Colombia's President Álvaro Uribe, surrounded by Ingrid Betancourt, members of the military and 11 other rescued Colombian hostages, called upon the FARC to make "peace" in a massive press conference July 2 in Bogotá. Boasting that not a single shot was fired in the rescue operation, Uribe said: "This is an invitation to the FARC to make peace, to start releasing the hostages they still hold captive."

Colombian Senator Piedad Córdoba was held by US immigration authorities at New York's JFK airport June 27, to be interrogated about her alleged ties to the FARC—despite her diplomatic visa. "When I left customs, I was retained for two and a half hours," she told Colombia's Caracol Radio. "I think they wanted to send me back to Colombia. All my papers were photocopied. I had brought denunciations to deliver to the Inter-American Commission of Human Rights. They photocopied everything, my phones and personal belongings too."

Serbs in Kosova inaugurated their own assembly June 28 at the divided city of Mitrovica—in defiance of the Albanian-led government and the UN. Forty-five members were elected in May during Serbia's general and municipal elections. The ballot was declared illegal by the UN and Kosova's official government, which has been recognized by 43 states. People from across Serbia gathered in Mitrovica to show support for the new assembly. Kosova's President Fatmir Sejdiu called it "an attempt to destabilize Kosova." An unnamed UN spokesman quoted by the BBC called the assembly a "virtual reality."

The international negotiators appointed to broker peace in Darfur have resigned, admitting that their mission has been a failure. The UN's Jan Eliasson announced that he and his African Union counterpart, Salim Ahmed Salim, would both step down, citing Sudanese government intransigence and the fracturing of the rebel movement into more than 30 factions. "It is a very, very sombre situation," said Eliasson. (The Independent, June 27)

From the WCBS-NY, June 23:

Truck Hits Bus; Bus Crashes Into Bank
One person is dead and four people are injured after an out-of-control dump truck coming off the Manhattan Bridge slammed into a waiting bus that was loading people for a trip to Boston.

Yet more evidence (as if we needed any) that the media are making us stupid. From a June 23 New York Times story entitled, "Correspondents Say Networks Put Wars on the Back Burner":

A new Energy Department report says much about how elites view the oil shock—and why the US is in Iraq. It actually mentions the impacts of biofuels, but that's a sideshow to the inexorable threat of China's economic rise. This synopsis does not even mention Iraq—but effective US control of the Persian Gulf will be a lever of control over China's access to energy. From Oil Voice, June 25:

It is pretty depressing that 29 years after Three Mile Island and 22 after Chernobyl, the nuclear industry has recouped its propaganda losses to the point that both candidates are obliged to pay lip service to the oxymoron of "safe nuclear power." McCain is gung-ho for nukes, calling for building 45 new reactors over the next 30 years. Obama's support is more equivocal—he said June 20 that nuclear power is an option worth pursuing, while adding the caveat: "I don't think that nuclear power is a panacea." (Reuters, June 20)