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MANAGUA, Nicaragua – A Nicaraguan army official says three Russian navy ships have left the Central American country after a brief visit here that stirred heated debate and underscored deep political divisions.

Lt. Col. Juan Morales says the destroyer Admiral Chabanenko and two support vessels left Sunday after delivering $200,000 in medicine, computers and other humanitarian aid.

Morales denied the ships left early because of opposition to the visit. They were scheduled to leave Monday.

Leftist President Daniel Ortega said he was authorized to approve the visit, but opposition lawmakers argued that the constitution requires congressional approval for visits by foreign military forces.

The warships previously visited ally Venezuela and sailed through the Panama Canal.

President Daniel Ortega is turning to Russia and Venezuela for replacement cash – with fewer strings attached.

Amid growing concern that Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega is leading his country off the path to democratic reform, foreign donors have started to cut off massive amounts of economic aid. Combined with the worsening global financial crisis, the Western Hemisphere’s second-poorest country finds itself in increasingly dire financial straits.

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The president of the UN General Assembly, Miguel d’Escoto Brockmann of Nicaragua, has denounced the policies of a certain Middle Eastern nation. They are “so similar to the apartheid of an earlier era,” he said, “that the world must unite against them, demanding an “end to this massive abuse of human rights” and isolating the offending nation as it once isolated South Africa: with a punishing “campaign of boycott, divestment, and sanctions.”

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HAVANA, Cuba, Dec 4 (acn) Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega said on Wednesday that the Rio Group has entered a new stage of maturity and strengthening with the recent admission of Cuba as a full member of this regional bloc.

“For the first time the Rio Group will be complete with the integration of Cuba, the only country that was missing,” Ortega said.

According to Prensa Latina news agency, the Nicaraguan leader added that the incorporation of Cuba will allow the group to work on the creation of its own security and defense doctrine that, for the first time, will not be dictated from the United States.

“They are no longer the owners of the world and they have to accept this reality,” Ortega stressed and added that the Rio Group represents the sovereign power of Latin America and the Caribbean today.

Meanwhile, the Nicaraguan President criticized the Organization of American States (OAS) and accused it of being an instrument of the United States Government.

Ortega announced that prior of the Summit of the Rio Group scheduled for Brazil later this month, the members of the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas (ALBA) – Venezuela, Cuba, Bolivian, Nicaragua, Honduras and Dominica – will meet in Caracas.

Nicaragua has some of the Full Story" target="_blank">highest rates of cervical cancer in the world.

While vaccines, early testing and treatment have reduced the effects of cervical cancer on women in the U.S., the disease is the number one killer of women in Latin America and Full Story" target="_blank">kills over 33,000 women in Latin America and the Caribbean each year.

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Ortega says his leftist ally Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez made the offer last week “without blackmail, without conditions of any sort.”

The U.S. said last week it would freeze $64 million in anti-poverty aid to Nicaragua amid accusations that local elections were fraudulent. The EU has withheld $54 million in budget support.

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MANAGUA (Reuters) - Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega, angry because the United States is rethinking an aid program, pressed Washington on Monday for billions of dollars in war reparations dating back to a 1980s civil war.

The International Court of Justice, based in the Hague, ordered the United States in 1986 to pay reparations to Nicaragua for training, arming and financing Contra rebels and mining Nicaraguan ports during a conflict that killed tens of thousands of people.

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Anyone can lend money; I am able to lend genius. So when I started making small loans to Third World entrepreneurs through the nonprofit website Full Story" target="_new">kiva.org I felt as though I wasn’t doing enough. That’s why a few weeks after I sent $25 to a baker in Nicaragua, I decided I needed to stop being a silent partner and start calling him all the time with my ideas.

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