Tropical Storm Gustav was blamed on Thursday for at least 68 deaths in the Caribbean and U.S. forecasters said it could hit New Orleans and Gulf of Mexico oil fields as a potentially powerful hurricane next week.

Venezuela seized foreign owned cement plants on Tuesday, a show of strength as President Hugo Chavez moves forward with a plan to make South America's top oil exporter a socialist society.

Tropical Storm Fay, which killed at least 57 people in Caribbean countries over the weekend, moved slowly on Monday along Cuba's southwestern coast, where it was expected to make landfall before heading to Florida as a possible hurricane.

Bolivian President Evo Morales easily won a recall vote on Sunday and vowed to push on with socialist reforms that his rightist opponents in South America's poorest country are trying to block.

More than 17 percent of HIV patients being treated for their infection in China developed resistance to available drugs by 2006 and 2007, according to a new nationwide survey.

A military court on Wednesday convicted Osama bin Laden's driver of supporting terrorism but acquitted him on the more serious charge of conspiring with al Qaeda in the first U.S. war crimes trial since World War Two.

Osama bin Laden's driver performed vital services that enabled "the world's most dangerous terrorist" to launch attacks, a prosecutor told jurors before they began deliberations on Monday in the first U.S. war crimes trial at Guantanamo.

Many developing countries that are combating AIDS are facing dire shortages of qualified doctors and nurses as healthcare workers leave for developed countries where they are paid many times more.

Brazilian police on Thursday arrested a man accused of having decapitated and mutilated his British teenage girlfriend after a spat over drugs, a spokeswoman said.

Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez has added a large Spanish-owned bank to the list of companies to be run by the government in the oil exporting nation, furthering his plans of building a socialist state.

A black-and-white interrogation video of Osama bin Laden's driver showed Salim Hamdan denying under questioning in a dark cell that he worked for al Qaeda.

Osama bin Laden's driver knew the target of the fourth hijacked jetliner in the September 11 attacks, a prosecutor said on Tuesday.

Osama bin Laden's driver went on trial at Guantanamo on Monday in the first U.S. war crimes trial since World War Two, nearly seven years after the September 11 attacks prompted U.S. President George W. Bush to declare war on terrorism.

The prosecution and defence witnesses have given widely different accounts of the way Osama bin Laden's former driver has been treated in U.S. prisons in Afghanistan and at Guantanamo Bay.

Colombia's biggest guerrilla force said on Friday it was betrayed by its own men in last week's military rescue of Ingrid Betancourt and 14 other hostages that added to a string of recent setbacks.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and Colombian President Alvaro Uribe said they repaired ties at a summit on Friday that showcased their renewed personal cooperation after months of bickering.

Nazi hunters are hoping to flush out the most notorious member of the Third Reich still believed to be alive, Aribert Heim, known as "Dr Death", in southern Chile - with an advertising campaign.

A lawyer for a defendant in the Argentine "suitcase scandal" said a U.S. government witness has sworn that Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez was personally involved in the affair, according to a U.S. court filing.

Colombia showed a video on Friday of the rescue of Ingrid Betancourt and 14 other hostages where their anger turned to ecstasy as theatre-trained military agents duped and overpowered leftist rebels.