Counties

The number of California swine flu cases rose to 79 Monday, according to state and local health officials, and more than 120 probable cases have been identified. But of those patients, just 10 have been hospitalized. "Everything indicates the illness continues to be mild, even among those who are hospitalized," said Dr. Gil Chavez, deputy director of the California Department of Public Health's Center for Infectious Diseases.

After nearly 14 long and sometimes embarrassing years as the national torchbearer for municipal bankruptcy, Orange County may soon lose that distinction thanks to a financial disaster elsewhere that could dwarf its debacle. Jefferson County, Ala., was weighing its options this week in the wake of a looming bond crisis that recently forced it to skip a $53-million sewer bond payment -- sending the county's credit rating tumbling to the lowest junk status.

The California Legislature recently passed a bill requiring that counties certify that adequate fire protection is in place before approving new subdivisions in high fire-hazard areas. The number of homes destroyed by wildfires has increased over the years, as developments have gone up in ever-closer proximity to wild lands.

The mayor of Birmingham, Ala., was indicted on federal charges of bribery, fraud and conspiracy Monday, part of a probe into a local financial crisis that has the surrounding county on the brink of one of the largest municipal bankruptcies in American history. The 101-count indictment focuses on Mayor Larry P. Langford's tenure as Jefferson County Commission president from 2002 to 2006.

As Monday's deadline for payment of the first installment of property taxes looms, some Southern Californians may be wondering if they are paying too much on homes whose values have dropped. This year's downturn in the number of home sales and median prices has caused widespread second-guessing on valuations, and in Orange County, for example, has generated near-record numbers of assessment appeals.

Angered by what they see as a state raid on cash that belongs to them, top officials from a dozen counties converged on Sacramento on Thursday and warned of a mutiny. In a contentious meeting attended by half a dozen legislators, the officials threatened lawsuits, vowed to withhold local taxes owed to Sacramento and said they would shut down unfunded state programs -- including those aiding children and the poor -- if the "deadbeat state," as one official put it, does not change its ways.

One hundred and forty-five years after Gen. Ulysses S. Grant first fought Gen. Robert E. Lee, another conflict is brewing on the Wilderness Battlefield: whether to let Wal-Mart build a superstore where 29,000 soldiers were wounded or killed. To stand on the battlefield at the foot of the Blue Ridge Mountains in rural central Virginia is to go back in time. It looks almost as it did on May 5, 1864, when 160,000 troops clashed over two bloody days -- a tangle of woods that trapped men in brutal, hand-to-hand combat and gave the field its name.