Some of the latest versions of WordPress use a new taxonomy database schema which can make it a bit tricky to get at and display posts data from MySQL. Here is a query we use to display the latest news and events throughout our site:

SELECT      wp_posts . *
FROM        wp_posts
LEFT        JOIN wp_postmeta ON wp_posts.ID = wp_postmeta.post_id
LEFT        JOIN wp_term_relationships ON ( wp_posts.ID = wp_term_relationships.object_id )
LEFT        JOIN wp_term_taxonomy ON ( wp_term_relationships.term_taxonomy_id = wp_term_taxonomy.term_taxonomy_id )
WHERE       wp_postmeta.meta_key = "_edit_last"
AND         wp_posts.post_status = "publish"
AND         wp_term_taxonomy.taxonomy = "category"
AND         wp_term_taxonomy.term_id
IN          ( [Put your category ID here] )
ORDER BY    wp_posts.post_date DESC

The IN clause is where you would want to put the ID from the category you want displayed. This query has been tested and works with WordPress version 2.9