Venezuelan food producers on Tuesday protested 26 laws President Hugo Chávez pushed through just before his special legislative powers expired, saying their restrictions on the economic freedom of businesses and consumers are unconstitutional.
Dressed in black trunks, Azea Augustama danced across the boxing ring, bobbing and weaving, striving for perfection with every hard-hitting punch. His goal: consistency.
LOS ANGELES TIMES
Many Mexicans are afraid to contact authorities about abductions, fearing officers could be involved. The problem is an awkward one for President Felipe Calderon's drug war. (May need to register)
Deep in the northernmost reaches of the Amazon jungle, a land conflict between rice farmers and a handful of Indian tribes has turned so violent that the country's Supreme Court warns it could escalate into civil war.
Prime Minister Vladimir Putin is calling for Russia to regain its influential position in former Cold War ally Cuba, Russian news reports said Monday.
LOS ANGELES TIMES
Maira Martinez, a 27-year-old forensic anthropologist, is a member of one of 12 exhumation teams working to recover and, they hope, identify the remains of thousands of victims of Colombia's civil war. (May need to register)
Red-and-blue, double-decker buses have begun bouncing down the Cuban capital's potholed streets on sightseeing tours inspired by those in locales from London to Mexico City.
A fire that burned for more than 15 hours destroyed 1,502 stalls and caused an estimated $100 million in damages at the Mercado Oriental, the main market in the Nicaraguan capital city of Managua.
THE NEW YORK TIMES
Venezuela's central bank sought on Friday to calm fears of faltering banks a day after President Hugo Chávez unexpectedly announced the nationalization of a large Spanish-owned bank, his latest effort to intensify state control over the economy through takeovers of private companies.
CHILE
This quiet town nestled in the hills of central Chile has a horrifying history. In 1978, in a stone oven on the town's outskirts, the Roman Catholic Church found the bodies of 11 farmers and four youths who were executed by Chile's military dictatorship. Police had accused the victims of being leftist subversives and arrested them five years earlier, but no charges were filed.
Pungent smoke billows from aging petrochemical plants here. Foul-smelling bluish water gathers in pools outside the walls. Fading paint announces the creaky Lazaro Cardenas refinery, a perfect metaphor for one of the world's biggest and most antiquated state oil companies.
THE WASHINGTON POST
In Tijuana, a chaotic border city of 1.5 million people, the HIV infection rate is nearly triple Mexico's national average, and it has been rising steadily for more than a decade. Today, about one in 125 adults in the city is infected with the virus that causes AIDS.
Haiti's Senate broke almost four months of political gridlock Thursday, ratifying Michèle Pierre-Louis as the Caribbean nation's newest prime minister -- and only the second woman to assume the post in Haitian history.
Mexico's top anti-drug prosecutor has resigned as part of a law enforcement shake-up amid a wave of shootouts and murders across the country, two officials in the attorney general's office said.
President Hugo Chávez said Thursday he intends to nationalize the Bank of Venezuela, which is owned by the Santander banking group of Spain.
TICO TIMES
Nicaragua's top electoral observation group fears it won't receive credential from the Supreme Electoral Council to observe upcoming municipal elections.
THE NEW YORK TIMES
The formation last month of a breakaway church openly sympathetic to President Hugo Chávez's government is raising the ire of Roman Catholic leaders in Venezuela and fueling a debate over the collision of religion and politics in one of Latin America's most secular nations.
THE SANTIAGO TIMES
Chilean Interior Minister Edmundo Pérez Yoma clashed with presumed presidential candidate Sebastián Pińera after Pińera suggested that Chile needs a more forceful police system, like Colombia’s, and held up Colombia’s fight against the revolutionary FARC guerrillas as a model for Chile.
LOS ANGELES TIMES
Since drug traffickers set foot in the border city of Tijuana, Mexican musicians have strummed behind, chronicling their exploits in the traditional polka-based rhythms of the "corrido." But with drug war violence and kidnappings escalating, the "narco-corridos" are losing their swagger.
CUBA
Two years after a crippling stomach illness forced him to give up power, a hospitalized Fidel Castro is still in his Adidas track suits, still writing newspaper columns on international affairs and, experts say, still getting in his brother's way.
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