Amador County - In a presentation before the Board of Supervisors Tuesday, Amador County Health Officer Dr. Bob Hartmann outlined what actions the county is taking to prepare for a possible swine flu pandemic. The deadly airborne flu virus that originated in Mexico and has killed as many as 149 people in the Mexico City area has now been detected in at least 13 people in California. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger on Tuesday declared a “state…

President Bush quietly slipped out of the White House this weekend and went on a secret mission. He has made a surprise visit to Iraq. According to the AP he secretly flew 11 hours, landing at an air base in Anbar province west of Baghdad. The visit underscores Bush's claim that his buildup of U.S. troops is helping to stabilize Iraq.

Felix, a highly dangerous Category 4 storm, due to make landfall on Tuesday morning, is charging toward Nicaragua and Honduras with top sustained winds of 135 mph (215 kph). The storm is provoking fears of a repeat of Hurricane Mitch, which killed some 10,000 people in Central America in 1998. The most important thing is that people pay heed to the call for evacuation so that we don't have to count bodies later," said Marco…

Weather related problems continue around different parts of the Caribbean and the U-S and its territories.  Hurricane Dean has swept across the southern coast of Jamaica with high winds and surf even as the storm’s eye remained offshore. At 8 p.m. ET Sunday, Dean was moving west about 35 mph with sustained winds of up to 145 mph, according to reports from the National Hurricane Center.

U.S. and Iraqi forces exchanged fire with suspected Sunni insurgents earlier today, killing two and wounding four of them during a massive search for three missing American soldiers. The search is taking place in a volatile area south of Baghdad, according to the Iraqi army. An al-Qaida front group, the Islamic State in Iraq, claimed Sunday that it had captured U.S soldiers in a deadly attack on a U.S. convoy the day before in Sunni…