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Foreclosure filings were up 32 percent from the same month last year, RealtyTrac Inc. said Thursday. More than 360,000 households, or one in every 355 homes, received a foreclosure-related notice, such as a notice of default or trustee’s sale. That’s the highest monthly level since the foreclosure-listing firm began publishing the data more than four years ago.

Banks repossessed more than 87,000 homes in July, up from about 79,000 homes a month earlier.

We don’t need to wait to act. In the fight against flu, preparation is more than half the battle — and we need everyone to chip in.

We in the federal government have been aggressively responding to the new H1N1 since April. We’re building on what we learned from the early spring season and from health officials in the southern hemisphere where flu seasons are already underway.

In addition to preparing the seasonal flu vaccine as usual, government scientists and vaccine manufacturers are working around the clock to produce a vaccine to protect people from the new H1N1 flu virus. And we’re making good progress on both fronts — the seasonal flu vaccine is ready for distribution and we’re on track to have an H1N1 vaccine by mid-October.

We’re also working closely with cities, states and across government agencies to make sure we have a rapid, coordinated response this fall. In the last few months, we’ve sent more than $350 million in federal grants to states, tribes, territories and hospitals to help them strengthen their flu response.

In early July, the Departments of Health and Human Services, Homeland Security, and Education held a flu summit for governors and public health officials. Just this week, we hosted another summit for mayors and county officials and webcast it on flu.gov — which has become the best place to find up-to-date information about flu.

Our agencies are working with the Department of Agriculture to make sure children will have access to healthy meals if their schools close, and with Departments of Commerce and Labor to reach people at work. The Obama Administration has briefed members of Congress at a special bi-cameral, bi-partisan session. And HHS has worked with Members — Republicans and Democrats — on “prevent the flu” public service announcements to air in August when they’re home.

In another emergency measure, regulators directed hospitals and clinics to provide vaccine to all their workers and some volunteers, a move designed to keep the medical workforce robust and prevent doctors and nurses from making their patients sick.

The actions illustrated the intensifying sense of urgency as health authorities, hospital administrators, and clinic executives across the nation confront the prospect of providing hundreds of millions of doses of vaccine against not one but two deadly types of flu in the same season.

“It’s a huge burden of work; there’s no doubt about that,’’ said Dr. Jay Butler, director of the swine flu vaccine task force at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

In Massachusetts, disease specialists are expecting to provide up to 9 million flu inoculations within the next few months, three times as many as last flu season, because of the need to give two doses of swine flu vaccine.

In Boston, the city health agency plans to offer shots during the day, night, and weekend. There is a chance that retired health workers will be pressed into service to provide vaccinations to adults and children, with many patients needing three visits for all their inoculations.

Knowing they are in a race against viruses that emerge suddenly and spread swiftly, private medical practices are also bracing for an onslaught. At Harvard Vanguard Medical Associates, part-time employees will be asked to work longer hours to deliver half-a-million vaccine doses so that doctors can focus on tending to the ill.

“It’s going to require all hands on deck,’’ said Dr. Alfred DeMaria, the top disease tracker at the state Department of Public Health. “We have to get everybody who’s a target for vaccine vaccinated, and we have to get enough people to give the vaccine.’’

The campaigns carry a substantial price tag: The federal government is purchasing the nation’s entire allotment of vaccine against swine flu, known scientifically as H1N1, and has given Massachusetts $10.4 million to defray costs associated with vaccination drives and testing.

Dr. Marylou Buyse, president of the Massachusetts Association of Health Plans, said she expects insurers to cover the costs of administering both types of flu vaccine in traditional settings, such as hospitals and physician offices. Her group is reviewing whether those expenses will be covered when plan members get their shots at vaccination drives in schools, government clinics, and elsewhere.

Forty-seven percent of all single-family homeowners with mortgages in Miami-Dade and Broward were in a negative equity position at the end of the second quarter, meaning they owed more on their mortgages than their homes would likely fetch on the market.

That’s up from 44 percent at the end of the first quarter, according to the Web-based real estate services firm. The firm does not do a similar analysis for condo owners.

Negative equity has become one of the chief reasons homeowners enter foreclosure. Discouraged by falling home prices and the prospect of making hefty payments on an impaired asset, many decide to walk away from the debt.

The Russian coast guard ship Ladny is leading the search effort, which also involves navy ships located in the Atlantic, the Defense Ministry said on its Web site today. The missing ship, the Arctic Sea, has a crew of 15 Russian sailors.

The Arctic Sea was attacked in Swedish territorial waters on July 24. The crew was tied up and assaulted while masked pirates searched the cargo vessel. It was boarded between the Swedish islands of Oeland and Gotland in the Baltic Sea by the group who identified themselves as police officers, Swedish police said on July 31.

The freighter, operated by Helsinki-based Oy Solchart Management AB, was scheduled to deliver a cargo of timber to Bejaia, Algeria on Aug. 4, the Sovfracht maritime news service reported last week.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev yesterday ordered Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov to take “all necessary steps” to find the ship and, if necessary, to free its crew, according to the Kremlin Web site.

The Arctic Sea may have been hijacked by pirates off the Swedish coast, RIA Novosti reported, citing Viktor Matveyev, Solchart’s managing director.

‘Anything’s Possible’

Matveyev said “in this situation anything’s possible,” even a hijacking off Sweden, the state-run Russian news service reported. Matveyev said “it’s still hard to believe that this could happen in Swedish territorial waters,” RIA reported.

Solchart has lost contact with the ship and has no information about its whereabouts, RIA said.

The Malta Maritime Authority’s security committee, which has been meeting on a daily basis since the first report of the Arctic Sea’s disappearance, has “no communication” with the ship.

They had never carried out a real interrogation, only mock sessions in the military training they had overseen. They had no relevant scholarship; their Ph.D. dissertations were on high blood pressure and family therapy. They had no language skills and no expertise on Al Qaeda.

But they had psychology credentials and an intimate knowledge of a brutal treatment regimen used decades ago by Chinese Communists. For an administration eager to get tough on those who had killed 3,000 Americans, that was enough.

So “Doc Mitchell” and “Doc Jessen,” as they had been known in the Air Force, helped lead the United States into a wrenching conflict over torture, terror and values that seven years later has not run its course.

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It would be the world’s greatest virtual library. But some authors have mixed emotions about its effect on the act of reading.

Novelist Jonathan Lethem says Google should be “congratulated” for its effort. Lethem adds, “This is the moment to take a look and say, ‘why isn’t it as private as the world we’re being asked to leave behind, the world of physical books?'”

Lethem wonders whether future readers will have the same kind of relationship with books that he had.

“When I was on this very private, very eccentric, intense journey as a younger person, it was crucial that it be a solitary practice,” he says. But if future readers have reason to think they’re leaving a digital trail, he adds it might deprive the reading experience of its intimacy.

Lethem is one of several authors — including Michael Chabon and Cory Doctorow — who have signed on to a campaign to pressure Google Books to offer greater privacy guarantees for its readers. The effort was organized by the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

“They know which books you search for,” says Cindy Cohn, legal director for the foundation. “They know which books you browse through, they know how long you spend on each page.”

It’s the same kind of information that’s produced by someone surfing the Web. But Cohn believes books should enjoy greater privacy.

The EFF and the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California want Google to keep reader data for less time than normal web searches. Ideally, they say, the data should be deleted after a month.

The Labor Department said Tuesday that the American work force produced, at an annual rate, 6.4 percent more of the goods they made and services they provided in the second quarter of this year compared to a year ago. At the same time, “unit labor costs” — the amount employers paid for all that extra work — fell by 5.8 percent. The jump in productivity was higher than expected; the cut in labor costs more than double expectations.

“It’s free money!” said Alecia Rumph, 26, who waited in a Morris Park, Bronx, line 300 people deep for the cash to buy uniforms and book bags for her two kids.

“Thank God for Obama. He’s looking out for us.”

Thousands of people lined up at banks and check-cashing shops to withdraw the cash that magically appeared on their electronic benefit cards.

Some rushed out because of rumors the money would vanish by the end of the day.

“Rumors, there’s always rumors,” said Teresa Medina, who waited four hours at a Pay-O-Matic in Clinton Hill, Brooklyn, to get $600 for her three teenagers – just in case they were true.