World/Nation Briefs October 13, 2014
Stepped-up Ebola screening uses no-touch thermometers
NEW YORK - Customs and health officials began taking the temperatures of passengers arriving at New York's Kennedy International Airport from three West African countries on Saturday in a stepped-up screening effort meant to prevent the spread of the Ebola virus.
Federal health officials said the entry screenings, which will expand to four additional U.S. airports in the next week, add another layer of protection to halt the spread of a disease that has killed more than 4,000 people.
"Already there are 100 percent of the travelers leaving the three infected countries are being screened on exit. Sometimes multiple times temperatures are checked along that process," Dr. Martin Cetron, director of the Division of Global Migration and Quarantine for the federal Centers of Disease Control and Prevention, said at a briefing at Kennedy.
Cetron added, "No matter how many procedures are put into place, we can't get the risk to zero."
The screening will be expanded over the next week to New Jersey's Newark Liberty, Washington Dulles, Chicago O'Hare and Hartsfield-Jackson in Atlanta.
Kurdish fighters struggling to repel Islamic State group
SURUC, Turkey - Kurdish militiamen are putting up a fierce fight to defend a Syrian town near the border with Turkey but are struggling to repel the Islamic State group, which is advancing and pushing in from two sides, Syrian activists and Kurdish officials said Saturday.
The battle for Kobani is still raging despite more than two weeks of airstrikes by the U.S.-led coalition targeting the militants in and around the town. The strikes, which are aimed at rolling back the militants' gains, appear to have done little to blunt their onslaught on Kobani, which began in mid-September.
Just outside the Turkish town of Suruc, across the border from Kobani, some 200 people gathered at a cemetery Saturday to bury two Kurdish fighters, a woman and a man, who died in the fighting.
The two fighters- 22-year-old Mujaid Ahmed and 20-year-old Fatma Sheikh Hassan - were laid to rest in two simple wooden coffins. Men took turns heaving shovels of dirt to cover the coffins as women wept.
Beyond marriage, other gay-rights challenges remain
NEW YORK - Even as they celebrate epic victories in the push for marriage equality, gay-rights activists acknowledge that other difficult issues remain on their agenda. There's the persistent high rate of HIV infections, the struggles to expand transgender rights, and the striking fact that even in some states allowing same-sex marriage, people can lose their job for being gay.
For many activists, the top priority after marriage is federal legislation that would outlaw a broad range of discrimination against lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transgender people. There's no such federal law now, and more than half the states do not ban discrimination by employers or public accommodations based on sexual orientation.
Anti-LGBT discrimination is among several issues likely to gain more attention following the Supreme Court's Oct. 6 decision to turn away appeals by five states seeking to preserve their bans on same-sex marriage.
- The Associated Press