Hostage mission ends in frustration

Bogotá, Colombia

France called off a humanitarian mission Tuesday to treat and possibly free ailing hostage Ingrid Betancourt after Colombian rebels said they wouldn't unilaterally release any more captives.

France's Foreign Ministry said late Tuesday that there was no longer any reason to keep the mission by France, Spain and Switzerland in Colombia. A French government plane has been waiting on a Bogotá airstrip for days with doctors hoping to reach Betancourt, who was said to be depressed and suffering from hepatitis C.

In a four-paragraph statement released Tuesday, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia repeated what they have insisted on since 2005: that the government demilitarize two counties as the first step toward a broad hostage-prisoner swap. Only as part of such an exchange, they said, would Betancourt go free.

Some had expressed hope that a humanitarian release of Betancourt would prompt Colombia's President Álvaro Uribe to make similar gestures with imprisoned rebels, providing momentum for peace talks that could bring an end to the decades-long conflict.

Guatemala City, Guatemala

Ex-security adviser fatally ambushed

Gunmen killed a former top government security adviser in Guatemala on Tuesday, a week after he was fired by President Álvaro Colom amid complaints he had become too powerful.

Victor Rivera was shot dead while driving through Guatemala City, Interior Ministry spokesman Ricardo Gatica said. His assistant was hurt.

A Venezuelan citizen, Rivera was hired by the government in the 1990s to help authorities confront a wave of kidnappings. His negotiating skills won the release of dozens of captives and the admiration of Guatemala's business elite.

Government spokesman Fernando Barillas said officials believe Rivera may have been killed because of his investigative work.

Earlier this year, he headed a probe into the killings of three Salvadoran members of the Guatemala-based Central American Parliament.

Mexico City

Aggressive bees attack 70 officers

At least 70 police officers were hospitalized after so-called Africanized bees swarmed a police shooting range in southern Mexico, authorities said Tuesday.

The attacked occurred Monday in Tapachula, Chiapas, after one of the policemen hit the bees' hive with a bullet, local police officer Miguel Serrano said Tuesday. At least 10 of the 70 officers stung were in serious condition, he said.

Africanized bees, a fierce hybrid strain sometimes referred to as "killer bees," are the result of an experiment to increase honey production in Brazil.

Also

Protester killed: An official said police opened fire on protesters in western Nepal today, killing at least one person a day ahead of a landmark election.

Death squad: A Peruvian court has sentenced four members of an army death squad to 15 to 35 years for kidnapping and murdering nine university students and a professor in 1992. In a separate courtroom, former President Alberto Fujimori is being tried for authorizing the death squad.

Food riots: U.N. peacekeepers used rubber bullets and tear gas to chase away hungry Haitians who stormed the presidential palace in Port-au-Prince on Tuesday, demanding President René Préval step down.

Seattle Times news services