She started sniffing glue at age six to ease the hunger of life in a Brazilian slum. She got her first revolver when she was 11. Now 54, Raquel de Oliveira, once the first lady of the drug trade in ...

In Brazil, 12 million families -- up to 60 million people -- live in slums, known as "favelas" in Portuguese, and 55 million people do not have access to a sewage system. Until now, the Catholic ...

RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) – Sixteen girls from one of Rio de Janeiro’s biggest slums have celebrated a fairy-tale evening in a debutante ball sponsored by local police. The 15-year-old girls from Mangueira ...

Thousands of Brazilian army troops raided Rio de Janeiro slums in a pre-dawn crackdown on crime gangs on Saturday, leaving parts of the city looking like a war zone on the first anniversary of the ...

The residents of Rio de Janeiro's slums are accustomed to seeing the police come in with guns blazing. But in Santa Marta, one of Rio's oldest slums, or favelas, the police are trying an entirely ...

Brazilian security forces have occupied a Rio de Janeiro favela in a bid to remove drug gangs from the city ahead of the World Cup this summer. In a dawn raid on Sunday, police swarmed the Mare slum, ...

The favelas of Rio de Janeiro in Brazil may have a reputation for violence and crime, but one slum experienced a dramatic change of fortune after a peace-keeping police force moved in there ...

RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) — The Brazilian army says gunmen have launched at least five attacks against troops in the Rio de Janeiro slum complex occupied on Saturday in a bid to improve security two months ...