LATAM POLITICS TODAY-Backpack prompts bomb scare ahead of Lula inauguration

The latest in Latin American politics today: Backpack prompts bomb scare ahead of Lula inauguration

BRASILIA - Police in Brazil's capital, Brasilia, said a backpack found near where President-elect Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva was staying that had prompted a bomb scare contained only personal belongings. News of the bomb squad being called into action just days before Lula takes office underscores the nervy atmosphere in Brasilia after the most fraught election in a generation.

On Dec. 24, Brasilia police said they had foiled a bomb plot, arresting a man with ties to a group of pro-Bolsonaro election deniers camped outside the army headquarters, who have been urging the military to overturn Lula's victory. Brazil's Lula invites Tebet to be his planning minister

BRASILIA - Brazilian President-elect Lula invited centrist Senator Simone Tebet to be his planning minister, a close Lula aide said, and she is expected to accept. Future Institutional Affairs Minister Alexandre Padilha said Tebet's party, the Brazilian Democratic Movement, had given a "positive signal." Tebet backed Lula over far-right incumbent Jair Bolsonaro after ditching her presidential bid when she failed to make the Oct. 30 run-off.

U.S. Supreme Court leaves pandemic-era border restrictions in place, takes up case The U.S. Supreme Court left in place for now a pandemic-era order allowing U.S. officials to rapidly expel migrants caught at the U.S.-Mexico border in order to consider whether 19 states could challenge the policy's end.

The court granted a request by a group of Republican state attorneys general to put on hold a judge's decision invalidating the emergency public health order known as Title 42 while it considered whether they could intervene to challenge the ruling. U.S. President Joe Biden, a Democrat, kept the restrictions in place for more than a year after taking office in 2021 despite promising to shift away from the hardline immigration policies of his Republican predecessor, Donald Trump. (Compiled by Sarah Morland Editing by Matthew Lewis)