||| Solidarity. And sends a message of peace

Caracas celebrates with Colombia

||| About 40 thousand people gathered in Chacaíto to celebrate Colombian Independence Day. The demonstration also served to send a message of peace, and to exhort the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) to free their remaining hostages. Both Colombian and Venezuelan bands like Los Melódicos and El Binomio De Oro took part in the celebration. [3]

Colombia
celebrates freedom

As Colombia commemorates its independence day, millions of people took to the streets, not only on Colombian territory, but also in many other countries like France
and Australia. Several concerts took place in many cities with just one consign: Freedom for the remaining hostages. Shakira performed after singing the national anthem.
[5] AP Photo

Breaking news

*With the Olympics less than three weeks away, Beijing began restricting car use and limiting factory emissions on Sunday in a final drastic effort to clear its smog-choked skies. Under the two-month plan, half of the capital's 3.3 million cars will be removed from city streets on alternate days, depending on whether the license plate ends in an odd or even number.


After soaring food prices led to deadly riots in April, the U.S. and the U.N. promised millions of dollars in aid to poor families like Rivilade’s, as well as help for farmers to break Haiti’s dependence on imported food. But three months later, The Associated Press has learned that only a fraction of a key U.S. food pledge – less than 2 percent as of early July – has been distributed. Even those who oversee the food aid programs say they are stopgap measures while programs to create jobs and help Haitian farmers to increase production are more critical to ending the country’s chronic hunger once and for all.

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama pledged steadfast aid to Afghanistan in talks Sunday with its Western-backed leader and vowed to pursue the war on terror “with vigor” if elected, an Afghan official said. On the second day of an international tour designed to burnish his foreign policy credentials, Illinois Sen. Obama and a pair of colleagues held two hours of talks with President Hamid Karzai at his palace in the capital.

In what
constitutes

his longest
journey, the pope addressed some 350,000 faithful
in Australia, and apologized for
sex crimes done by the clergy.
[8]

Futures
traded

Chancellor Nicolás Maduro said the up-coming Chávez-Uribe meeting was a ‘positive thing’ for the region.

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