World/Nation

Obama declares Ebola a global threat

WASHINGTON - President Barack Obama declared Tuesday that the Ebola epidemic in West Africa could threaten security around the world, and he ordered 3,000 U.S. military personnel to the region in emergency aid muscle for a crisis spiraling out of control.

The question was whether the aid would be enough and was coming in time. An ominous World Health Organization forecast said that with so many people now spreading the virus, the number of Ebola cases could start doubling every three weeks.

"If the outbreak is not stopped now, we could be looking at hundreds of thousands of people affected, with profound economic, political and security implications for all of us," Obama said Tuesday after briefings in Atlanta with doctors and officials from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Emory University.

Obama called on other countries to join in quickly supplying more health workers, equipment and money. By day's end the administration asked Congress to shift another $500 million in Pentagon money to the effort, meaning the U.S. could end up devoting $1 billion to contain the outbreak.

"It's a potential threat to global security if these countries break down," Obama said, speaking of the hardest-hit nations of Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea. At least 2,400 people have died, with Liberia bearing the brunt. Nearly 5,000 people have fallen ill in those countries and Nigeria and Senegal since the disease was first recognized in March. WHO says it anticipates the figure could rise to more than 20,000, and the disease could end up costing nearly $1 billion to contain.

Researchers post exam of rare colossal squid

WELLINGTON, New Zealand - It was a calm morning in Antarctica's remote Ross Sea, during the season when the sun never sets, when Capt. John Bennett and his crew hauled up a creature with tentacles like fire hoses and eyes like dinner plates from a mile below the surface.

A colossal squid: 770 pounds, as long as a minibus and one of the sea's most elusive species. It had been frozen for eight months until Tuesday, when scientists in New Zealand got a long-anticipated chance to thaw the animal and inspect it - once they used a forklift to maneuver it into a tank.

Huge squid sometimes inhabit the world of fiction and imagination, but have rarely been seen in daylight. It's possible that ancient sightings of the species gave rise to tales of the kraken, or giant sea-monster squid, said Kat Bolstad, a squid scientist from the Auckland University of Technology led the team examining the creature.

She described this rare specimen as "very big, very beautiful."

The squid is a female, and its eight arms are each more than a yard long. Its two tentacles would have been perhaps double that length if they had not been damaged.

Police hunt for suspect in trooper killing

BLOOMING GROVE, Pa. - Hundreds of law enforcement officers fanned across the dense northeastern Pennsylvania woods Tuesday in the hunt for a heavily armed survivalist suspected of ambushing two troopers as part of a deadly vendetta against police.

Eric Matthew Frein, 31, of Canadensis, is "extremely dangerous" and residents in the area should be alert and cautious, State Police Commissioner Frank Noonan said at a news conference in which he revealed the suspect's name.

"He has made statements about wanting to kill law enforcement officers and also to commit mass acts of murder," Noonan said. "What his reasons are, we don't know. But he has very strong feelings about law enforcement and seems to be very angry with a lot of things that go on in our society."

Frein was charged Tuesday with first-degree murder, homicide of a law enforcement officer and other offenses. About 200 law enforcement officials were combing the rural area of northeastern Pennsylvania marked by dense forest, but "we have no idea where he is," Noonan said.

Police found a U.S. Army manual called "Sniper Training and Employment" in the suspect's bedroom at his parents' house, and his father, a retired Army major, told authorities that his son is an excellent marksman who "doesn't miss," according to a police affidavit released Tuesday.

Ukraine gives more autonomy to rebellious east

KIEV, Ukraine - Ukraine moved to resolve months of crisis Tuesday by strengthening ties to Europe and loosening some controls over the country's rebellious eastern regions where it has been fighting Russian-backed separatists.

The actions by lawmakers began to flesh out the emerging picture of a new Ukraine, where a determined pivot toward Europe has come at great cost: concessions to Russia and a war with rebels that killed more than 3,000 people and pushed the West's relations with Moscow to Cold War-era lows.

- The Associated Press