Word: bogot
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Last year, 380,000 Colombians were forced off their land amid fighting between rebels, paramilitaries and the army, a 24% increase from 2007's figure, according to the Bogotá-based human-rights group Codhes (the Spanish acronym for the Human Rights and Displacement Office). Colombian officials, in turn, put the number of displaced at 294,000 for just the first six months of last year. "It's the million-dollar question," Marie-Helene Verney, spokeswoman for the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in Colombia, says of the perplexing trend. "Something is going on." (See pictures...
...disrupt the enemy's civilian support network. According to Codhes, such scorched-earth tactics have uprooted more than 4.5 million people since 1985, leaving Colombia (pop. 45 million) with the world's second largest population of internally displaced persons (IDPs). Only Sudan, with nearly 5 million, has more. (The Bogotá government began keeping track of IDPs in 1997 and its running total is 3.1 million...
...still have to pay taxes on international flights - $134 round-trip for New York to the Dominican Republic - and book all travel three days in advance. JetBlue does not offer as many exotic destinations as other airlines. Outside of the Caribbean, JetBlue's only other international stop is Bogotá, not exactly a tourist haven. Domestic options like Las Vegas, New Orleans and the Los Angeles area are attractive, but it's difficult to truly city-hop since JetBlue connections are a pain. Notice how often the aerophile Miller has to fly back to New York, JetBlue's home base...
...took some arm-twisting. One Colombian legislator traveling in Taiwan was ordered aboard a flight back to Bogotá so he could cast his vote. Up until the last minute, government envoys prowled the aisles and cajoled lawmakers on the floor of the Colombian Senate. But in the end, they delivered for President Alvaro Uribe. By a lopsided 62-to-5 vote - with the opposition walking out in protest - senators on Tuesday approved a bill paving the way for a referendum to amend the constitution and allow Uribe to run for an unprecedented third term...
...General Omar Torrijos, who got the U.S. in 1977 to sign the treaty that eventually gave the canal to Panama - has pushed through some anticorruption reforms. But scandals have persisted. Herrera's campaign had to fight allegations that it received financing from a Colombian national now in prison in Bogotá on charges of alleged extortion, money laundering and drug trafficking in exchange for political favors. (It didn't help Herrera when it was disclosed that while he was staying in Panama, the Colombian, David Murcia, had employed bodyguards provided by Panama's Institutional Protection Service, responsible for protecting...