 Hello and welcome to the International Daily Roundup by People's Dispatch, where we bring you major news developments from around the world. Our headlines? Israeli rights group Bet-Selem Head defies ban addresses school students, Costa Rica's National Rescue Movement announces protests against IMF deal, marginalized groups worst hit as the US struggles to cope with COVID-19 related casualties, and in our video feature we look at Guatemalan security forces attacking migrant caravans at the border. In our first story, despite a ban from Israel's education minister, the head of the Human Rights Organization Bet-Selem, Haga Elad, took part in an online lecture with students of the school in Haifan Monday, January 18th. The organization had just last week called Israel an apartheid state, following which a ban was imposed on members of organizations spreading lies about Israel. Israel's education minister, Yohav Gulant, in the ban order, said without taking the name of Bet-Selem that certain organizations are calling to quote him, Israel falls in derogatory names, and they should not be allowed to enter the education institutions in the country. Haga Elad criticized the move saying that Gulant's claim of Israel being Jewish and democratic allies, as it is neither Jewish nor democratic, and that to quote him, we live in a binational reality. Bet-Selem's report had also pointed to the differentiated and inferior rights offered to the Palestinian people in the occupied territories and within Israel. It cited a range of Israeli policies aimed at the dispossession of the Palestinian people, their exclusion from political participation, and the denial of citizenship and restrictions on their movement. The order banning Bet-Selem from schools is based on a 2018 law banning organizations critical of the Israeli military's actions in the occupied territories from lecturing in schools. In our next story, social movements and trade unions in Costa Rica have started mobilizing as the government seeks to sign an agreement with the IMF to secure a loan worth $1.75 billion. The country is facing a mounting debt crisis as the domestic economy struggles to cope with the COVID-19 pandemic. However, the loan will be conditioned on Costa Rica enforcing neoliberal austerity measures including cuts in public spending, a public sector wage-free and tax reforms. The government has further proposed to reduce spending from 16.45% of the GDP in 2020 to 13% in 2025. Unified under the Umbrella the National Rescue Movement or the MRN, progressive groups have begun rallying support to oppose the loan package. The government has suspended negotiations with the IMF in October 2020 following mass protests. However, the negotiations were resumed last week on January 11th for the three year loan. The MRN has warned that the measures will deepen to quote them concentrated in exclusive economic model which will polarize income distribution in the country. A key contentious measure is the proposed public employment framework law bill which the government is seeking to approve. The law has been denounced as exploitative and anti-worker and seeks to enforce a 12-hour working day. It further empowers the government to sell public institutions such as the Bank of Costa Rica and increase taxes. Despite public opposition, President Carlos Alvarado asked Congress to approve the bill on January 18th. We now go to the United States where the situation continues to be dire as the pandemic reaches its one-year mark in the country. According to John Hopkins University, the U.S. has had 24 million COVID-19 cases as of today, making up a quarter of the total global infections. The fatality rates in the U.S. have surpassed other badly hit nations as 400,000 people have died from COVID in the country so far. The pandemic has also disproportionately impacted vulnerable groups including Indigenous, Black and Latin American communities. Counties with predominantly Black and Indigenous populations were the worst affected after the first wave. The Navajo Nation, for instance, witnessed the highest infection rates during the first wave. At the same time, Black people formed a majority of the deaths reported in the states of the Deep South. According to the Guardian, while the average fatality rates stood at approximately 100,000 for 100,000 people, the rate for Native American peoples was 168.4 and 136.5 for Black people. A study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences has also noted the single biggest decline in average life expectancy in 2020 in the past 40 years. The pandemic is estimated to have reduced life expectancy by 1.13 years in 2020. However, the estimated decline in the life expectancy is particularly stark for African Americans with a decline of 2.1 years and for Latin Americans by 3.05 years. For our final story today, we go to the Guatemalan border where security forces have attacked and blocked a migrant caravan trying to pass to the country to reach the US-Mexico border. Approximately 8,000 migrants predominantly from Honduras have entered Guatemala since January 14th. They are trying to escape violence and poverty in the hopes of seeking asylum in Mexico and the US. Here is a video feature on the ongoing situation. A caravan of more than 1,000 Honduran migrants was brutally repressed by the Guatemalan military and police forces on January 17th. A migrant caravan, which is on its way to the United States, has to pass to Guatemala and Mexico first in order to reach the United States. Both Guatemala and Mexico have signed the Safe Third Country Immigration Agreement with the US under threat of economic sanctions. They have taken measures to stop the passage of migrants to their territories. Warnings were issued by Guatemalan authorities that migrant caravans would not be allowed to the country. According to the Guatemala National Police, between 6,000 and 9,000 people have entered the country since January 15th, making it one of the biggest caravans since 2018. The Guatemalan Migration Institute reported that between January 15th and 16th, around 1,000 immigrants were arrested and deported to Honduras by immigration and security officials. So what has bought thousands of Honduran migrants to leave their homes? Honduran migrants, including women, men and children, have set off on this perilous 4,000-kilometer long journey on foot to the US with the hope to apply for humanitarian asylum there. Ever since the ousting of Manuel Zelaya in 2009 in a US-backed coup, things have gone from bad to worse in the country. More than 60% of the country lives in poverty and the unemployment rates are soaring. The migrants seek to escape extreme poverty, violence, unemployment, lack of education and health within the country, which has been worsened by the COVID-19 pandemic. The devastation caused by the Eta and Ayurveda hurricanes, which struck Central American countries in November 2020, have also made people's lives miserable. Most of the people who have joined this migrant caravan say that they have nothing to return to. Some migrants have also stated that the US is a root cause of their problems and it is on the US now to take care of the migrants. Where are the migrants now? Thousands of Hondurans who left their country last week in different places on January 13th, 15th and 16th, from the city of San Pedro Sula, remained stranded in Vado Hondo in northeast in Guatemala and are fighting the authorities to let them continue on their way to the US and Mexico border. Security forces maintained barriers along the Chitrula Department to prevent the migrants from advancing. More than 20 military and police checkpoints have been placed on the highway that would lead the migrants from their current location to the border with Mexico. How has the United States reacted? The administration of US President Donald Trump has adopted a hostile policy against these caravans and imposed harsh restrictions against undocumented migration. Migrants are hoping that a situation would change after President-elect Joe Biden is inaugurated on January 20th. Biden promised to reverse Trump's strict immigration policies and rebuild asylum processes. However, the possibility of allowing the arriving asylum seekers to enter the US has already been rejected by Biden's transition team officials. That's all we have time for today. We'll be back tomorrow with more news from around the world. Until then, keep watching People's Dispatch.