Friday Afternoon Federal Newscast

Officials with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are pretty busy these days. They say swine flu activity is picking up, with 37 states now reporting widespread cases. That’s up from 27 states the week before. Meanwhile, CDC officials say states have ordered 3.6 million doses of swine flu vaccine for a campaign that started this week. We’ll hear more from the CDC later this hour.

The federal government’s resource for flu information — flu-dot-gov — now features a new H1N1 Flu Self-Evaluation guide for adults – along with a new Flu Myths and Facts section. The idea is to provide the public with the latest and most accurate information about the flu. However, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius says the website is for educational purposes only and not intended to be a substitute for your doctor’s advice.

The partnership for public service wants to help you hire more IT specialists. Their new “FedRecruit: IT Pilot Program” focuses on entry-level recruitment, hiring, and retention in information technology. Agencies expect to fill more than 11,000 IT positions through 2012, and this program will allow agencies to work together to solve their human capital challenges.

Education Secretary Arne Duncan wants you. He’s looking for a new generation of teachers. Duncan calls education the civil rights cause of our time. He’s looking for veterans, retirees and professionals seeking a second career to answer the call to teach. He says the need is especially acute for black men in the nation’s classroom.

As promised, the U.S. Postal Service has whittled down its list of post offices and other facilties which are being reviewed for possible closure. Several months ago, that list included almost 450 offices across the country. Now, the list is down to 371. Locally, nine postal facilities remain on the list in D.C., five in Maryland with three in the Washington area. Four postal facilities are on the list for Virginia, none of which are in the D.C. area. Postal service officials say the list is not final, but is part of an ongoing efficiency and cost-cutting review.

The Department of Homeland Security has wrapped up the third — and final phase — of its public comment period on its agency-wide Quadrennial Homeland Security Review. DHS officials say that more than 20,000 people participated in the first-ever web-based discussion on the department’s performance when it comes to its core mission of homeland security. Officials will now boil down all the responses from the open comment period into the final report to Congress being prepared by DHS secretary Janet Napolitano. The report must be delivered to Capitol Hill by December 31st of this year.

Phishing is becoming even more widespread. They seem to be particularly fond of imitating IRS websites. That’s from a GAO analysis of Internal Revenue Service data, which shows a big jump in the number of fraudulent sites that were taken down in 2008. Last year, there were more than three-thousand fake IRS sites – a jump of more than 240 percent from 2007. The GAO credited the IRS for their programs to prevent, detect and resolve identity theft. But auditors say the IRS needs to work on enforcing security controls.

The moon may not have given the kind of reaction NASA was looking for today when two spacecraft were sent crashing into the lunar surface. The first photos and videos released by NASA didn’t show the large dust plume that was expected. A scientist says the plume may still appear in other images.

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