Avianca opens new Medellin-Madrid flight route

Colombian airline Avianca announced that it will open up a new connection between the central Colombian city of Medellin and Spain's capital Madrid, as well as increasing flights between Bogota and the Cordoba and Santander departments.

The new direct route between Medellin and Madrid will run twice weekly on Wednesdays and Saturdays from Colombia to Spain, and Thursdays and Sundays for the return trip.

The new service means that Avianca will now run 19 direct flights between Colombia and Europe each week.

In an attempt to promote domestic tourism in Colombia, Avianca will also open up ten flights every weekday from

Uribe: FARC will return to Colombia under new govt

Colombian President Alvaro Uribe Friday accused members of the FARC of hiding out abroad, awaiting until the end of his presidential term to return to Colombia, reports Caracol Radio.

According to Uribe, rebels from the Colombian guerilla organization have holed up outside Colombia to escape his anti-terrorist measures. The Colombian head of state warned that FARC members would try to return to Colombia to build up their organization, when a new administration takes power.

He also indicated that there are still tough terrorist skirmishes ahead and that the FARC hope to recover after finding refuge abroad.

Colombian presidential elections are

Preview: Liga Postobon Week 13

Independiente Medellin will attempt to reconquer the sole lead in the Colombian Liga Postobon in a home match with Once Caldas on Sunday.

The action starts on Saturday however when Junior travel to face Atletico Huila in Neiva. Junior are currently in third place but the competition is fierce in that region of the table, forcing the coastal team to win this game if they want to avoid the risk of dropping out of the top four.

Real Cartagena did exactly that after losing all of their last three games, and the magic that kept them in the top

Research group disputes Santos 'false positives' claim

The Research Center for Popular Education and the Program for Peace (CINEP/PP) is disputing claims by presidential candidate Juan Manuel Santos that the "false positives" scandal, over the army's murder of civilians, who were then reported as guerrillas killed in action, has been over for more than a year, according to Colectivo de Abogados.

Santos told media in March that the "issue of false positives was gone,"  and that "there has not been a single false positive case since October 2008."

CINEP/PP said in a report that there were in fact nine known cases of false positives between October 2008 and December 31 2009, seven of

Colombians biggest beer drinkers

Colombia is the most profitable beer market in the world for SABmiller, one of the world's largest brewers.

The Andean nation's beer sales were some of the least affected and fastest to recover from the global economic downturn, which hit the beer industry hard, the company's CEO Graham Mackay told Dow Jones Newswires at the World Economic Forum (WEF) on Latin America in Cartagena.

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Source: Colombia news | Colombia Reports

'Venezuela is holding 20 Colombians on spying charges'

Colombia's Ombudsman Volmar Perez announced Wednesday that there are a total of twenty Colombian citizens currently being detained by Venezuela on charges of espionage, reported Colombian media.

Perez said that alongside the eight Colombians arrested for taking photographs of Venezuelan military telecommunications towers and highways at the end of March, the country's authorities also arrested twelve Colombian citizens on March 19, on suspicion of spying.

According to reports, the twelve detained Colombians, who were arrested at a country house in the Venezuelan state of Miranda, were friends and family of the property's owner.

The ombudsman explained that, "Venezuelan authorities found five

Improve your Spanish: Take a Cartagena taxi

English-speaking visitors to Colombia's premier tourist destination Cartagena will no longer have to engage in elaborate games of charades with taxi drivers, thanks to a new initiative to equip 4,000 taxis in the Caribbean port with English-Spanish phrase cards.

The "English Speakers" program, a joint intiative by the Ministry for Trade, Industry and Tourism and the Cartagena Tourism office, introduced the first 100 of the phrase cards into city taxis on Monday.

The introduction of the bilingual phrase-cards, which each contain 25 key phrases in English and Spanish, is part of a larger initiative to make the city more tourist-friendly.

"The