World/Nation
• Poll: Most say the US is heading the wrong way
WASHINGTON - Congress has checked out, and the American people have noticed.
Three-quarters of Americans doubt the federal government will address the important problems facing the country this year, according to a new Associated Press-GfK poll.
All told, only 28 percent of Americans think the nation is heading in the right direction, the lowest level in August of an election year since 2008. It's about on par with 2006, when Democrats took control of the U.S. House amid a backlash to the Iraq war.
This time around, it's not clear whether either party will benefit from the disaffection.
One-third say they hope the Republicans take control of Congress outright this fall - which the GOP can accomplish with a net gain of six seats in the U.S. Senate while holding the U.S. House. The same share want to see Democrats lead Congress - a far less likely possibility.
• Census: Almost 10M Americans changed race
WASHINGTON - Nearly 10 million Americans decided they would be a different race or ethnicity in the early 2000s, with the largest movement coming from Hispanics deciding which racial category they should be in, a new census report showed Wednesday.
People switched between races, moved from multiple races to a single race or back, or decided to add or drop Hispanic ethnicity from their identifiers on census forms.
Researchers said the information used - race, ethnicity, sex, age, location and how the information was gathered - is not particularly helpful for figuring out why people decided to make those changes. They noted that there has been a tendency toward multiple-race responses, and new census form designs may have caused some changes in how people respond to questions about Hispanic ethnicity.
Age may have something to do with the changes, the researchers suggested.
"Compared to adults, children and adolescents may be more likely to change their race/Hispanic responses for two reasons: childhood and adolescence are times of personal identity development and young people's information was probably reported by their parents in 2000 but may be self-reported in 2010," researchers said.
The report showed that 1 in 16 people - or approximately 9.8 million of 162 million - who responded to both the 2000 and 2010 censuses gave different answers when it came to race and ethnicity.
• Authorities anticipate more Ebola infections
LAGOS, Nigeria - Nigerian authorities rushed to obtain isolation tents Wednesday in anticipation of more Ebola infections as they disclosed five more cases of the virus and a death in Africa's most populous nation, where officials were racing to keep the gruesome disease confined to a small group of patients.
The five new Nigerian cases were all in Lagos, a megacity of 21 million people in a country already beset with poor health care infrastructure and widespread corruption, and all five were reported to have had direct contact with one infected man.
Meanwhile, the World Health Organization began a meeting to decide whether the crisis, the worst recorded outbreak of its kind, amounts to an international public health emergency. At least 932 deaths in four countries have been blamed on the illness, with 1,711 reported cases.
In recent years, the WHO has declared an emergency only twice, for swine flu in 2009 and polio in May. The declaration would probably come with recommendations on travel and trade restrictions and wider Ebola screening. It also would be an acknowledgment that the situation is critical and could worsen without a fast global response.
The group did not immediately confirm the new cases reported in Nigeria. And Nigerian authorities did not release any details on the latest infections, except to say they all had come into direct contact with the sick man who arrived by plane in Lagos late last month.
• Hamas enters talks with Israel on Gaza
GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip - Hamas has entered Egyptian-brokered talks with Israel on a new border regime for blockaded Gaza from a point of military weakness: it lost hundreds of fighters, two-thirds of its 10,000 rockets and all of its attack tunnels, worth $100 million, Israel says.
The Gaza war has boosted the Islamic militant group's popularity among Palestinians because it confronted Israel. But the mood can quickly turn if Hamas fails to deliver achievements for Gaza in the Cairo talks, most urgently the opening the territory's borders.
If the Cairo talks fail, Hamas will have only limited options, since resuming rocket fire would probably bring more ruination on an already-devastated territory. In the past month of Israel-Hamas fighting - the third major round of such hostilities in five years - nearly 1,900 Palestinians have been killed, more than 9,000 wounded and thousands of homes destroyed.
The massive destruction in Gaza City's neighborhood of Shijaiyah, close to the border with Israel, illustrated the extent of Hamas' military setbacks and the fickle public mood it faces.
Entire city blocks have been laid to waste in Shijaiyah in one of the fiercest battles of the war that pitted hundreds of Hamas gunmen against Israeli troops after the start of the Israeli ground operation July 17.
• Russia may block all US agricultural imports
MOSCOW - Russian President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday hit back hard against countries that have imposed sanctions over the Ukraine crisis, ordering trade cuts that an official said would include a ban on all imports of agricultural products from the United States.
The full list of products to be banned or limited for up to one year is to be published Thursday. But the state news agency RIA Novosti quoted Alexei Alexeenko of Russia's plant and veterinary oversight service as saying "from the USA, all products that are produced there and brought to Russia will be prohibited."
Alexeenko also was quoted as saying he thinks all fruits and vegetables from European Union countries will also be banned.
The move follows the latest round of sanctions against Russia imposed by the EU last week, which for the first time targeted entire sectors of the Russian economy.
- The Associated Press