■COLOMBIA
Minister denies claims
The nation’s defense minister on Sunday denied a Venezuelan claim that Colombian troops had crossed into the country. “I’ve investigated and there was no incursion,’’ Defense Minister Juan Manuel Santos told Caracol radio. Rough terrain along the border would have “made it practically impossible for [the incursion] to have happened the way they say it happened,’’ he said.But Venezuelan Information Minister Andres Izarra told Venezuelan state television that officials had photographs showing “a military incursion in our territory.” Venezuela’s foreign ministry sent Colombia a diplomatic note on Saturday demanding an explanation for what it called an “illegal incursion” of 60 Colombian soldiers into Venezuela’s western Apure state. Santos said he’d spoken with the head of Colombia’s armed forces, who assured him no such incident had taken place.
■COLOMBIA
FARC leader surrenders
A wanted leader of Latin America’s largest guerrilla army handed herself over to authorities on Sunday, Colombia’s defense minister said. Eldaneyis Mosquera, also known as “Karina,” was one of the most senior women in the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC. She operated in the country’s mountainous, northwestern region, where security officials blamed her for a series of attacks and kidnappings. “We’ve been after this woman for a long time,” Defense Minister Juan Manuel Santos told reporters. The FARC has recently taken a number of hits in northwestern Colombia, where its leader was killed in March by a subordinate who then handed himself over to authorities. Earlier this month, President Alvaro Uribe asked Mosquera in a public speech to turn herself in.
■UNITED STATES
Men duel with Tasers
It wasn’t exactly pistols at 30 paces, but police say a security company supervisor and a restaurateur shot each other with Tasers in a confrontation over parking in Boulder, Colorado. Police said neither man needed medical attention after the Saturday confrontation, but Harvey Epstein, co-owner of Mamacitas restaurant, was arrested on suspicion of felony menacing and using a stun gun. A police report said Epstein and Casey Dane, a supervisor for Colorado Security Services, were arguing over a metal boot that one of Dane’s guards had clamped on a wheel of a van parked behind the restaurant. Dane told police he was afraid Epstein was going to hit him with a pair of bolt cutters. Epstein told police Dane put his hand on a holstered pistol and threatened to shoot him, an accusation Dane denies. Both men drew Tasers. “They shot each other,” Police Sergeant Pat Wyton said.
■IRAQ
Group calls for probe
A media rights group called for a full probe into a 2003 US shelling that killed two foreign journalists at a Baghdad hotel, claiming that new evidence showed the incident was not an accident. The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) said the US should “tell the whole truth” about the incident at the Palestine Hotel on April 8, 2003, just a day before Baghdad fell to US invading forces. The IFJ said a former US army sergeant had reported seeing secret US documents that listed the hotel as a possible target, a statement which it said “exposed as a cover-up” the US position that the shelling was an accident. Spanish cameraman Jose Couso and Ukraine-born cameraman Taras Protsyuk were killed at the hotel, which was home to about 150 journalists and media staff at the time.
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