“Colombia” on The Daily Caller

Colombia has been intermittently on and off the Obama administration’s agenda since it took office in 2009. When Hillary Clinton delivered her foreign policy address at the Council on Foreign Relations last week, she remarked that Mexico is “looking more and more like Colombia looked 20 years ago.” Shortly thereafter, President Obama rebuked the comparison in an LA-based Spanish newspaper. The turnaround is characteristic of Washington’s unjustified ambivalence towards one of our greatest and most promising Latin American allies. (more)

WASHINGTON _ Mexico’s struggle against powerful drug cartels increasingly resembles an insurgency that challenges the government’s control of its own soil, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Wednesday. (more)

Three teens who were on a 69-name hit list posted on Facebook have been killed in the past 10 days in a southwestern Colombian town, officials say. (more)

Even in the best of times few people look forward to July and August here in Arizona. The annual monsoon adds enough humidity to the heat load to drive most folks indoors, as though it were Minneapolis in January. (more)

President Hugo Chávez engaged in some sabre-rattling Sunday, threatening to cut off the sale of oil to the United States if military action is taken against Venezuela on the Colombian border. (more)

CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) — Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has broken diplomatic relations with neighboring Colombia, accusing the close U.S. ally of fabricating reports that Colombian rebels find safe haven inside Venezuela. (more)

Last month, Oliver Stone’s ”South of the Border” made its American debut. The documentary’s focus is Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez, who Stone believes has been cruelly demonized in Western media. (more)

A day after smashing his bike to the ground in a fit of frustration after losing yet another Tour de France sprint stage, Mark Cavendish found redemption Thursday at the end of the 116.5-mile Stage 5 from Epernay to Montargis. (more)

China has at least $2.5 trillion in foreign exchange and must, due to its own balance of payments rules, invest it all overseas. Most unavoidably goes into American bonds, the only market big enough to absorb it.[1] However, since the beginning of 2005, the PRC has invested almost $200 billion in foreign assets outside bonds. Official Chinese data are unhelpful, but The Heritage Foundation’s China Global Investment Tracker sorts non-bond spending by country and sector. The tracker is current through June 30, 2010. (more)

The idea that President Obama is anti-business broke into the mainstream this week. (more)

QUITO — Authorities seized a large, home-built submarine in a marsh near the Colombian border that was designed to carry as much as 12 tons of cocaine to Mexico, Ecuador’s Antinarcotics Police chief Joel Loaiza said Tuesday. (more)

The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc) rebels were trying to retake a strategic mountain area near the Caribbean coast when they were hit. (more)

Last Sunday, Mexicans in twelve states voted in gubernatorial and city council elections. As predicted, voter turnout was poor, which many take as a sign of the resurgence of the once-omnipotent Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI. (more)

A little before noon on a spring day, J.J. Rendón wakes up and dresses as usual in a Jedi-like black frock. He takes a drag on a cigarette and rubs sleep from his dark eyes. Golden statues line his shelves, and water burbles over a Buddhist shrine that’s a centerpiece of his bayside condo in Brickell’s Jade Residences, a 48-story tower with private elevators activated by thumbprint readers. (more)

A dangerous and record-challenging heat wave will affect much of the East this week as a once-delightful air mass turns ugly. (more)

BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) — A 100-foot (33-meter), twin-screw diesel submarine seized at a jungle shipyard in Ecuador marks a quantum, if anticipated, leap in drug-smuggling evasion technology, the top U.S. counter-drug official for the region said Sunday. (more)

BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) — Fans worldwide have fashioned replicas of the World Cup trophy out of everything from papier-mache to plastic. But a lawbreaker in Colombia gets top prize for most original material: cocaine. (more)

She was lurking in the Ivy, ready to pounce. (more)

PRETORIA, South Africa — Four years of careful planning, during which U.S. coach Bob Bradley used 92 players and guided his team through 18 qualifying matches in nine countries (along with several other tournaments and dozens of friendlies) will come down to 90 minutes on Wednesday afternoon in the South African city of Pretoria. (more)

Police arrested a man at Dulles Airport on Thursday for trying to smuggle cocaine past security in powdered soup packets. According to the LaCrosse Tribune, customs dogs identified the man, who was traveling to El Salvador, as a suspect. This attempt, although creative, is far from the first imaginative drug-smuggling attempt. Check out a few other favorites: (more)