World/Nation

• Second nurse tests positive for Ebola

DALLAS - The Ebola crisis in the U.S. took another alarming turn Wednesday with word that a second Dallas nurse caught the disease from a patient and flew across the Midwest aboard an airliner the day before she fell ill, even though government guidelines should have kept her off the plane.

Amid growing concern, President Barack Obama canceled a campaign trip to address the outbreak and vowed that his administration would respond in a "much more aggressive way" to Ebola cases in the United States.

Though it was not clear how the nurse contracted the virus, the case represented just the latest instance in which the disease that has ravaged one of the poorest corners of the earth - West Africa - also managed to find weak spots in one of the world's most advanced medical systems.

The second nurse was identified as 29-year-old Amber Joy Vinson. Medical records provided to The Associated Press by Thomas Eric Duncan's family showed she inserted catheters, drew blood and dealt with Duncan's body fluids.

Duncan, who was diagnosed with Ebola after coming to the U.S. from Liberia, died Oct. 8.

• World looks to try to stop Ebola spread

JOHANNESBURG - Some doctors in countries hit hardest by the deadly Ebola disease decline to operate on pregnant women for fear the virus could spread. Governments face calls from frightened citizens to bar travel to and from afflicted nations. Meanwhile, the stakes get higher as more people get sick, highlighting a tricky balance between protecting people and preserving their rights in a global crisis.

The world could impose more restrictions to ward off a disease that has overwhelmed several West African countries, and exposed shortcomings in medical procedures in Texas and also Spain, where Ebola cases have been diagnosed. Such measures can be legal, lawyers say, but the challenge is to ensure that quarantines, curbs on movement and other steps do not intrude too heavily on civil liberties.

"People would rather do more than less, and the problem is that it becomes a slippery slope in terms of rights," said Paul Millus, a New York lawyer who handles civil rights and employment issues.

Already, Sierra Leone, Guinea and Liberia, where the Ebola outbreak has killed thousands, are trying to implement severe controls.

Authorities have imposed curfews, lockdowns and roadblocks. They have ordered a stop to traditional funeral rites that involve touching relatives' bodies. An entire battalion of troops in Sierra Leone is in quarantine, waiting to deploy on a regional mission to conflict-torn Somalia.

• Police scuffle with Hong Kong activists

HONG KONG - Police briefly scuffled with protesters camped out in Hong Kong's streets overnight, but held back from dismantling barricades erected by the activists pushing for greater democracy in the Chinese territory.

Earlier this week, police had removed barriers on the edges of the protest zones.

Protesters reacted to those moves by building bamboo structures that police dismantled. Later, they occupied an underpass that police then cleared out aggressively, using pepper spray and dragging activists away.

Shortly after midnight Thursday, police clashed again with some demonstrators on a main road in front of the government headquarters. Police said two protesters were arrested and three officers were injured.

The demonstrators oppose the Chinese central government's decision to screen candidates to run in the territory's first direct elections in 2017.

• Kurds resilient in fight against militants

MURSITPINAR, Turkey - Intensified U.S.-led airstrikes and a determined Kurdish military force on the ground appear to have had some success in halting advances by Islamic State fighters on a strategic Kurdish town near Syria's border with Turkey - at least for now.

On Wednesday, the Kurdish militiamen were fighting ferocious street battles with the Sunni extremists in Kobani and making advances on some fronts, hours after the U.S.-led coalition stepped up its aerial campaign.

In a surprising display of resilience, the Kurdish fighters have held out against the more experienced jihadists a month into the militants' offensive on the frontier town, hanging on to their territory against all expectations.

• Inherent Resolve: Military operation gets official name

WASHINGTON - It's less punchy than previous nicknames for U.S. conflicts in the Middle East - remember Operation Desert Storm and its thunderous attacks against Saddam Hussein? - but the Pentagon has finally named its fight against Islamic State militants in Iraq and Syria: Operation Inherent Resolve.

The naming, which took weeks of deliberation behind closed doors at U.S. Central Command and at the Pentagon, is part of an effort to organize a long-term military campaign.

But that name, Inherent Resolve.

Inherently bland.

It's less awe-inspiring than other names chosen for U.S. military operations in Iraq over the past two decades - Desert Shield, Desert Storm and Desert Fox, for example. It appears to convey the no-drama approach that marks President Barack Obama's style.

Getting out the vote: How many will turn out?

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. - Democrats claimed a big success after former President Bill Clinton campaigned across several college campuses in Arkansas recently, saying they signed up enough partisans to fill more than 4,000 volunteer shifts in their drive to re-elect Sen. Mark Pryor.

Now the concern is the "flake rate" - the people who fail to show up.

Welcome to the final stages of a costly voter turnout operation in Arkansas and other states that have competitive Senate races. These efforts loom as the Democrats' possible last line of defense in a year when President Barack Obama is a political drag and turnout already would be far lower than in a presidential election year.

"We have to expand the electorate," said Robert McLarty, in charge of the party's effort to increase Arkansas' turnout.

- The Associated Press