Reuters World News Summary

Following is a summary of current world news briefs. Frequent crossers of U.S.-Mexico border fret over threatened shutdown

Workers and students who frequently cross the U.S. border with Mexico worried over the weekend about the impact on their lives if President Donald Trump follows through on a threat to shut entry points used by hundreds of thousands of people every day. Faced with a surge of asylum seekers from Central American countries who travel through Mexico, Trump said on Friday there was a "good likelihood" he would close the border this coming week if Mexico does not stop unauthorized immigrants from reaching the United States. Turks vote in local elections which could see Erdogan lose in big cities

Turks go to the polls on Sunday in local elections that President Tayyip Erdogan has described as a matter of survival for the country. Erdogan, who has dominated Turkish politics for more than 16 years thanks to strong economic growth and supreme campaigning skills, has become the country's most popular, yet also most divisive, leader in modern history. UK's May under pressure to rule out long Brexit delay

British Prime Minister Theresa May is facing a new push by members of her Conservative Party to lead Britain out of the European Union in the next few months, even if it means a potentially damaging no-deal Brexit. Conservative lawmakers urged May against a long extension of the Brexit process in a letter sent after her exit deal was rejected for a third time by the House of Commons on Friday, a lawmaker said. Before mosque attacks, New Zealand failed to record hate crimes for years

Weeks before a gunman killed 50 Muslims in Christchurch, a man had threatened to burn copies of the Koran outside New Zealand mosques, in what community leaders said was the latest in a long list of threatening behavior against religious minorities. Police said they warned a 38-year-old man over the incident, which was unrelated to the Christchurch attack, but could not say if it was part of a pattern. 'Yellow vest' numbers down in 20th week of French protests

Thousands of demonstrators marched in cities around France on Saturday for a 20th weekend of "yellow vest" protests, but numbers were lower and clashes with police sporadic. Outbreaks of vandalism and confrontations with police led to more than 100 arrests on the margins of otherwise peaceful demonstrations in Paris, Avignon, Toulouse and Bordeaux - where protesters broke the windows of a bank before being pushed back. Venezuelans rally to protest chronic power outages

Thousands of Venezuelan opposition sympathizers protested on Saturday against recurring blackouts that crippled much of the country this month and have aggravated the OPEC nation's economic and social crisis. Electricity has slowly been restored following a blackout on Monday that left most of Venezuela's 24 states without power. That followed a massive week-long national outage on March 7. U.S. ending aid to El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras over migrants

The United States is cutting off aid to El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, known collectively as the "Northern Triangle," the State Department said on Saturday, a day after President Donald Trump blasted the Central American countries for sending migrants to the United States. "We are carrying out the President's direction and ending FY (fiscal year) 2017 and FY 2018 foreign assistance programs for the Northern Triangle," a State Department spokesperson said in a statement. The department declined to provide further details. 'Wound' of migration not solved by physical barriers, pope says

Pope Francis said on Saturday the plight of migrants was "a wound that cries out to heaven" and could never be healed by physical barriers. Francis, starting a two-day visit to Morocco, also backed Moroccan King Mohammed VI's efforts to spread a form of Islam that promotes inter-religious dialogue and rejects violence in God's name. Liberal lawyer Caputova wins election to become Slovakia's first female president

Riding a wave of public fury over corruption, liberal lawyer Zuzana Caputova won Slovakia's presidential election on Saturday, bucking a trend that has seen populist, anti-European Union politicians make gains across the continent. Corruption and change in political style were the main themes ahead of the run-off vote, which took place a year after journalist Jan Kuciak, who investigated high-profile fraud cases, and his fiancée were murdered at their home. Palestinians mass at Gaza border to mark protest anniversary

Tens of thousands of Palestinians rallied at the Israel-Gaza border on Saturday, facing off against Israeli tanks and troops on the first anniversary of the 'Great March of Return' demonstrations. Israeli forces had massed the other side of the fortified frontier, with tensions already high after a rocket attack from Gaza and Israeli air strikes earlier in the week.