming a constitutional ban on re-election and winning in a contest marred by irregularities. Weeks of large street demonstrations against the government re-emerged this summer and in October, his brother Tony Hernández was found guilty of cocaine trafficking in a U.S. federal court.U.S. prosecutors named the president a co-conspirator in the case. He denies any involvement. His brother is scheduled for sentencing next month.The announcement comes as hundreds of Hondurans crossed Guatemala and began gathering at the Mexico border. When they left the northern city of San Pedro Sula Wednesday many chanted that Hernández had to go, a common refrain since the first caravans in 2018.Former President Mel Zelaya, who was removed from office in a 2009 coup, said the government was sending a message that it isn’t interested in fighting corruption. He called for a protest in front of the commission’s offices on Jan. 27.“It’s a logical demonstration,” Zelaya said. “Because as long as that dictatorship is governing the country, Honduras has no hope of moving forward.”
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TECUN UMAN, GUATEMALA –  More than 200 mostly Honduran migrants rested on a bridge at the Guatemala-Mexico border waiting for the arrival of others and hoping sheer numbers will improve their chances of entering Mexico and continuing their journey north.
Across the river from Tecun Uman, in the Mexican border town of Ciudad Hidalgo, National Guard troops with riot shields trucked in throughout Friday afternoon in anticipation of the migrants’ next move.
Mexico’s government has said migrants entering the country without registering will not be allowed to pass from the border area. But those seeking asylum or other protections will be allowed to apply and legalize their status.
Guatemalan officials had counted more than 3,000 migrants who registered at border crossings to enter that country in recent days and there were additional migrants who did not register.
Sonia Eloina Hernandez, the Ciudad Hidalgo mayor, said officials were expecting a large number of migrants.
“We’re readying ourselves,” she said. “We don’t know exactly how many people are coming.”
About 148 migrants had crossed to Ciudad Hidalgo in recent days and requested asylum, Hernandez said. At least 500 more were spread around Tecun Uman waiting.
As night fell Friday, migrants tried to sleep on the Guatemala side of the bridge, heads propped on knapsacks, children lying on parents. Damp clothes hung from fences. Others killed time playing soccer along the banks of the Suchiate river.
“We have to wait to see what happens,” said Tania Mejia, a 25-year-old mother from Honduras. She had staked out a few square feet on the ground beside a tree at the bridge’s entrance with her 6-year-old son and 3-year-old daughter.
Mejia wanted to be among the first to cross, but was weighing that desire against the safety of her children and thinking she might hang back to see how things develop.
Her memories are still fresh of the first two migrant caravans she traveled with alone, one at the end of 2018 and another in the spring of 2019. She knew things could escalate if security forces tried to stop the migrants from entering Mexico.
“They say the Mexicans aren’t going to allow passage, but who knows?” she said.
If necessary, Mejia said, she might have to wade across the river like she did one of the previous times. Her hope this time is not making it to the United States, but rather to northern Mexico.
“I have a person in Mexicali who can give me a job so I went to get there,” she said.
The bridge was not closed by Mexico on Friday. Migrants who wanted to cross and request asylum or seek to regularize their status and find work could do so.
But the migrants were wary of a trap. Mexico’s offer of legal status and potential employment carries a stipulation that would confine them to southern Mexico, where wages are lower and there are fewer jobs than elsewhere in the country.
Hernandez, the mayor, said it is different now in Mexico from 2018 and early 2019, when mass caravans flowed across the border. She said the Mexican government from the municipal to the federal level is coordinated and prepared.
She expected more guardsmen to arrive in Ciudad Hidalgo “so the people don’t cross via the river, so that he who wants to enter Mexico, as our president says, ‘Welcome,’ but via the bridge.”
In Guatemala’s capital, Mauro Verzzeletti, director of the local migrant shelter, said he expected 1,000 to 1,500 people to bed down there Friday night. The migrants planned to set out again Saturday around 4 a.m.
Meanwhile, Guatemala’s human rights defender’s office said there were a bit more than 1,000 migrants gathering at another point on the Mexican border far to the north in the Peten region and there were reports that Mexican forces were gathering on the other side of the border there.
In Ciudad Hidalgo, Francisco Garduno, commissioner of Mexico’s National Immigration Institute, was emphatic that migrants who try to enter the country irregularly would go no farther.
“They cannot enter because it would be in violation of the law,” he told The Associated Press. He declined to talk in specifics about border reinforcements, but said there were “sufficient” troops to keep things orderly. 
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More than 3,500 Central Americans had poured into Guatemala by Friday in U.S.-bound gatherings known as caravans, officials said, posing a headache for the leaders of Guatemala and Mexico amid fierce U.S. pressure to curb migration.President Donald Trump has repeatedly urged the region to prevent such groups of migrants reaching Mexico’s border with the United States, and the latest exodus from Honduras that began on Wednesday has been accompanied by U.S. border agents.The migrants, some traveling in groups as small as a dozen people while others formed caravans of more than 100, said they planned to unite at the Guatemalan border city of Tecun Uman before crossing together into Ciudad Hidalgo, Mexico.Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said his government was monitoring the situation as the migrants approached, saying there were 4,000 jobs available on the southern border, as well as shelters and medical help.”We are keeping an eye on everything,” Lopez Obrador said during a regular press conference.Honduran migrants get a ride on the back of a truck as they travel north in hopes of reaching the United States, in Quezaltepeque, Guatemala, Jan. 17, 2020.Lopez Obrador did not say if Mexico would seek to keep the migrants in the southern part of the country. Most Central Americans who leave their countries escaping poverty and violence are eager to make their way towards the United States.Under U.S. pressure, Mexican security forces have increasingly broken up large groups as they head north.On Wednesday, Guatemala’s new President Alejandro Giammattei suggested Mexico would prevent any caravans from reaching the United States.About a thousand migrants entered Guatemala on Thursday, with local officials busing some of the migrants back to the Honduran border to fill out official paperwork, said Alejandra Mena, a spokeswoman for Guatemala’s migration institute.”We haven’t returned people from Guatemala and we have a total of about 3,543 people who have so far crossed the border,” Mena said.At least 600 Honduran migrants spent the night under tents in a shelter in Guatemala City on Thursday night, sleeping on mattresses.”Now we have more experience, and we know how to treat them,” said Father Mauro Verzeletti, director of the Migrant House shelter in Guatemala City.Guatemala’s former President Jimmy Morales agreed last July with the U.S. government to implement measures aimed at reducing the number of asylum claims made in the United States by migrants fleeing Honduras and El Salvador, averting Trump’s threat of economic sanctions.New leader Giammattei said a top priority would be reviewing the text of migration agreements made with the United States.
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On the day his Senate impeachment trial formally began, U.S. President Donald Trump scored a bipartisan victory Thursday as the Senate passed a North American trade pact, known as USMCA. The international accord replaces the 25-year-old North American Free Trade Agreement, or NAFTA, and governs trade between the United States, Canada and Mexico. VOA’s Ardita Dunellari looks at what this pact is expected to deliver both for the U.S. economy and for the president’s re-election campaign.
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