Friday Afternoon Newscast

Newscast items include a Black Hawk Helicopter crash and a updated from the CDC on the flu.

The Navy says a service member is dead and eight others injured after an Army Black Hawk helicopter crashed on a Navy ship during a training exercise. A Navy spokesman says the crash happened aboard the USNS Arctic around 8 o’clock last night off the coast of Fort Story, Va., which is north of Virginia Beach. The injured service members were evacuated by a second Army helicopter and taken to a local hospital for treatment. Names have not been released. The cause is under investigation.

The government’s latest figures show swine flu is widespread across the country and increasing in almost every state. It’s now caused at least children’s deaths since April. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released the new tally Friday morning. Forty-six states now have widespread flu activity. The only states without widespread flu are Connecticut, Hawaii, New Jersey and South Carolina. There are at least two different types of flu causing illnesses now. Testing from about 5,000 patients suggests that nearly all of the flu cases are swine flu.

The healthcare reform bill making its way through the U.S. House of Representatives will include a public insurance option, but negotiations are continuing on the details of the public plan. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said today, negotiations were not just about a government-run option but also were looking forward to the shape of a final bill that could be approved by both the House and the Senate, which she said also was now leaning toward a public option.

The superintendent of Gettysburg National Military Park has told a newspaper he’ll being reassigned because U.S. Interior Department investigators discovered that he used his federal computer to view sexually explicit images. John Latschar will begin Monday at the Historic Preservation Training Center in Frederick, as a special assistant to the National Park Service’s associate director for cultural resources. Park service spokesman David Barna has not said why Latschar had been reassigned, calling it a personnel issue. Latschar told the newspaper that “there’s no excuse” for his behavior. He said he was “going through some rough personal and professional times” from 2004 to 2006, when he used his computer to search online for the images.

–More Newscast Items–

Stopgap measure might hitch a ride on Interior spending bill (GovExec)

Despite budget cuts, NASA to continue spending on It (Next Gov)

Border projects mostly met stimulus goal, DHS review finds (Washington Post)

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