Word: nicaragua
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Central America. Poverty, earthquakes and civil wars have savaged the region for most of this century. Still, the Dantesque calamity that hit the isthmus last week may have taken suffering to a new plateau. As many as 10,000 people were estimated dead in the battered countries of Nicaragua and Honduras, while some 2 million were left homeless, in the wake of the relentless rains of Hurricane Mitch. In all, the storm caused a staggering $3 billion in damage--more than half the combined Nicaraguan and Honduran gross domestic products...
...Nicaragua alone, where 3,800 were thought dead, much of the landscape looks as barren as the moon. Starving, sallow-skinned children, many suffering cholera from the fetid waters that destroyed their homes, begged for food on the crumbled, mud-slick roads between Managua and the flooded northern sierras...
...going to take a lot more than food and medicine to save Central America. For starters, the governments of Honduras and Nicaragua suggested Monday, their combined foreign debt of $10 billion ought to be discounted, and then they'll need a few billion more to rebuild the region in the wake of Hurricane Mitch. "These countries have suffered an infrastructural apocalypse," says TIME Latin America bureau chief Tim Padgett. "With damage equaling more than 60 percent of the two countries' combined GDP, emergency aid won't be enough -- it will require a long-term commitment from the industrialized world...
...MANAGUA, Nicaragua: Hurricane Mitch may have ratcheted up its casualty figures by faking out Central American authorities. "Mitch came from the east, which was where people prepared," says TIME reporter Lorraine Orlandi. "But most of the damage actually occurred on the west coast." The hurricane's behavior was also atypical: "People mostly prepared for hurricane-strength winds passing through," says Orlandi. "Nobody imagined that Mitch would stay in one place for almost a week and dump so much rain -- most of the deaths were caused by flooding and mud slides...
...Monaghan, a devout Roman Catholic and an antiabortion crusader, has for years been drifting away from Domino's, which he founded with his brother in 1960, toward charitable pursuits at home and in foreign countries. He has opened a mission in Honduras and supervised construction of a cathedral in Nicaragua. More recently Monaghan has bankrolled Catholic elementary schools in Ann Arbor, Mich., and a Catholic liberal arts college in nearby Ypsilanti. "He loves his charities," says daughter Maggie, a Domino's spokeswoman. "He wanted to leave before he becomes too old to enjoy the benefits of his charity work...