World/Nation

• Doctor who returned to New York has Ebola

NEW YORK - An emergency room doctor who recently returned to the city after treating Ebola patients in West Africa has tested positive for the virus, becoming the first case in the city and the fourth in the nation.

Mayor Bill de Blasio and Gov. Andrew Cuomo on Thursday urged residents not to be alarmed by the doctor's Ebola diagnosis. De Blasio said all city officials followed "clear and strong" protocols in their handling and treatment of Craig Spencer, a member of Doctors Without Borders.

"We want to state at the outset that New Yorkers have no reason to be alarmed," de Blasio said. "New Yorkers who have not been exposed are not at all at risk."

• Canada gunman agitated about passport denial

OTTAWA, Ontario - He seemed lost, "did not fit in," had drug problems, and went more than five years without seeing his mother. In recent weeks, he had been living at a homeless shelter and had talked about wanting to go to Libya - or Syria - but became agitated when he couldn't get a passport.

A day after Michael Zehaf-Bibeau launched a deadly attack on Canada's seat of government, a portrait of the 32-year-old Canadian began to emerge, along with a possible explanation for what triggered the shooting rampage.

Bob Paulson, commissioner of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, said Zehaf-Bibeau - a Muslim whose father was from Libya - may have lashed out in frustration over delays in obtaining a passport.

"I think the passport figured prominently in his motives. I'm not inside his head, but I think it was central to what was driving him," Paulson said.

In what the prime minister called a terrorist attack, Bibeau shot a soldier to death at Canada's national war memorial Wednesday, then stormed the Parliament building, where he was gunned down by the sergeant-at-arms. Bibeau was armed with what police said was a lever-action Winchester rifle, an old-fashioned, relatively slow-firing weapon.

• Democrats hope to trump Obama's unpopularity

WASHINGTON - Struggling to preserve their Senate majority, Democrats are attacking Republicans over Medicare and Social Security in Louisiana, spending cuts in Arkansas, off-shore jobs in New Hampshire and women's issues in Colorado.

Republicans have a one-size fits-all counter-argument. It's Barack Obama, a two-term president they've turned into a political punching bag and pummeled at will while Democrats avert their eyes.

"Mark Begich is with Obama. I'm with you," Republican challenger Dan Sullivan of Alaska says in his newest television commercial in one of several close race in red states that define the nation's battle for Senate control.

He's not the only one.

Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell, plagued by his own poor approval ratings, has said much the same thing for months in Kentucky. His opponent, Alison Lundergan Grimes won't disclose if she voted for a president whose nominating convention she attended two years ago. At a debate last week, the secretary of state wrapped her refusal in lofty principle, citing a "constitutional right for privacy at the ballot box."

• U.S. officials say Iraq's army is regrouping slowly

MACDILL AIR FORCE BASE, Fla. - Iraq's fractured army has begun to regroup and stage modest, localized attacks on the Islamic State militants who routed them last spring and summer, but they are unlikely to be ready to launch a major counteroffensive for many months, senior U.S. military officials said Thursday.

"We've seen them start to act like an army," one official said in a lengthy exchange with a group of Washington reporters who were invited to U.S. Central Command headquarters for the command's most extensive briefings on operations in Iraq and Syria.

The Iraqi security forces, trained for years by the U.S. prior to its departure from Iraq in 2011, have suffered sectarian divisions, a breakdown in leadership and a loss of confidence. To compound the problem, they surrendered tanks, armored personnel carriers and other U.S.-supplied equipment several months ago when IS fighters overtook Mosul.

• Military detainee being transferred to U.S. for trial

WASHINGTON - The Obama administration is preparing to transfer a military detainee in Afghanistan for criminal trial in Virginia, U.S. officials said Thursday.

The move would mark the first time a military detainee from Afghanistan was brought to the U.S. for trial, and it represents the Obama administration's latest attempt to show that it can use the criminal court system to deal with terror suspects.

The prisoner, known by the nom de guerre Irek Hamidullan, is a Russian veteran of the Soviet war in Afghanistan who defected to the Taliban and stayed in the country, U.S. officials said. He was captured in 2009 after an attack on Afghan border police and U.S. soldiers in Khost province, officials said.

He has been held at the U.S. Parwan detention facility at Bagram airfield ever since. He faces up to life in prison on several charges relating to the 2009 attack, and is expected to be tried in one of the federal courthouses in the Eastern District of Virginia. Prosecutors in that office have experience with high-profile terror prosecutions, including that of Sept. 11, 2001, conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui, who is serving life without parole.

- The Associated Press