Yahoo! News: World - Latin America

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 - Fidel Castro dusted off his full military uniform for the first time since stepping down as president four years ago, a symbolic act in a communist country where little signals often carry enormous significance.

AFP - A second drill that will widen a supply chute to 33 miners trapped in a Chilean mine, and could aid their rescue, arrived Friday at the site where the men have been trapped for nearly a month.

AFP - At least four people died in a clash between soldiers and suspected drug gang members in northeastern Mexico, a day after 25 outlaws died in a shootout with soldiers nearby, police said Friday.

AP - Mexican soldiers killed at least 30 suspected cartel members in two shootouts near the U.S. border in a region that has become one of biggest battlegrounds in the country's drug war, authorities said Friday.

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 - 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.

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.

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 - 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.

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.

AFP - Mexican President Felipe Calderon admitted drug violence was worsening in Mexico but said the cartels had been weakened by the toppling of several major drug bosses, in his annual address Thursday.

Reuters - Hermelindo Maquin set out from his home in the Guatemalan countryside in early August, leaving behind his small farm and pregnant wife as he began the long, perilous journey to the United States.