BOGOTA, Colombia — At a sprawling office in Bogota, operators equipped with headsets and computer monitors speak in crystal clear Spanish to customers in Mexico, Chile and Spain. They punch the clock for Unisono, one of more than a dozen international call centers located in Bogota, where a key attraction is the way people talk. By many accounts, the Spanish spoken in the Colombian capital is the most easily understood.

SAN JOSE, Costa Rica — During a United Nations meeting about nuclear arms proliferation last September, a 69-year-old Nobel Peace Prize laureate cleared his throat to deliver bold remarks to a room of world leaders with high-powered armies.

WASHINGTON — U.S. federal agents are today closing in on four former Guatemalan soldiers  accused of taking part in a 1982 massacre, which one law enforcement official called “the most shocking modern-day war crime American authorities have ever investigated.” One former soldier alleged to have taken part in the massacre of 251 villagers in the rural Guatemalan hamlet of Las Dos Erres is already in custody in Texas. Another former soldier in Florida and two more in California are under active investigation.