News In Brief

US charging a Nicaraguan with running cocaine ring

A US magistrate has issued an arrest warrant for a high Nicaraguan official linked to a cocaine-smuggling ring operating between Latin America and the United States.

According to an affidavit from an undercover federal agent, an agreement was reached with the leftist Sandinista government to develop an airfield in Nicaragua for cocaine smuggling.

The Drug Enforcement Administration agent said photographs show Sandinista soldiers and Frederico Vaughan, an aide to Nicaragua's interior minister, unloading 1,500 pounds of cocaine from a damaged Titan twin-engine aircraft at an airport in Managua, the Nicaraguan capital.