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| Students attend a career fair at the University of Illinois in Springfield, Ill. Credit Seth Perlman/Associated Press |
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The U.S. economy added 248,000 jobs in September, bringing the unemployment rate down to 5.9 percent. Job growth was higher than projected and it brought the unemployment rate down to its lowest level since July 2008. Growth was seen mostly at grocery stores, factories, and restaurants. It was a significant gain over the 180,000 jobs added in August.
N.Y. TIMES
But the surprisingly rosy jobs report released by the government on Friday appeared to be too little, too late to bolster the prospects of Democratic candidates facing voters in struggling campaigns for next month’s midterm elections in the face of rising disenchantment with President Obama’s performance.
And the signs of improvement were tempered by evidence that wage gains remained meager and that millions of Americans were still so discouraged by their job prospects that they had lost contact with the regular employment system.
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Henning, 47, was an aid convoy volunteer who was captured by ISIS in Syria nine months ago and is thought to have been held with 20 other Western hostages. Members of the convoy Henning was helping when he was captured have described armed men surrounding a warehouse where the convoy was delivering medical equipment. Gunmen claimed they were suspicious of Henning because he was not Muslim and separated him from the group. In the video showing his beheading, Henning's executioner, in a London accent, says, "If you, Cameron, persist in fighting the Islamic State, then you, like your master Obama, will have the blood of your people on your hands."
The other ISIS hostage is Peter Kassig, a 25-year-old native of Indiana. Kassig founded an emergency aid group for Syrian refugees in Lebanon and Syria called Special Emergency Response and Assistance (SERA). The organization provided medical assistance, medical supplies, clothing, food, and cooking stoves, and fuel to refugees.
N.Y. TIMES
Health officials’ handling of the first Ebola patient diagnosed in the United States continued to raise questions Friday, after the hospital that is treating the patient and that mistakenly sent him home when he first came to its emergency room acknowledged that both the nurses and the doctors in that initial visit had access to the fact that he had arrived from Liberia.
For reasons that remain unclear, nurses and doctors failed to act on that information, and released the patient under the erroneous belief that he had a low-grade fever from a viral infection, allowing him to put others at risk of contracting Ebola. Those exposed included several schoolchildren, and the exposure has the potential to spread a disease in Dallas that has already killed more than 3,000 people in Africa.
Health officials narrowed down to 10 the number of people considered most at risk of contracting Ebola after coming into contact with Mr. Duncan. They also moved the four people who had shared an apartment with him from their potentially contaminated quarters, as local and federal officials tried to assure the public that the disease was contained despite initial missteps here.
The four people, a girlfriend of Mr. Duncan and three of her relatives, had been under orders not to leave their home, and Texas officials apologized to them for not moving faster to have the apartment cleaned of potentially infectious materials.
The cleanup began Friday afternoon — more than a week after Mr. Duncan first went to the hospital — as television-news helicopters swirled in the skies above and workers in yellow protective suits scoured the apartment, whose entryway and balcony were covered with a tarp.
Around the country, anxiety spread Friday as two hospitals in the Washington area each reported a possible case of Ebola, and a television journalist working in Liberia prepared to return to the United States after being told that he had the virus. Besides the 10 people considered most at risk in Dallas, another 40 people are being monitored in the city but are considered at relatively low risk, officials said. No one has developed any symptoms. The first signs of the illness often appear within eight to 10 days, but can take as long as 21 days.
Images from Monrovia, Liberia and Dallas in the last few days have raised new questions about the adequacy of the American effort on both continents.
In Liberia, the help Mr. Obama promised several weeks ago has been slow to arrive, and logistical glitches have prevented the United States military from being able to quickly set up the hospitals and treatment centers needed to halt the virus. Gen. David M. Rodriguez, commander of the Africa Command, told reporters in Washington that the military was working quickly, but that it could take “several weeks” to get the hospitals built and the medical personnel trained.
And in Dallas, the misstep at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital, where Mr. Duncan is in serious condition, came after the acknowledgment Thursday by other health officials that the apartment where he had stayed had not been sanitized, with the sheets and towels that he had used while sick still there.
Dr. Ashish Jha, a professor at Harvard University’s School of Public Health, said there appeared to be “literally multiple failures” that led to Mr. Duncan’s release on Sept. 25, only to be hospitalized three days later when his symptoms worsened. Among them, he said, are that the nurse who learned Mr. Duncan had just come from Liberia failed to tell a doctor directly.
“In a well-functioning emergency department, doctors and nurses talk to each other,” Dr. Jha said. “Also, why didn’t the physician think to ask the question separately? Anyone who comes in with a febrile illness, a travel history, that’s a fundamental part of understanding what might be going on.”
He added, “For me, the most disappointing thing isn’t that the system didn’t work, but in the aftermath, instead of helping every other hospital in the country understand where their system failed and learn from it, they have thrown out a whole lot of distractions.”
“The United States is prepared to deal with this crisis, both at home and in the region,” Ms. Monaco said. “Every Ebola outbreak over the past 40 years has been stopped. We know how to do this, and we will do it again.”