Vice President Mike Pence praised Central American leaders for their efforts to attack crime, corruption and narcotrafficking and assured them that “your success is our success” as a two-day summit on the region’s security and prosperity opened Thursday at Florida International University. (Miami Herald)

The Democratic Republic of the Congo has suffered two separate outbreaks of polio, a debilitating and potentially deadly disease that the world is trying to eradicate, the World Health Organization said. Confirmation of the outbreaks in Congo’s Haut-Lomami and Maniema provinces came less than a week after the WHO said polio had resurfaced in Syria, in an area partly controlled by Islamic State. (Reuters)

The number of migrants who entered Europe in the first half of 2017 is 35% of the number a year ago, new figures show. The United Nations’ migration agency said 73,189 migrants entered Europe by sea. (USA Today)

A West Coast federal appeals court upheld the freeze on President Trump’s travel ban, declaring that Trump had exceeded his lawful authority in suspending the issuance of visas to residents of six Muslim majority countries and suspending the U.S. refugee program. (WaPo)

Mexican authorities discovered 112 migrants, including four babies, huddled alive in the back of a truck as it traveled along a highway in the country’s south, the attorney general’s office said. The truck, which officials said had ventilation and water for the passengers, was intercepted on a highway. (Reuters)

Heavily armed al-Shabab fighters have stormed a military base in Somalia’s semiautonomous state of Puntland, killing close to 70 people and wounding dozens more, officials say. (Al Jazeera)

The European Union has slapped new security screening on imports from Bangladesh, a move that is likely to make it…

Congo has two days to heed U.N. calls to jointly investigate violence in Kasai province, or else it risks having an international human rights inquiry imposed upon it, U.N. human rights chief Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein said on Tuesday. (VOA)

The head of the United Nations Population Fund, Babatunde Osotimehin, a champion for girls’ and women’s health, has died suddenly at his home, the UNFPA said on Monday. “This is a devastating loss for UNFPA and for the people, especially women, girls and youth, he dedicated his life to serving, starting from when he became a doctor in Nigeria,” the U.N. agency said in a statement. (Reuters)

Warning that smugglers may now be “broadening” a death trap for migrants and refugees that could stretch from the Mediterranean to the vast Sahara Desert, the United Nations refugee agency has reiterated its call for safe pathways so that those in desperate need of international protection do not lose their lives. (UN News Center)