Mars image courtesy of CDC Global under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license

In October, Ebola spread to the US, Spain, and Mali. The US had its first local case when a Liberian man—who may have lied both to airport officials and to health care workers about his contact with an infected person—came down with the disease in Dallas. Two nurses in Dallas contracted the disease after treating the man. A New York doctor also came down with the disease after returning from treating Ebola patients in Guinea. A nurse in Spain contracted Ebola after treating two priests who had been brought who had gotten the disease in West Africa and were brought back to Spain for treatment. And a two-year old girl in Mali tested positive for Ebola after her aunt brought her into the country from Guinea. Helen Branswell wrote that as long as the outbreak continues in West Africa new cases will continue to spread to other countries. “The best way to sum it up in my mind,” infectious disease Kamran Khan told Branswell, “is a good offence in West Africa is the best defense for everyone else.”

The World Health Organization (WHO) said that Ebola has successfully been contained in Nigeria and Senegal, however. There are also signs the outbreak may be slowing in the worst affected countries. But WHO Assistant Director-General Bruce Aylward warned that the disease is still not under control. “A slight decline in cases in a few days versus getting this thing closed out is a completely different ball game,” Aylward said. “It’s like saying your pet tiger is under control.”

Peter Piot, who was part of the team that first identified the Ebola virus in 1976, said that now that the disease has spread so widely, we may not be able to contain it until we have an effective vaccine. Three vaccines are currently undergoing expedited safety trials. WHO said that field trials of experimental drugs and vaccines could begin in West Africa as soon as November. WHO also said that serum from the blood of Ebola survivors could soon be available to use in West Africa.

Francisco Martinez, Spain’s Secretary of State for Security, said that people in a “jihadist chat room” connected with Islamic State have talked about using Ebola “as a poisonous weapon against the United States”. But US Homeland Secretary Jeh Johnson said the US has “seen no specific credible intelligence that [Islamic State] is attempting to use any sort of disease or virus to attack our homeland”. Nicholas Evans wrote in Slate that there is actually little danger the Ebola virus could be used as a weapon by terrorists. First, the relatively slow rate at which Ebola spreads would make it easier to contain than other potential biological weapons. Second, the fact that Ebola is transmitted only through bodily fluids would make it hard to weaponize. “A terrorist organization,” Evans wrote, “would have to go door to door with bags of blood and vomit to infect even a handful of people.”

The governors of New York and New Jersey ordered everyone entering the country through local airports who had had contact with Ebola patients in West Africa to undergo a quarantine. Kaci Hickox, a nurse who treated patients with Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) in Sierra Leone, was isolated at New Jersey hospital after registering a low-grade fever. She was kept in isolation for several days in spite of testing negative for the virus and showing no other symptoms. A judge in Maine, where Hickox lives, required her to coordinate her travel with public health officials and allow herself to be monitored for symptoms, but ruled that Maine could not quarantine her since she “currently does not show symptoms of Ebola and is therefore not infectious”.

 A CBS News poll found that 80% of Americans think that people coming into the country from West Africa should be quarantined until it is clear that they do not have Ebola. But the US Supreme Court has ruled in the past that people have the right to appeal any decision to confine them involuntarily. And the New England Journal of Medicine wrote in an editorial that since it is easy for to monitor health care workers and isolate them before they become contagious, it makes little sense to quarantine them. “Those responsible, skilled health care workers who are risking their lives to help others are also helping by stemming the epidemic at its source, “ the editorial said. “If we add barriers making it harder for volunteers to return to their community, we are hurting ourselves.”

Gen. Curtis Scaparrotti, commander of US forces in South Korea, said that he believed that North Korea has managed to make a nuclear weapon small enough to fit on a ballistic missile. Gen. Scaparrotti said that the probability an untested weapon that complex would be effective was “pretty darn low”. North Korea has yet to successfully test a long-range ballistic missile, although satellite imagery suggests that it may be preparing its Sohae Launching Station for a missile test. Satellite images also suggest that North Korea is working to develop the capability to launch ballistic missiles from a submarine. “We remain open to dialogue with North Korea, but there is no value in talks just for the sake of talks,” US Secretary of State John Kerry said. “North Korea must demonstrate that it is serious about denuclearization.”

Two people were killed in a large explosion at Iran’s Parchin military compound during the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has expressed concerns that Iran might be developing a nuclear weapon at the Parchin base, but has not been allowed to inspect the site since 2005. Kuwait’s Al-Rai newspaper reported the explosion was caused by Israeli sabotage. Al-Rai said that Iran had ordered Hezbollah to plant bombs along Israel’s border with Lebanon in retaliation. Yuval Steinitz, Israel’s minister of intelligence, said that Israel had “highly reliable information” that Iran was conducting tests on neutron initiators for nuclear weapons at the base.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released its “Synthesis Report” integrating the findings of the three working groups that contributed to its Fifth Assessment Report on climate change. The report warned that

Continued emission of greenhouse gases will cause further warming and long-lasting changes in all components of the climate system, increasing the likelihood of severe, pervasive and irreversible impacts for people and ecosystems. Limiting climate change would require substantial and sustained reductions in greenhouse gas emissions which, together with adaptation, can limit climate change risks.

The report said that in order to keep global warming to under 2°C (3.6°F), we will have to release no more than an additional trillions tons of carbon dioxide, significantly less than would be produced if we used all the fossil fuel already held in coal and oil reserves. The National Climatic Center reported that 2014 is on pace to be the warmest year on record.

Kevin Kelly wrote in Wired that recent breakthroughs—cheap parallel computation, the availability of enormous amounts of data, and improved algorithms—mean that we will see real artificial intelligence in the near future. David Brooks wrote in The New York Times that the development of machines that can reason will force us to rethink what it means to be human and give those who control information a dangerous power to shape society.  Tesla and SpaceX founder Elon Musk again warned that advanced artificial intelligence may be the biggest threat to human survival and may need to be regulated at the national and international level. “With artificial intelligence we’re summoning the demon,” Musk said. “You know those stories where there’s the guy with the pentagram, and the holy water, and he’s like—yeah, he’s sure he can control the demon? Doesn’t work out.”

This news summary was put together in collaboration with Anthropocene. Thanks to Seth Baum, Kaitlin Butler, and Grant Wilson for help compiling the news.

For last month’s news summary, please see GCR News Summary September/August 2014.

You can help us compile future news posts by putting any GCR news you see in the comment thread of this blog post, or send it via email to Grant Wilson (grant [at] gcrinstitute.org).