Peruvians

Lori Berenson, an American who has spent more than 14 years in Peruvian prisons on terrorism charges, is expected to be released on parole as early as Thursday, the national prisons institute said Wednesday. The announcement followed a court ruling Tuesday granting Berenson's request for parole. Judge Jessica Leon ordered her to remain in Peru until 2015, when her sentence ends. "I'm very happy. I am going to have three glasses of wine," her father, Mark Berenson, told the Associated Press on Tuesday.

Ricardo Zarate remembers reading a 2004 article in the Economist magazine predicting that Peruvian cuisine was the Next Big Thing. A Peruvian who had studied at a culinary college in Peru, then at Westminster Culinary College in England, he was cooking in a Japanese restaurant in London. The moment he read the article, he knew it was right: Peruvian was the next big thing, and he wanted, desperately, to cook Peruvian in his own restaurant. He started dreaming and moved to L.A. in 2007.

Former President Alberto Fujimori of Peru made an impassioned plea of innocence at his human rights crimes trial in the Peruvian capital, portraying himself Friday as the leader who rescued his country from anarchy, not the man prosecutors have cast as a "Frankenstein" monster. "Rather than prove my guilt, the prosecution has merely shown the inconsistency of its accusations," Fujimori said, alleging that prosecutors fabricated evidence in their effort to make an "iceberg from a piece of ice."

A former housekeeper for Lakers superstar Kobe Bryant is suing him and his wife, Vanessa, contending that she was verbally abused and humiliated while she worked at the couple's Newport Coast home. Maria Jimenez, a 48-year-old immigrant originally from Peru, alleges Vanessa Bryant badgered and harassed her, and forced her to perform demeaning tasks. Jimenez filed the wrongful-termination lawsuit March 20 in Orange County Superior Court.

Conchita Cintron, who broke into the male-dominated sport of bullfighting at 13 and became one of the world's first famous female matadors, has died. She was 86. Cintron, who became known as "La Diosa Rubia," or "The Blond Goddess," died of a heart attack Tuesday in Lisbon, the Portuguese news agency Lusa said, quoting unidentified family members. She was buried Wednesday at a cemetery in Trajouce, near Lisbon, according to a funeral agency and local church.

In a space that will soon house an anticucheria, or Peruvian kebab restaurant, shaggy-haired rockers flanked by buxom, jiggling Amazonian dancers in neon yellow bikinis serve up a pulsing cumbia beat to a rollicking crowd. Surrounded by hundreds of friends and admirers flushed red by the pisco sours flowing from the bar, Gaston Acurio, the man of the hour, surveys the scene of his birthday party and smiles contentedly.

Lima Nights A Novel Marie Arana Dial Press: 248 pp., $25 She has the first line: "Give me your hand." He has had enough to drink to risk making a fool of himself. So, pale, blue-eyed Bluhm, egged on by his friends, lets Maria, a black-haired beauty, lead him onto the dance floor at a dive called Lima Nights. And so it begins. Carlos Bluhm, we learn, hails from a prominent German Peruvian family with deep roots in Lima.

Yma Sumac, the Peruvian-born singer whose spectacular multi-octave vocal range and exotic persona made her an international sensation in the 1950s, has died. She was 86. Sumac, who was diagnosed with colon cancer in February, died Saturday in an assisted-living facility in Silver Lake, said Damon Devine, her personal assistant and close friend. Bursting onto the U.S.