The first doses of swine flu vaccine arrived Monday as more than half the nation reported widespread flu cases. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said 600,000 doses of nasal FluMist were being shipped this week. A total of 250 million doses, in both spray and injectable form, are expected by flu season's end.

With unemployment expected to rise well into next year even as the economy slowly recovers, the Obama administration and Democratic leaders in Congress are discussing extending several safety net programs as well as proposing new tax incentives for businesses to renew hiring. But officials emphasized the effort would not add up to a second economic stimulus package, only an extension of the first.

Texas' top lawmakers in Congress want President Obama to pony up some of the $787 billion in economic stimulus money to rescue NASA's manned-space program and ensure that astronauts one day will travel beyond the orbiting international space station. The lawmakers asked Obama to divert $3 billion from the unspent portion of the economic stimulus package.

The federal government will require each agency to measure its greenhouse-gas emissions for the first time and set targets to reduce them by 2020 under an executive order signed by President Obama. The measure affects such things as the electricity federal buildings consume and the carbon output of workers' commutes.

The nation's governors are emerging as a formidable lobbying force as health-care reform moves through Congress and states overburdened by the recession brace for the daunting prospect of providing coverage to millions of low-income residents. The legislation the Senate Finance Committee is expected to approve this week calls for the biggest expansion of Medicaid since its creation in 1965.

A new report from a national coalition of some 450 mayors urges President Obama to adopt dozens of reforms to help curb gun violence, including steps to crack down on problems at gun shows and the creation of a federal interstate firearms trafficking unit. The report says its 40 recommendations could be accomplished within existing laws through agency reforms, regulatory moves and better funding.

The chairman of the U.S. House transportation committee scolded Gov. Timothy M. Kaine and the state for being the slowest of the states in spending transportation stimulus money. Virginia ranks dead last, with just 16.5 percent of its federal award going toward actual construction through the end of August. Nationally, 42.7 percent of American Recovery and Reinvestment Act highway funding has been spent so far.

Canada's mayors are withdrawing their threat to boycott suppliers from the United States in retaliation for Buy-American provisions that exclude Canadian suppliers from bidding on projects funded by U.S. federal stimulus money. The Federation of Canadian Municipalities says it won't enact a resolution passed in June because municipal leaders see progress in talks between the two countries.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency has made little progress in improving either of its largely information technology-based national public warning systems for disasters in the last two years, a senior Government Accountability Office official told a congressional panel. A senior FEMA official disputed those assessments and said several improvements are scheduled for completion in 2012.

A bill before Congress would give local governments the authority to set fuel efficiency standards for taxicabs, allowing cities such as Boston, New York and Seattle to overcome federal court rulings that struck down their ambitious efforts to require all taxis to be hybrids. Courts have ruled that cities infringed on a 1975 federal law.