Eighteen people have died and several others have been wounded in a shooting at a shoe factory in San Pedro Sula in northern Honduras, police said.

The incident began at 3:45 p.m. local time onTuesday, when two men carrying AK-47 assault rifles burst into the factory in the coastal city and began shooting.

Protestors have taken to the streets of Buenos Aires calling for the release of all political prisoners and demanding an end to pro-Israeli behavior.

Thousands of people gathered in Buenos Aires to demand the release of all political prisoners, specially that of Roberto Martino a civil rights leader who was detained during 2009 anti-Zionism protests, reported PressTV.

Iran's first Ambassador to Bolivia, Ale Reza Qezili, has met with and submitted his credentials to President Evo Morales.

The Iranian envoy submitted his credentials to the Bolivian president at the Quemado presidential palace in La Paz on Monday, IRIB reported.

General Mohammad Qasim Fahim, a prominent Afghan military commander, politician and vice president to Afghan leader Hamid Karzai, has reportedly died in France.

Fahim, who suffered from bone cancer and diabetes, died in a hospital in the French capital, Benawa, an Afghan media outlet reported on Monday.

The Colombian Air Force has killed at least 15 suspected leftist rebels during an Air Force bombing raid near the country's eastern border, a report says.

Colombia's Air Force pounded hideouts of the leftist National Liberation Army (ELN), the country's second-largest rebel group, in eastern Arauca Department, AFP reported on Saturday.

A number of Mexican politicians have been killed in a plane crash in the south of the country, police and political officials say.

However, there are conflicting reports as to exactly how many people died when a private plane crashed near a beach resort in Huatulco.

South Korea and the United States are to go ahead with a joint military exercise on the west coast of the Korean Peninsula, officials say.

According to South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff and the US military in Seoul, the drills, scheduled to begin on Sunday, will involve over 17,000 American and South Korean troops.

A shootout between army troops and suspected drug dealers in northeast Mexico has left at least 25 purported drug cartel gunmen, Mexican authorities said.

The killings happened on Thursday in the border state of Tamaulipas, just south of Texas, the Los Angeles Times reported.

Fourteen police officers have been killed and seven others wounded by explosion of a mine allegedly laid by leftist rebels in southern Colombia, said a police commander.

The police officers were killed when their vehicle was blown up the mine on a road in southern Caqueta department late Wednesday, the AFP reported.

Some 50,000 Argentinean healthcare workers have staged a 24-hour strike across the country demanding better job security and higher salaries.

"Some 1,500 hospitals and 6,000 healthcare centers have to deal with poor conditions, low salaries and lack of job security and staff shortages," said Chairman of the Healthcare Federation Jorge Yablowsky, who took part in the strike.

A former Argentine navy lieutenant who is now in the US has been ordered for prosecution in his homeland for his alleged role in a 1972 massacre of leftist guerrillas.

US Magistrate Judge Robert Dube said he would issue a written decision in a few weeks on whether Roberto Guillermo Bravo, 68, should be returned to the South American country.

In a sign of the widening violence in Mexico, eight people have been killed in Cancun after suspected drug gang members threw bombs into a bar on the city's outskirts, according to the local attorney-general's office.

The attack in the Caribbean beach resort, in southeastern Mexico, took place early on Tuesday.

Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro has spoken of his illness, which forced him to leave power, for the first time, saying he "was at death's door."

"Several times I asked myself if [doctors] were going to let me live in those conditions or if they'd let me die,'' he told Mexico's La Jornada newspaper during a five-hour interview published on Monday, The Miami Herald reported.

Mexican officials have announced the arrest of a US-born suspected drug trafficker nicknamed "the Barbie" in a major victory for the government amid spiralling drug violence.

Edgar Valdez Villareal, a Mexican-American, who faces trafficking charges in the US, has been blamed for a vicious turf war that has included bodies hung from bridges and shootouts in central Mexico.

Amid efforts to crackdown on drug smugglers, the Mexican police have taken into custody a major drug lord who is the alleged head of the Beltran Leyva drug cartel.

The 37-year-old Edgar Valdez Villarreal, known as the Barbie, was captured by federal police close to the border between the southern Mexican states of Morelos and Guerrero following a shootout, Xinhua news agency reported on Monday.

Violent clashes between government security forces and demonstrators continue unabated in the Indian-controlled Kashmir.

Several people have been wounded on Tuesday after police opened fire to disperse the protesters in the capital city of Srinagar, AFP reported.

The Bolivian President Evo Morales has called for concerted efforts of Iran, Venezuela and Bolivia to put an end to the unilateralism dominant in the world.

"People in the world are suffering from the unilateralism of big countries that have filled the markets with their products," Morales said in a meeting with Iranian Minister of Industries and Mines Ali Akbar Mehrabian on Monday.

A fresh wave of violence has hit the northeastern Mexico border state of Tamaulipas, where suspected drug traffickers have shot dead the mayor of a small town.

Marco Antonio Leal was killed by gunmen on Sunday, as he drove through his rural municipality of Hidalgo near the Gulf of Mexico, the local attorney-general's office said.

At least one person has been injured after two bombs went off near a morgue in the Mexican city of Reynosa where the bodies of 72 migrants massacred last week are being kept.

"They were two different bombs about a block apart. We're investigating. We don't know what types of devices were used," AFP quoted an official as saying on Sunday.

Separate Taliban attacks and bomb explosions have left six American soldiers dead in Afghanistan's most volatile regions, NATO has reported.

Three soldiers were killed while they were fighting insurgents in two separate battles in eastern parts of Afghanistan on Saturday, the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said in a statement.

Top Iranian and Venezuelan officials have proposed new industrial projects for further cooperation between the two allies in the future.

Iran's Industries and Mines Minister Ali-Akbar Mehrabian, in Caracas on an official visit, met with Venezuela's house, industry and agriculture ministers in Caracas on Saturday to discuss joint industrial projects underway and planned by the two countries.

Mexican federal authorities are to investigate the massacre of 72 migrants on a ranch in the north of the country as evidence points to drug traffickers.

According to government security spokesman Alejandro Poire, the involvement of drug cartels in the killings makes it a federal crime.

Helicopter crash in Venezuela has killed ten members of the country's National Guard who were on a mission to track drug traffickers near the Colombian border.

The crash took place in western Apure State near the Colombian border on Friday as three officers along with seven soldiers were taking off on a counter-narcotics mission.

Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro has said al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden is a US agent used by former US President George W. Bush to scare the world.

"Any time Bush would stir up fear and make a big speech, bin Laden would appear threatening people with a story about what he was going to do," Castro said on Friday, AP reported.

The Cuban government has issued two free-market reforms aimed at boosting its struggling economy, including allowing foreign investors to lease state-owned land for up to 99 years.

The moves, announced in the official Gazette newspaper on Thursday and Friday, are considered a significant shift for the country as Raul Castro, the country's president, promises to scale back government control of businesses.

Mexico says it is planning to tighten the noose around big-ticket cash purchases to curtail the flow of smuggled dollars and fight money laundering.

President Felipe Calderon put forward the sweeping new measures Thursday to crack down on billions of dollars of the illicit money gained by the drug cartels and spent by them for more profit.

A car bomb has exploded outside the local affiliate of Televisa TV network in the northeastern city of Ciudad Victoria, in Tamaulipas state.

Friday's blast damaged equipment and the station was unable to broadcast locally, AFP news agency reported.

Cuba has issued a pair of surprising free-market decrees, allowing foreign investors to lease government land for up to 99 years — potentially touching off a golf-course building boom — and loosening state controls on commerce to let islanders grow and sell their own fruit and vegetables.

The moves, published into law in the Official Gazette on Thursday and Friday and effective immediately, are significant steps as President Raul Castro promises to scale back the communist state's control of the economy while attempting to generate new revenue for a government short on cash.

Explosives planted in a vehicle have been detonated outside a TV station in the northeastern Mexican city of Ciudad Victoria,in the state of Tamaulipas.

The explosion rocked the Televisa TV's local branch at 0518 GMT on Friday, leaving no fatalities.

The president of the Philippines has toughened his stance in response to China's outrage over a botched hostage rescue operation in Manila in which eight Hong Kong tourists were killed last week.

Benigno Aquino called the carnage "ghastly" and admitted that there were many failures in the police operation to free the hostages.

Mexican drug cartels have infiltrated Central America with devastating power by buying up land and paying people off as the region struggles to contain the move.

Central America has been an open route for cocaine trafficked north from the Andes mountain range of South America. Mexican cartels are now buying up land, storing arms and drugs and hiring members of local criminal networks in Central America to help them move in and sell drugs, Reuters reports.

The head of Iran's Red Crescent Society says the presence of American forces in Pakistan has disrupted the process of international aid to the flood-stricken people.

"Western countries only make decisions on paper, and have not provided the flood-stricken people of Pakistan with enough help," IRCS Secretary General Zaher Rostami said on Thursday.

At least 10 people have been wounded in an explosion at a bar in the Mexican beach resort of Puerto Vallarta, in the state of Jalisco.

Investigators believe the blast was intentional but were unable to confirm media reports it was caused by a grenade, a spokesman for the state prosecutor's office said on Thursday.

At least 72 bodies have been discovered on a ranch in northeastern Mexico, in what is seen as one of the worst cases of drug-related violence in the country.

The bodies, including those of 14 women, were found Wednesday after a shoot-out with suspected drug cartel gunmen near San Fernando in Tamaulipas state.

At least three American soldiers have been injured in an attack on a military convoy in southeastern Afghanistan amid a surge in Taliban attacks against foreign troops.

According to Afghan officials, the incident took place in the central Afghan province of Logar on Tuesday morning, a Press TV correspondent reported.

Hundreds of people have appeared at a courthouse in Toronto to face charges of involvement in street protests and vandalism in the Canadian capital during last June's G20 summit.

In a day-long session held on Monday, the Ontario Court of Justice dropped charges against several of the 303 people who were accused of street violence.

A US-led soldier has been killed in fresh clashes in southern Afghanistan, a NATO statement says.

NATO says the latest death brings to 12 the number of US-led troops killed in Afghanistan during the past three days.

Amnesty International's new secretary general has sharply criticized the Canadian government for its "serious" human rights violations.

Salil Shetty told the CIVICUS World Assembly on Citizen Participation on Monday that Amnesty International is increasingly concerned "about the serious worsening" of Canada's human rights approach.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad says the Islamic Republic gives high priority to expanding its relations with all the Latin American nations.

President Ahmadinejad made the remarks at a meeting with the new Peruvian accredited ambassador to Iran, Javier Paolini Velarde, on Tuesday.

Mexican authorities say they have recovered at least 19 bodies of apparent victims of drug-cartel wars in the ventilation shaft of a mine near the central city of Pachuca.

The Public Security Ministry in the state of Hidalgo told the German Press Agency, dpa, on Monday that the toll was expected to increase as the search through the site, which started over the weekend, was still continuing.

At least five people have been killed in a US drone attack in Pakistan's northwestern tribal belt near the Afghan border, according to security officials.

The attack hit the Dandey Darpa Khel area, about five km from Miranshah, the main town in North Waziristan district, AFP reported on Monday.

Gunmen have killed 3 people, including a mother and her teenage daughter in the south of Indian-administered Kashmir, a report says.

On Sunday, four masked gunmen broke into the house of the mother and daughter in southern Kulgam district and shot them dead, AFP reported on Monday.

Mexican police have said that they found four decapitated and mutilated corpses hung from a bridge outside the Mexican capital.

The bodies of the four young men were discovered early on Sunday, near Cuernavaca, a city about an hour outside Mexico City, where many of the nation's elite own homes.

A shootout has erupted between Mexican police and drug traffickers near the Mexican border-city of Ciudad Juarez, injuring three police officers and killing an armed suspect.

The violence escalated late on Saturday when a Mexican police officer attempted to help a municipal police patrol, which the gunmen had attacked.

Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki has received Peru's new envoy to Tehran, reiterating Iran's interest in expanding ties with Latin American nations.

In receiving the accreditation of Peru's new Ambassador Javier Paolonich in a Saturday meeting, Mottaki noted the historic relations between Iran and Latin American countries and emphasized the Islamic Republic's interest in expanding relations with all countries in the region.

Australia will face its first hung parliament in 70 years as general election results show that neither the ruling Labor party nor the opposition won a majority in Saturday's vote.

With 78 percent of the ballots counted, Prime Minister Julia Gillard was lagging behind opposition leader Tony Abbott by 70 seats to 72, public broadcaster ABC said.

Five US-led troops have been killed in Afghanistan over the past 24 hours as the Taliban step up their attacks against foreign forces in the country.

Two NATO soldiers died in separate militant attacks in southern Afghanistan on Saturday, the US-led military alliance said without disclosing the nationality of the soldiers or the exact location of the incident.

Haiti's electoral council has ruled that hip-hop artist Wyclef Jean is not eligible to run as a candidate in November's presidential election.

Jean was among 34 people considered by the body but was left off the list of approved candidates which was published on Friday.

Mexican authorities have arrested six police officers believed to be linked with the abduction and murder of the mayor of a town in northern Mexico.

The six policemen have confessed to killing Mayor Edelmiro Cavazos of Santiago, after his body was found blindfolded on the side of a mountain road on Wednesday, officials said.

Mexico has criticized the US for failing to control the flow of smuggled arms through its borders and letting deadly weapons to fall into the hands of drug traffickers.

Addressing an anti-narcotics forum on Thursday, Mexican President Felipe Calderon said that the smuggled US arms, which fall into the hands of drug cartels, are used to foster drug violence and have so far claimed thousands of lives.

Evo Morales, the Bolivian president, has declared a state of emergency as firefighters contend with 25,000 separate blazes across the Andean country.

Flames were burning in five of the country's nine regions on Friday, engulfing as much as 1.5 million hectares of land.

Fidel Castro is showcasing a theory long popular both among the far left and far right: that the shadowy Bilderberg Group has become a kind of global government, controlling not only international politics and economics, but even culture.

The 84-year-old former Cuban president published an article Wednesday that used three of the only eight pages in the Communist Party newspaper Granma to quote — largely verbatim — from a 2006 book by Lithuanian-born writer Daniel Estulin.

Wyclef Jean, the Haiti-born international hip-hop artiste, has not made it onto the list of approved candidates for the country's presidential election in November, according to a media report citing a member of the electoral council as its source.

"He is not on the list as I speak," the electoral official, who asked not to be identified, told Reuters news agency on Thursday.

Seven rebels of the National Liberation Army (ELN) have been killed in a military attack in the northwestern Colombian town of Taraza.

In a joint operation, Colombian police intelligence forces, the army and the air force bombarded an ELN camp before dawn on Wednesday, Herald Tribune reported.

Colombia's Constitutional Court has ruled that a controversial agreement which gives US troops access to Colombian military bases is unlawful.

The court declared on Tuesday that the 2009 US-Colombia accord should be executed in the form of an international treaty.

An election law from the era of Brazil's dictatorship past which forbids making fun of candidates has caused concern ahead of the countries October 3 presidential election.

Presidential elections are not a joking matter in Brazil and as an example TV and radio broadcasters are legally forbidden from making comical remarks about candidates.

A Mexican mayor has been kidnapped and more than a dozen people have been killed in a wave of suspected drug violence across Mexico, authorities have said.

Hitmen kidnapped Edelmiro Cavazos, the mayor of Santiago, a small town outside of Monterrey in the northern border state of Nuevo Leon., they said on Monday.

The Colombian goverment has rejected an offer for talks from the country's most powerful rebel group.

In a videotaped message released before the appointment of president Juan Manuel Santos, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc) leader Alfonso Cano offered to open peace talks with the new government.

Tea party activists are gathering along a remote stretch of the Arizona-Mexico border about 70 miles west of Nogales.

They're rallying Sunday on a private ranch in support of Arizona's controversial immigration law. A judge has put much of the law on hold.

Canadian officials have said that hundreds of Sri Lankan asylum seekers who arrived in the country after three months at sea are in good condition despite their gruelling voyage.

At least 450 Tamil migrants reached British Columbia on the Thai-flagged MV Sun Sea cargo ship, in a human smuggling operation possibly organised by Sri Lanka's Tamil Tiger separatists, a security official said.

Jamaican authorities have imposed new curfews in the west of the capital, Kingston, after 10 people were killed in gang violence and a shootout with police.

Residents in four neighbourhoods, including the city of Spanish Town, have been ordered to stay in their homes until late on Sunday.

At least 19 suspected drug gang members have been arrested in a series of raids across Mexico's northern states.

Among those detained on Friday was a 29-year-old man suspected of involvement in a car bombing in Ciudad Juarez, the first such attack in they city at the heart of much of the drug-related violence that has left at least 28,000 people dead since 2006.

Fidel Castro will attend a special session of parliament on Saturday, his first appearance in official government proceedings or in front of lawmakers since falling seriously ill four years ago.

Cuban state television announced during its Friday night newscast that the former president would attend the session, which will be broadcast nationwide. The brief statement read on the air did not say whether or not Castro would address the assembly, which will discuss the threat of nuclear war, though it's hard to imagine him not doing so.

Fernando Lugo, the president of Paraguay, has been diagnosed with a type of cancer known as lymphoma, although his doctors said he has a good chance of being treated successfully.

The doctors said on Friday that a biopsy carried out this week showed Lugo had non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, but said it was treatable because it had been caught in its early stages.

Mexico's supreme court has upheld a law allowing same-sex marriages in the capital, dealing a blow to federal prosecutors who argued that it violated the constiutional protection of the family.

The justices' eight to two ruling on Thursday will be seen as legal victory for hundreds of gay couples who have been married in Mexico City since the landmark law took effect on March 4.

Haiti-born hip-hop star Wyclef Jean has registered as a candidate for the country's presidential election scheduled for November, a party official has said.

"Wyclef is registering as candidate for president for my party," Daniel Jean Jacques, head of the country's Viv Ansanm political party, told Reuters.

A Canadian man indicted in the United States on terrorism charges has been freed from jail after a Canadian judge refused to extradite him.

Abdullah Khadr has been held in Canada since his arrest in December 2005. US officials accused him of purchasing weapons for al-Qaeda, and based their charges in part on a statement he made in Pakistan to the FBI and Canadian police.

Iran appears to have rejected an offer from Brazil to give asylum to an Iranian woman sentenced to death by stoning.

Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, the Brazilian president, has been "emotional" and probably had insufficient information about the case, Ramin Mehmanparast, Iran's foreign ministry spokesman, said on Tuesday.