Earning the title ‘City of the Year 2012′ the capital of Antioquia has been and praised for having implemented innovative and sustainable measures for improving the quality of life for its close to 2 million inhabitants. As Colombia’s second largest city and one of the vital engines of economic growth in country, Medellín has always taken pride in being a key hub for banking and mining companies as well as an attractive place to do business, given an ideal location close to the coffee axis and the coasts of both the Pacific and Caribbean.

The Venezuelan government plans to create a new force tasked with patrolling the border with Colombia, which will face an uphill battle if it is to make a dent in crime in a region where criminal groups, corrupt security forces and general lawlessness run rampant. President Nicolas Maduro announced the government will create a Joint Task Force, which will be a "civic-military" initiative bringing together area residents, political actors and security forces with the goal of reinforcing border security.

For a little under a year, the Colombian government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) have been holding peace talks in Havana -- the first since the round conducted by the Pastrana administration from 1998 to 2002. Those were plagued by delays, accusations from the FARC that the Colombian government was planning to assassinate its top leaders, accusations from the Colombian government that the FARC was planning to kidnap officials, and ongoing violence.

Colombia’s ministry of transport may decide to ban colorful buses called “chivas” in a new plan for modernizing transport. The folkloric chivas, which have long delighted tourists, are at risk of extinction due to new plans set out by the ministry of transport.The colorful buses, which are often heard before they are seen, are regarded by some as a “party on wheels” with passengers playing music and even occasionally passing around a bottle of rum.

Colombia doesn’t have a space program, but as of Friday, it does have an elite aerospace engineering team. RoboCol, a group of 15 assorted engineering students and two designers from the Bogota-based Andes University, finished fourth place out of 50 international participants in the Lunabotics Mining Competition held at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida for its work on “Intensity”, a robot designed to traverse lunar terrain.

Popular Colombian band Bomba Estereo has been asked to cancel their free concert in Jaffa as part of a boycott of Israel. The appeal has been made by the Colombian section of the “boycott Israel” campaign has appealed to the band to turn down the invitation to play in Jaffa to stand in solidarity with the Palestinian people.

After nine months in Havana, Cuba, negotiators are making slow but steady progress toward ending the conflict between Colombia's government and its largest leftist guerrilla group, the 49-year-old Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). The talks are now at the second of five agenda points, and a growing segment of public opinion believes that this peace process—the fourth in the past 30 years—may end in an accord.

The presidents of Colombia and Venezuela have agreed to work to improve relations, two months after a row erupted between the two neighbours. Juan Manuel Santos of Colombia and Venezuela's Nicolas Maduro met for talks at a border town in Venezuela. They agreed to set up high level groups to discuss security, energy and trade. Relations had been strained since Mr Santos agreed in May to meet Venezuelan opposition leader Henrique Capriles in Bogota.