How times change
Twenty years ago, the appearance of this sentence in a newspaper would have been unthinkable:
Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega said he has asked the US government to give Central America at least US$1bn (£500m) to support its fight against drug trafficking.
Times change in unexpected ways. Twenty years ago, the Reagan White House was actively sponsoring the terrorists known as the Contras, who fought Ortega's Sandinistas tooth and nail. Now, Ortega is president again, and even though many of those Reagan-era sponsors of the Contra terrorists hold high positions in the Bush administration, Ortega believes US-Nicaraguan relations have thawed enough to make such a request (or maybe I should call that "GOP-Sandinista relations" instead).
Some things change, some things don't.