A hidden cross-border tunnel used to smuggle migrants and contraband between the US and Mexico will be sealed, Mexican border officials have said.

Running between Ciudad Juarez in Mexico and El Paso in Texas, which sit next to each other on either side of the border, the 300m tunnel was concealed in a storm sewer system and only discovered last week - despite official estimates it took at least a year to build.

Investigators are now looking into whether local officials knew of its construction.

Security has been ramped up on both sides of the border ahead of the inauguration of Donald Trump, who has vowed to launch mass deportations of illegal immigrants once in office.

The tunnel had been reinforced with wooden beams to prevent collapses and was equipped with lighting and ventilation.

Such a structure could have taken at least a year to build, army officials said.

The Mexican Attorney General's Office has been tasked with investigating whether local officials had been complicit in the construction of the tunnel, General Jose Lemus, commander of Ciudad Juarez's military garrison, told Mexican media.

The tunnel was discovered on 10 January, after US border patrol agents removed a metal plate covering the entry hole to the tunnel and then alerted their Mexican counterparts to its existence.

The flow of migrants from Mexico in the US has long overshadowed relations between the two neighbours and became a defining issue of the 2024 US presidential election race that culminated in Trump's victory last year.

Raids to detain and deport migrants living in the US without permission could begin as early as Tuesday - the day after Trump officially returns to the White House - according to US media reports.

Under US diplomatic pressure, Mexico has been conducting its largest ever migrant crackdown, bussing and flying non-Mexican migrants to the country's south, far from the US border.

But Trump campaigned on a promise to seal the US-Mexico border and his threat to impose 25% tariffs was seen as an attempt to force Mexico into doing more to stop undocumented migrants from reaching the southern border of the US.

In response, the recently elected Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum has said she will ask the US to take action to stop the flow of weapons being smuggled from the US into Mexico.

Panama's president has rejected a plan by Donald Trump to "take back" the Panama Canal, telling his US counterpart the key trade route "is and will remain" in the country's hands.

In his inaugural speech, President Trump claimed that Panama had "broken" a promise to remain neutral, alleging that "China is operating the Panama Canal".

President Jose Raul Mulino said he rejected Trump's words in their "entirety", adding there is "no presence of any nation in the world that interferes with our administration".

The Panama Canal is one of the US's most important trade routes, with about 40% of all the country's container ships passing through the waterway between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.

In the first address of his second term, Trump claimed: "American ships are being severely overcharged and not treated fairly in any way, shape or form and that includes the United States Navy.

"And above all China is operating the Panama Canal and we didn't give it to China, we gave it to Panama, and we're taking it back."

The US built the canal in the early 20th century but, after years of protest, President Jimmy Carter signed a treaty with Panama in 1977 to gradually hand back control of the waterway, which Trump has branded "a big mistake".

In 1999, Panama took full control of the canal with a treaty in place that it remain neutral and open to vessels of all nations.

Following Trump's address, Mulino said in a social media post on X: "The canal was not a concession from anyone. It was the result of generational struggles that culminated in 1999."

Hong Kong's Hutchison Whampoa operates two ports on the waterway - the Port of Balboa on the Pacific side of the route while Cristobal operates on the Atlantic end.

Around 5% of global maritime trade passes through the 51-mile Panama Canal.

Last week, Marco Rubio, Trump's nominee for secretary of state, told a senate confirmation hearing "the very legitimate concern is these companies control both ends of this canal and at a time of conflict and the Chinese tell them 'shut it down and don't let the US go through there' we got a big, big problem. A big economic problem and a big national security and defence problem".

In his speech, Trump said that he wanted to be a "peacemaker" but Michael McFaul, the former US ambassador to Russia under President Obama wrote on social media: "You can't be a president of peace and take back the Panama Canal."

As well as the Panama Canal, Trump has previously also said he wanted to acquire Greenland, the autonomous Danish territory. Denmark rejected any suggestion they would give it up.

Trump did not mention Greenland in his address but he set out his expansionist vision for the next four years.

"The United States will once again consider itself a growing nation, one that increases our wealth, expands our territory, builds our cities, raises our expectations and carries our flag into new and beautiful horizons," he said.

Pope Francis has said that Donald Trump's plans to deport illegal migrants from the US would be a "disgrace" if they materialised.

Speaking to an Italian TV programme from his Vatican residence, Francis said that if the plans went ahead, Trump would make "poor wretches that don't have anything foot the bill".

"That's not right. That's not how you solve problems," he said.

Trump has promised to begin the largest expulsion of undocumented immigrants in US history soon after he takes office.

In a message to Trump shared on Monday, Pope Francis offered him "cordial greetings" and urged him to lead a society with "no room for hatred, discrimination or exclusion" and promote "peace and reconciliation among peoples".

The Pope is known to hold the issue of migrants dear. During a public audience last August, he said that "systematically working by all means to drive away migrants" was "a grave sin".

In 2016, before the first presidential election won by Trump, Pope Francis said "a person who thinks only about building walls... and not of building bridges, is not Christian".

Referring to Trump's promise to build a wall on the Mexican border to keep migrants from travelling into the US, Francis said: "I say only that this man is not Christian if he has said things like that. We must see if he said things in that way and I will give him the benefit of the doubt."

Francis and Trump later met when Trump and his family visited Rome in 2017.

Before the US presidential election in 2024, the Pope declined to say whether people should vote for Trump or for his Democratic opponent Kamala Harris, merely urging people to choose "the lesser evil" according to their conscience.

During the interview on Sunday evening, Francis also touched on the issue of migration to Europe, saying there was "a lot of cruelty" and that everyone had "the right to remain home and the right to emigrate".

The Pope also added that some of the southern European countries that receive the most migrant arrivals "are not having any children and need manpower".

"In some of these countries, there are entire villages that are empty. A good, well-thought out migrant policy would help countries like Italy and Spain too," he said.

In another section of the interview, Francis was asked about the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East and said he did not know why making peace was so difficult.

"I don't know why... it's as if there was an international drive towards self-destruction," the Pope said.

Francis, 88, has been in the post since 2013, when he was elected to succeed Pope Benedict XVI.

A statue of the Spanish conquistador Francisco Pizarro has been reinstalled in the centre of Lima, the capital of Peru, more than 20 years after it had been removed.

The sculpture was unveiled during a ceremony marking the 490th anniversary of the city's founding.

Pizarro founded Lima in 1535 after defeating the Inca Empire and claiming their lands for the Spanish crown.

Indigenous leaders say he was a mass murderer who destroyed their culture, while those who supported the statue's return said Peru should not erase its history.

The monument, which shows Pizarro on horseback with his sword drawn, was created by the American sculptor Charles Rumsey and offered by his widow to commemorate the city's fourth centenary in 1935.

In 2003, it was moved to a park next to train tracks outside the city centre following calls for its removal.

Luis Bogdanovich, who was in charge of restoring the historic centre, told local media the statue had become damaged by the constant passing of trains, which caused it to crack.

Rafael López Aliaga, Lima's mayor, and Isabel Díaz Ayuso, president of the Community of Madrid, presented the bronze statue on Saturday alongside Mr Bogdanovich and several descendants of Pizarro in Lima's main square, Plaza de Armas.

Díaz Ayuso said the ceremony was commemorating "not only the birth of a city, but also the beginning of a historic encounter that forever transformed the world", the Spanish daily El Pais reported.

Dozens of Peruvians held a demonstration nearby opposing its return, according to the AFP news agency.

"This is an offence, an offence to all the indigenous peoples of Peru, Latin America and the world," one person said.

The death toll from attacks by a rebel group in Colombia's Catatumbo region has risen to 60, the country's human rights office has said.

Rival factions have been vying for control of the cocaine trade in the region - which sits near the border with Venezuela - for years.

The Ombudsman's Office said the latest violence involved the National Liberation Army (ELN) - the largest armed group still active in Colombia - and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc), which signed a peace treaty with the state in 2016.

The attacks broke an uneasy truce between the guerrilla groups, which had been in peace negotiations with the government.

The Ombudsman's Office, a government agency that oversees the protection of citizens' human and civil rights, previously reported that 40 had died in the violence.

It said that many people, including community leaders and their families, were facing a "special risk" of being kidnapped or killed at the hands of the ELN. It noted that 20 people had recently been kidnapped, half of whom were women.

The office said that among those killed were seven peace treaty signatories and Carmelo Guerrero, the leader of the Association for Peasant Unity in Catatumbo (Asuncat), a local advocacy group.

Asuncat wrote on social media on Friday that Roger Quintero and Freiman Velasquez, members of its board of directors, had not been seen since the previous day, and that it suspected armed groups had taken them.

"In some communities in the region, food shortages are beginning to be reported, affecting local communities," the Ombudsman's Office wrote in a statement on Saturday, adding that thousands of people are believed to have been displaced by the violence.

"Elderly people, children, adolescents, pregnant women and people with disabilities are suffering the consequences of these events."

"Catatumbo is once again stained with blood," the Association of Mothers of Catatumbo for Peace wrote on Friday.

"The bullets exchanged not only hurt those who hold the weapons, but also tear apart the dreams of our communities, break up families and sow terror in the hears of our children."

The Ombudsman's Office appeared to lay the blame for the latest violence on the ELN, which had been in peace talks with the Colombian government until they were suspended on Friday due to the violence in Catatumbo.

President Gustavo Petro - who since his election in 2022 has sought to end violence between armed groups in the country - accused the ELN of "war crimes" and said the group "shows no willingness to make peace".

The ELN accused Farc of having initiated the conflict by killing civilians in a statement on Saturday, according to Reuters news agency. Farc has not publicly responded to the allegation.

On Saturday, the Colombian army announced it was sending additional troops to the region in an effort to restore peace.

A leading Cuban dissident and activist has been released from jail as part of a wider prisoner release deal between the Cuban government and the United States.

Jose Daniel Ferrer spent more than three years in prison following anti-government protests that swept through the Communist-run island in 2021.

Under the agreement brokered by the Catholic Church, outgoing US President Joe Biden removed Cuba from the US list of state sponsors of terrorism just days before the end of his term.

In return, Cuba said it would free 553 people, many of whom were detained during the anti-government protests.

The island began releasing the first of hundreds of prisoners on Wednesday, freeing about 20 people, according to local NGOs.

Ferrer is one of the most recognised names among Cuban dissidents and pro-democracy activists. The 54-year-old leader of Cuba's Patriotic Union (Unpacu), an opposition group in the country, was jailed and charged with public disorder following the 2021 protests.

"I am at home, in fair health, but with the courage to continue fighting for the freedom of Cuba," Ferrer told Reuters in a phone conversation.

Many of the prisoners released this week were arrested in association with 2021 protests, during which citizens demanded that the Cuban government do more to ease widespread food shortages and lower spiralling prices.

Biden's move to remove Cuba from the US list of state sponsors of terrorism came just days ahead of President-elect Donald Trump's inauguration.

Senator Marco Rubio, Trump's pick for secretary of state, has been critical of the decision to ease sanctions on Cuba, hinting that it could be reversed.

Speaking at his Senate nomination hearing on Wednesday, Rubio said referring to some of the sanctions on Cuba that the Biden administration rescinded on Tuesday that "the new administration is not bound by that decision".

Earlier, Trump's choice for national security adviser, Mike Waltz, said on Fox News that "anything [the Biden administration] are doing right now, we can do back, and no-one should be under any illusion in terms of a change in Cuba policy".

The Cuban government says the island's designation as a state sponsor of terrorism is deeply unjust and aimed at harming its economy by making it impossible for Cuba to access international banking credits.

Cuba has started to release the first of hundreds of prisoners it agreed to free following a deal with the United States.

Under the agreement brokered by the Catholic Church, President Joe Biden removed Cuba from the US list of state sponsors of terrorism just days before his term ends.

In return, the Cuban government said it would free 553 people, many of whom were detained during anti-government protests that swept through the Communist-run island in 2021.

While Havana has cautiously welcomed the deal, there are doubts as to how long it will last after President-elect Donald Trump's pick for secretary of state, Marco Rubio, appeared to hint that it could be reversed.

Speaking at his Senate nomination hearing on Wednesday, Rubio said referring to some of the sanctions on Cuba that the Biden administration rescinded on Tuesday that "the new administration is not bound by that decision".

Earlier, Trump's choice for national security adviser, Mike Waltz, had said on Fox News that "anything they [the Biden administration] are doing right now, we can do back, and no one should be under any illusion in terms of a change in Cuba policy".

Despite the doubts raised by Trump administration officials, Cuba released about 20 prisoners on Wednesday, according to local NGOs.

One of those released was 53-year-old Donaida Pérez Paseiro, who had been sentenced to eight years in prison for taking part in the 2021 anti-government protests, during which citizens demanded that the Cuban government do more to ease widespread food shortages and lower spiralling prices.

In a video she posted on social media, Ms Pérez Paseiro said that the Cuban government had used her and her fellow prisoners as "a bargaining chip" to leverage Cuba's removal from the US list of state sponsors of terrorism.

In the recording, she also said she would continue to "fight for Cuba's freedom".

Dariel Cruz García was also among those who were freed on Wednesday.

The 23-year-old had been sentenced to 15 years in prison for sedition after joining in the 2021 protests.

He told Reuters that officials had announced that he could serve the remainder of his sentence - which has been reduced since he was originally sentenced - at home.

"I escaped from hell to be with my family. I'll behave myself so I can move on," he told the news agency.

The vice-president of Cuba's highest court, Maricela Sosa, said on TV that those freed had neither received an amnesty nor had they been pardoned and warned that they could be re-arrested if they broke the terms of their parole.

There are also still hundreds of families awaiting news as to whether their loved ones will be among the 553 the government has agreed to release.

"They're desperate, all waiting with tremendous anxiety for a call from their children," Dariel Cruz García's mother told Reuters.