World/Nation

Gay couples marry in Nevada

LAS VEGAS - Gay couples have started to get married in Las Vegas, a city filled with chapels which for them had been off-limits until Thursday evening.

Thomas Topovski cried as the Clark County clerk announced to cheers that gay marriage licenses would be issued, bringing same-sex unions to the marriage capital of the world amid a flurry of court decisions this week which tore down legal barriers nationwide.

Topovski and Jefferson Ruck, his partner of 14 years, returned to the marriage bureau in Las Vegas on Thursday after standing in line for hours the day before.

About 10 same-sex couples were waiting as the announcement came shortly after 5 p.m.

U.S. military planes arrive in Ebola hot zone

MONROVIA, Liberia - Six U.S. military planes arrived in the Ebola hot zone Thursday with more Marines, as West Africa's leaders pleaded for the world's help in dealing with a crisis that one called "a tragedy unforeseen in modern times."

"Our people are dying," Sierra Leone President Ernest Bai Koroma lamented by videoconference at a World Bank meeting in Washington. He said other countries are not responding fast enough while children are orphaned and infected doctors and nurses are lost to the disease.

Alpha Conde of Guinea said the region's countries are in "a very fragile situation."

Ebola is "an international threat and deserves an international response," he said, speaking through a translator as he sought money, medicine, equipment and training for health care workers.

Cuban migration surges by land and sea

HAVANA - The number of Cubans heading to the United States has increased dramatically since the island lifted travel restrictions last year, eliminating a costly exit visa and making it easier for emigrants to return, new U.S. government figures show.

With greater access to cash and legal travel documents, the vast majority are avoiding the risky journey by raft across the Florida Straits. Instead, most of the new arrivals are passing through Mexico or flying straight to the U.S.

More than 22,000 Cubans arrived on the U.S. borders with Mexico and Canada in the fiscal year that ended last month. That was nearly double the number in 2012 and almost triple the 2011 figure, according to U.S. Customs and Border Patrol.

U.S. officials say that before the recent surge, more than 20,000 Cubans formally migrated to the U.S. every year using visas issued by the U.S. government, while several thousand more entered on tourist visas and stayed. Adding in migrants who entered informally, U.S. officials believe more than 50,000 Cubans were moving to the U.S. every year.

Turkey tactic anger's Kurdish population

ISTANBUL - Turkey is playing a risky game of chicken in its negotiations with NATO partners who want it to join combat operations against the Islamic State group - and it's blowing back with violence in Turkish cities.

As the Islamic militants rampage through Kurdish-held Syrian territory on Turkey's border, Turkey says it won't join the fight unless the U.S.-led coalition also goes after the government of Syrian President Bashar Assad.

The tactic has enraged Turkey's own Kurdish population, which accuses the Turkish government of standing idly by while their people are being slaughtered in the strategic border town of Kobani.

Turkey's strategy risks not only alienating its NATO partners, but also torpedoing one of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's signature achievements: once-promising talks to end 30 years of bloody insurgency by the PKK, the Kurdish separatist guerrilla movement fiercely opposed by Ankara.

Gay marriage mixups show justices mistakes

WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court's mishandling of big news this week about same-sex marriage was a reminder: Even the justices put their robes on one arm at a time.

Developments on an issue moving at warp speed through the legal system already were confusing. But twice in a week, the court added to the head-scratching by releasing information that was wrong or seriously incomplete. It affected both same-sex couples seeking to get married and state officials trying to preserve their bans on gay and lesbian unions.

These weren't the first mistakes made by the highest court in the land, and certainly they won't be the last. Errors at the court can be trivial, but they also can be life-changing. In 2003, for example, justices struck down state anti-sodomy laws and declared that an earlier Supreme Court decision upholding them was "not correct when it was decided, and it is not correct today."

"To err is human, and the justices and the clerks are human like the rest of us," said Aaron Bruhl, a law professor at the University of Houston.

On Monday, the justices surprised most people in the legal world when they acted without fanfare to reject gay marriage appeals from five states. Worse than the court's unexplained orders, at least from the perspective of reporters at the court and officials and affected Americans awaiting a decision elsewhere: The thick packet of orders handed out at 9:30 a.m. EDT was missing more than 30 pages, including those with the gay marriage cases.

- The Associated Press