World Briefs

SAN JO Costa Rica – Central American leaders will push the U.S. to slow a flood of deportations when Vice President Joe Biden meets with them Monday, promising a "new day for relations" with a region that has felt ignored.

It is the first top-level visit to Central America by a US official since President Barack Obama took office in January.

"These meetings are a first and important step toward a new day for relations and the development of a partnership between the countries and peoples of the hemisphere," Biden said in an article published Friday in the Costa Rican newspaper La Nacion.

VINA DEL MAR, Chile – US Vice President Joe Biden said that the US is not planning to lift its trade embargo on Cuba.

Biden, who was in the Chilean resort city of Vina del Mar for a summit of center-left leaders from Latin America and Europe, replied "no" when asked by reporters if Washington plans to scrap the decades-old embargo.

MEDELLIN, Colombia – Former US President Bill Clinton urged the people who run Latin America's biggest development bank on Saturday not to turn their backs on the leftists in the region who parlayed the poor's discontent into electoral victories, calling them “Colombia’s neighbors” instead of explicitly mentioning Venezuela, Ecuador and Bolivia.

He said he doesn't agree with their politics but "I do understand why poor people who feel powerless turn away from the messy world of democracy."

"It shouldn't be surprising that a reaction to global inequality and America's withdrawal in the last 8 years" under the Bush administration produced governments "that are either too authoritarian or too hostile to market economics or both," Clinton told Inter-American Development Bank's governors.

SEOUL, South Korea – North Korea's plans to launch a rocket as early as this week in defiance of warnings threatens to undo years of fitful negotiations toward dismantling the regime's nuclear program.

The U.S., South Korea and Japan have told the North that any rocket launch — whether it's a satellite or a long-range missile — would violate a 2006 U.N. Security Council Resolution prohibiting Pyongyang from any ballistic activity, and could draw sanctions.

North Korea said sanctions would violate the spirit of disarmament agreements, and said it would treat the pacts as null and void if punished for exercising its sovereign right to send a satellite into space.