No-one says "latest" when referring to the earliest of a series of news articles - that would be stupid. However, the most recent news article
is the latest - If a story breaks at 00:01, and there's subsequent updates at 01:00, 05:30 and 13:50, then the one at 13:50 occurs later than all the others (unless you're some sort of tachyonic alien), doesn't it?