cogent and level3

Does anyone know what the story is with Cogent and L3? I noticed that my Cogent site (IN NY) is using a path to one of my providers (IN NJ) via asia as opposed to the local and preferred L3 peer. After several days I was finally told that L3 and Cogent are working through some peering negotiations and cogent is moving traffic off their L3 peer in anticipation of a depeering (I guess they are trying to avoid the whole France Telecom thing that happend last time). Does anyone have a better clue as to what is going on and where the negotiations stand?