BOGOTÁ, Dec 19 (IPS) - The leaders of Colombia’s FARC guerrillas ordered the release of two women hostages and the young son of one of them as a gesture of "compensation" for the frustrated facilitation efforts made by Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez and Colombian Senator Piedad Córdoba, and of goodwill towards the hostages’ families. "The order to free them in Colombia has already been given," says a seven-point communiqué sent...

MEXICO CITY - The family of a student who survived a Colombian military raid on a rebel camp says she is returning to Mexico. Maria Alvarez says her niece Lucia Morett will return to Mexico on Wednesday. Morett has been exiled in Nicaragua since Colombia's March 1 cross-border attack on the rebel camp in Ecuador. She had feared prosecution in Mexico for having ties to the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC. The attack killed a top FARC commander and 24 others,...

Forced recruitment of minors in Colombia by guerrillas and paramilitaries is rising drastically and is now a principal reason for families to flee their homes. Few statistics exist, but one leading organization estimates there are between 8,000 and 13,000 children in the ranks of the country’s illegal armed groups, reported BBC Mundo. “It is estimated that 30 percent of the members of illegal armed groups are minors,” said María Clara Melguizo, spokeswoman for...

Descendents of ancient Native Americans tribes will meet to listen and debate the devastation to the towns, the land, and the people due to the militarization of the Mexican-American border area and the construction of the border fence. The debate is being organized by Chabad de San Francisco on August 28, 2008 at 7:00 PM at the Shalom School (834 Avenida 28, San Francisco, CA). The cultural debate at the Shalom School is known in Yiddish as a “Farbrengen.” The debate will...

The German newspaper "Die Welt" reported last month that Venezuela is becoming a safehaven for Islamic terrorists. The close friendship between the leftist Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez and his Iranian colleague Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a hardline Muslim radical, resulted into ever closer cooperation between the two countries. Western intelligence services have reason to believe that Iran's fundamentalist regime is sending terrorists and Muslim radicals to an increasing number...