Specter of military escalation hangs over Colombia vote (opens in new tab)

On the eve of the vote, hard-right Abelardo de la Espriella has a slight polling edge over his leftist rival -- having promised an end to peace talks and to launch a wave of airstrikes against guerrillas and cartels. A decade after peace accords ended a FARC leftist insurgency that killed a quarter of a million people, an alphabet soup of armed groups still control chunks of the country. Many dissident fighters have long since cast off ideology, focusing instead on illegal mining, kidnapping,...