CALIFORNIA | LOCAL
June 4, 2012 | By Tracy Wilkinson, Los Angeles Times
MEXICO CITY — Adolfo Calero, a former Coca-Cola executive who led the largest anti-Sandinista Contra rebel force in 1980s Nicaragua and served as one of its most articulate lobbyists in Washington, has died. He was 80. Calero died Saturday night in the Nicaraguan capital, Managua, of complications from lung disease, an aide told local media. Calero's career mirrored the tumultuous history of Nicaragua as it emerged from a sleepy Central American backwater to the center of the Cold War struggle.
CALIFORNIA | LOCAL
May 17, 2012 | By Rick Rojas and Andrew Blankstein, Los Angeles Times
Mercedes Adilia Rodriguez's wishes were precise and meaningful: Her casket would be closed during her funeral, and she refused to be buried in the chilly earth of a Southern California cemetery. Instead, following tradition, she would be interred above ground in her hometown in Nicaragua. But in the days after her death, family members say they were summoned to Rose Hills Memorial Park and Mortuaries in Whittier and told the funeral home had made a mistake. She had been confused with someone else.
BUSINESS
January 22, 2012 | By Eve Mitchell
After years of living in the mountains of northern Nicaragua as an agricultural aid worker trying to make life better for the country's poor farmers, Paul Rice woke up and smelled the coffee - specifically, fair-trade coffee. That was 12 years ago. Today, Rice heads Fair Trade USA, an Oakland nonprofit that is the country's leading certifier of fair-trade products. Such certification helps farmers living in countries with emerging economies receive a fair price for coffee, tea, chocolate, rice and other products they produce instead of selling at the lower market price to a middleman.
WORLD
November 7, 2011 | By Tracy Wilkinson, Los Angeles Times
Presidential election results seemed to indicate clear winners Sunday in Guatemala and Nicaragua, two Central American countries where democracy has been dramatically weakened by violence and political abuse. In Nicaragua, President Daniel Ortega, a one-time Sandinista revolutionary who now professes to be a born-again Christian, looked set to be reelected, based on preliminary results, after eviscerating the constitution to become eligible for a third term. In Guatemala, retired army Gen. Otto Perez Molina, who had the edge going into Sunday's vote, was well on the way to victory, according to partial results.
CALIFORNIA | LOCAL
March 24, 2011 | By Victoria Kim, Los Angeles Times
The State Bar of California has declined to discipline a Los Angeles attorney who was accused of orchestrating a massive fraud in representing Nicaraguan banana workers in lawsuits against U.S. corporations, according to a document reviewed by The Times. Then-Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Victoria G. Chaney had referred attorney Juan Dominguez, a personal injury lawyer whose ads are ubiquitous on Los Angeles buses, to the state bar after she made findings that he was central in a scheme to recruit fake plaintiffs, coach them to lie about working on Dole-affiliated banana farms, and fabricate medical evidence.
WORLD
September 20, 2010 | By Tracy Wilkinson, Los Angeles Times
Constitutional bans and felony convictions would be career killers for many politicians. But in Nicaragua such inconveniences don't seem to be an obstacle to running for president. The race to rule Nicaragua is shaping up as a choice between two modern-day caudillos — strongmen — who are very familiar, for good and for bad, to this troubled country's voters. Daniel Ortega, the autocratic president and former revolutionary comandante , has announced his intention to seek reelection next year, even though the constitution forbids it. Arnoldo Aleman, a former president who made a top 10 list of the world's most corrupt leaders and served time after his term for money-laundering and fraud, declared his candidacy in July.