Columbian President Alvaro Uribe has come down with the swine flu, and officials in the country are now contacting other South American officials whose leaders attended a recent summit with Uribe.

Uribe began feeling symptoms on Friday, the same day he attended a meeting of South American presidents in Bariloche, Argentina. On Saturday, the 57-year-old leader was confirmed to have the H1N1 virus. He is not considered to be a high risk patient, and is not being quarantined. None of his family or close associations have experienced symptoms.

Uribe had spent the day Friday defending a plan that would give US troops access to Columbian bases as a parto f the war on drugs during a UNASUR group summit which was attended by most presidents in the region.

WHO Declares First Global Flu Pandemic in 41 Years

For the past several years we've been subjected to the warning ads in various media - radio, television, and print - that the world is overdue for a flu pandemic and that one is sure to be coming soon. The day has finally arrived. On Thursday the World Health Organization declared a swine flu pandemic, the first global flu epidemic in 41 years.

Infections around the globe, including the United States, Europe, South America, and Australia, have now climbed to nearly 30,000 cases.

The announcement of the pandemic is official scientific confirmation that a new flu virus has emerged and is quickly making its rounds globally. Now that the WHO has upgraded the situation to pandemic levels, they will begin asking drugmakers to speed up the production of a swine flu vaccine. The declaration should also prompt governments to devote additional funds towards efforts to contain the virus.

Dr. Margaret Chan made the announcement Thursday following an emergency meeting with flu experts. Chan indicated that the WHO would be moving the world up to the agency's highest alert level - phase 6. Phase 6 means that a pandemic, or global epidemic, is already under way.

It has now emerged that two passengers with names linked to Islamic terrorism were on board the Air France flight which crashed late last month, killing all 228 on the flight. French secret servicemen were able to establish the connection while working through the list of passengers who boarded the ill-fated Airbus in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil on May 31.

Flight AF447 crashed in the mid-Atlantic while en route to Paris during a violent storm. Investigators are positive that there were computer malfunctions, however they have not yet ruled out terrorism.

Soon after news of the crash broke, agents for the Direction Générale de la Sécurité Extérieure were dispatched to Brazil.

The country of Ecuador in South America is waiting patiently for the imminent eruption of the Tungurahua volcano, which has been spewing ash and smoke. Local authorities have already ordered the evacuation of more than 1,000 villagers who live near the foot of the volcano.

The evacuation of the roughly 300 families has been taken as a precautionary measure following the volcano's recent rumblings. The relocated families live in the ten hamlets located on the western slopes of the 5,000-meter volcano.

Representatives for the villagers are requesting that the government resettle the evacuated families in new locations so that they will not have to return to living in the danger zone.

The most recent reports from Ecuador's Geophysics Institute said that the volcano had been spewing ash, but that there was no sign of lava. However, it is expected to intensify over the next few days.

President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela turned back Venezuela's clocks by half an hour on Sunday. The adjustment to Venezuela's relationship with Greenwich Mean Time was a one-off thing, that Chávez says will put Venezuelans more biologically in tune with the sun.

"It's about the metabolic effect, where the human brain is conditioned by sunlight."

Many within Venezuela, however, question the move, and think of it more as a impulsive initiative of a leader hell-bent on changing just about everything. After all, this is the guy who renamed the country the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela after Simón Bolívar, and who ordered the horse on the national flag to face left instead of right, in order to reflect his socialist orientation.

Some scientists, however, endorse the time change as a rational move, given that Venezuela's Caribbean coast is actually wide enough for two time zones. A few other countries worldwide, including India, Iran, and Afghanistan, have 30-minute variations from the standard hourly deviations from GMT. Nepal has an even rarer difference of 15 minutes.

The Venezuelan government has been studying the time change since it was first proposed in 1999. Venezuela had previously been four and a half hours behind GMT up until 1965, when the 30-minute variation was dropped for convenience.

At 15:43GMT Wednesday, a powerful earthquake measuring 7.7 on the Richter scale rocked northern Chile. There have so far been no immediate reports of injuries.

The earthquake occurred about 60km deep, and was centered about 106km west of the town of Calama. According to Carmen Fernandez, director of Chile's national emergency office, the quake stretched across nearly 2,000km, all the way from Chile's northern border with Peru to the capital, Santiago.

"It is a major quake," said Fernandez.

Cement cracked at an airport in Antofagasta, where staff had to be evacuated. The cities of Calama and Arica in the north lost electrical power, and panicked residents flood the streets.

As a result of the massive earthquake, U.S. officials have also issued a tsunami alert in the Pacific. The alert was issued by the Pacific Tsunami Warning Centre in Hawaii, and covers areas "bordering the Pacific Ocean and adjacent seas" off the coasts of Chile and Peru.

Carlos Camejo, 33, of Venezuela was pronounced dead after a highway accident and taken to the morgue. At the morgue, examiners began an autopsy, but it was clear that something was horribly amiss when Camejo began bleeding.

The examiners rushed to sew up the incision on his face, as Camejo woke up in excruciating pain.

"I woke up because the pain was unbearable," Camejo told local newspaper El Universal.

It sounds like something straight out of a science-fiction movie, but it's not. After a what is believed to be a meteorite crashed into a southern Peruvian village over the weekend, locals have been struck with a mysterious illness.

The villagers heard an explosion and saw a fireball blazing across the sky on Saturday, which many at the time thought was an airplane about to crash. It was later discovered to be a meteorite, and later in the day residents began complaining of headaches and vomiting that was apparently brought on by a "strange odor" emanating from the meteorite.