Reuters - More women are working and dying for powerful drug cartels in Mexico's most violent city as high unemployment along the U.S. border sucks desperate families into the lethal trade.
Reuters - Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro, wearing his green military cap and clothing like the commandant of old, made his first speech before the Cuban public Friday since falling ill in 2006, warning of the threat of nuclear war.
Reuters - Children tussle after dark on a dusty soccer field used just weeks ago as a shooting range by local drug gangs, a sign that a new police force is making a mark on one of Venezuela's most violent slums.
AP - One of two known survivors of a drug gang's massacre in northern Mexico of 72 undocumented Central and South American migrants said in an interview broadcast Thursday that they were killed because they refused to work for the traffickers.
AP - Soldiers killed at least 25 suspected cartel members Thursday in a raid and gunbattle in a Mexican state near the U.S. border that has become one of the most dangerous battlegrounds in the country's drug war.
AFP - A clash between the army and gang members at a ranch near Mexico's northern city of Monterrey left at least 25 gang members dead, the military unit involved in the firefight said.
Reuters - Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez defended his socialist government's security record on Thursday, rejecting pre-election claims by the opposition that crime had risen sharply during his 11 years in power.
Reuters - At least 25 suspected drug gang members were killed in an army raid in rural northeastern Mexico on Thursday, the army said in a press release.
AP - An electoral official accused President Hugo Chavez and his allies of breaking campaign laws by using state-run media to berate rivals and praise friends ahead of this month's legislative elections.
AFP - The 33 Chilean miners trapped underground longer than anyone on record will soon be able to see and talk to loved ones through a video link, Health Minister Jaime Manalich said Thursday.