TRNS News Notes is brought to you by Victoria Jones. Victoria Jones is the Chief White House correspondent and global analyst of the Washington DC based Talk Radio News Service, where her insight and analysis are made available to over 400 news talk radio stations around the country and internationally.

Breaking: A second health care worker who provided care for Thomas Duncan at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital has tested positive for Ebola (AP, Reuters)

In the News

  • TX nurses: “Unsupported, unprepared, lied to”
  • TX nurses: “Left to figure things out”
  • CDC: “Ebola response team” in future

  • Obama: “Progress and setbacks” in ISIS fight
  • Has ISIS used chemical weapons against Kurds?
  • Where did ISIS get chemical weapons?
  • NYT: U.S. Govt tried to suppress intel about chem weapons in Iraq
  • NYT: Govt kept quiet out of embarrassment

  • Biden huddles to help long-term unemployed
  • Obama won’t nominate AG until after midterms
  • Anger in Hong Kong: Video of police beating protester
  • Malala pleads for Nigerian abducted girls
  • Halloween howls

 

Texas Nurses: “Unsupported, Unprepared, Lied To”
• Nurses at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas claimed during a conference call with reporters Tuesday that when Thomas Eric Duncan was brought into the hospital by ambulance (second trip) with Ebola-like symptoms, he was “left for several hours, not in isolation, in an area” where up to seven patients were (LAT, NYT, WaPo, Hill, CNN, Fox, me)

• A statement outlining a litany of damning assertions was read by Deborah Burger, co-president of National Nurses United. The nurses on the call were anonymous and didn’t speak. The union doesn’t represent the nurses, but has been vocal about what it says are hospitals’ failures to prepare for Ebola. Burger said all the nurses had been involved in Duncan’s care

• “Subsequently, a nurse supervisor arrived and demanded that he be moved to an isolation unit, yet faced stiff resistance from other hospital authorities,” they alleged. The union said the nurses “strongly feel unsupported, unprepared, lied to and deserted to handle their own situation.”

• Duncan’s lab samples were sent through the usual hospital tube system “without being specifically sealed and hand-delivered. The result is that the entire tube system … was potentially contaminated,” they said. There was no advanced preparedness on what to do with the patient. There was no protocol. There was no system, they alleged

• Graphic: How hospital workers are supposed to treat Ebola safely (NYT)

Nurses: Left to Figure Things Out
• The nurses were asked to call the infectious disease dept if they had questions, but that dept didn’t have answers either, the statement said. So the nurses essentially were left to figure things out on their own, the statement said. The statement said guidelines were constantly changing

• They figured things out as they dealt with “copious amounts” of highly contagious bodily fluids from the dying Duncan while they wore gloves with no wrist tape, flimsy gowns that didn’t cover their neck, and no surgical booties, the statement alleged

• “Hospital officials allowed nurses who interacted with Mr Duncan to then continue normal patient-care duties,” potentially exposing others, it said. There was no way to independently confirm the allegations, which are in sharp contrast to statements from hospital officials

• “Patient and employee safety is our greatest priority, and we take compliance very seriously,” the hospital said in a statement. “We have numerous measures in place to provide a safe working environment, including mandatory annual training and a 24-7 hotline and other mechanisms that allow for anonymous reporting.”

• With the death of another UN staffer Tuesday to the West African Ebola outbreak, the United Nations Staff Union put out a statement saying, “questions must be asked on whether adequate resources are in place to protect UN personnel and their families from this deadly disease.” (TRNS)

CDC: “Ebola Response Team”
• CDC Director Dr Tom Frieden said Tuesday that the CDC might have prevented nurse Nina Pham’s infection if it had responded more aggressively to Duncan’s case. CDC experts were in the hospital Tuesday watching workers as they donned and removed the protective gear required to treat Pham and as they moved in and out of her room

• The CDC also plans to launch an “Ebola response team” which will go to any hospital that reports an Ebola case. “I wish we had put a team like this on the ground the day the first patient was diagnosed,” Frieden said. “That might have prevented this infection. But we will do that from this day onward.” (LAT, WaPo, TRNS, NYT, CNN, Hill, Politico, Fox, AP, Reuters, me)

• Frieden said 76 other healthcare workers from the hospital were being monitored for possible Ebola symptoms. Also Tuesday, Duncan’s nephew, Josephus Weeks, wrote in a Dallas Morning News article that the hospital had provided his uncle with substandard care

• The World Health Organization predicted Tuesday that Ebola could lead to up to 10,000 new cases a week in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea. In addition, about 70% of those who fall ill in the three countries are dying

• President Obama told a group of international military leaders Tuesday, “As I’ve said before, and I’m going to keep on repeating until we start seeing more progress, the world as a whole is not doing enough. There are a number of countries that have capacity that have not yet stepped up.”
• The Obama administration isn’t ruling out appointing a “czar” to lead the U.S. response to the Ebola virus. However, WH spox Josh Earnest on Tuesday indicated that Lisa Monaco, the president’s homeland security and counterterrorism adviser, may already fill that role (Hill, me)
Obama: “Progress and Setbacks” in ISIS Fight
• President Obama pointed to some “important successes” in the U.S.-led coalition against ISIS militants in Iraq and Syria as he met with military leaders from participating countries around the world on Tuesday, amid questions about the merits of his strategy (WSJ, TRNS, me)

• “There are going to be periods of progress and setbacks,” Obama said. “What we’re also fighting is ideological,” he said, adding that coalition countries will need to create economic opportunities and communicate an “alternative vision” for those who are being recruited by ISIS

• Col Steven Warren, a Pentagon spox, said military leaders from more than 20 countries were discussing the continuing campaign at Joint Base Andrews in MD. The meeting is meant to “align the unique capabilities” of the various countries contributing. The U.S. wouldn’t be formally asking any countries to increase their contributions

• The leaders discussed what more needs to be done in the air campaign against ISIS and, as a group, discussed what countries are best positioned to contribute additional resources, Col Warren said

• Col Warren acknowledged that ISIS fighters are making new gains in Anbar, but noted that the Iraqi military, with U.S. support, has taken territory from the militants, including the towns of Sinjar and Amirli, as well as the Mosul Dam. “This is the nature of warfare. There will be ebbs and flows across the battlefield for months,” Col Warren said (more ebbing than flowing…)
• President Obama will participate in a rare videoconference today with the leaders of the UK, France, Germany and Italy as he looks to build support for efforts to combat ISIS in Iraq and Syria and Ebola. They’ll also discuss Russia and Ukraine, the WH said (Hill, me)

Has ISIS Used Chemical Weapons Against Kurds in Kobane?
• As ISIS continues to battle Kurdish forces for control of Kobane, a town on the Syrian-Turkish border, graphic photographs have emerged (warning: graphic) of injured Kurdish fighters with blistering wounds and peeling skin (Buzzfeed, me)

• “The injuries in the photographs appear to be consistent to some sort of chemical burn,” said Jerry Smith, the former Head of Syria Operations at the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, and now head of the independent security consultancy, Ramehead

• The photos were first published by the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal. Jonathan Spyer, editor of MERIA, wrote that Israeli chemical weapons experts reviewing the photographs believed that mustard was the most likely chemical agent used

• Spyer said he was given the photos by Kurdish sources about one month ago, and that they document an incident from 12 July. While Spyer’s sources speculated that mustard agent was used, other chemical weapons experts have argued that a different blistering agent may have been used – but still some sort of chemical burn

• Hamish de Bretton-Gordon, a British chemical weapons expert, said, “What we’ve seen in Syria, when the regime delivered sarin, they loaded it into rockets … and we’ve at least one case when ISIS militants were killed as they tried to load a rocket with chlorine and the rocket exploded killing 15 of them.”
Where Did ISIS Get Chemical Weapons?
• De Bretton-Gordon added that there were two likely possibilities by which ISIS would have gotten a chemical agent – from a secret chemical weapons stockpile kept by the Assad regime in Syria, and hidden from UN inspectors, or from a stockpile in Iraq left over from Saddam Hussein’s regime – see below (NYT today)

• Iraq’s ambassador to the UN, Mohamed Ali Alhakim, sent a letter to UN SecGen Ban Ki moon in July stating that ISIS had captured a former chemical weapons facility in the Iraqi town of Muthanna, northwest of Baghdad. The bunker, he said, had sarin-filled rockets, as well as “mustard-contaminated” artillery shells

• At the time, State Dept spox Jen Psaki disputed Alhakim’s account, saying that the two bunkers “don’t include intact chemical weapons … and would be very difficult, if not impossible, to safely use this for military purposes or, frankly, to move it.”

• Since then, however, U.S. officials have voiced concerns that ISIS has not only captured chemical weapons, but has deployed them, including in a chlorine gas attack on Iraqi soldiers

• “Everyone is paying attention to Kobane because it is the battle reporters can physically watch,” said a U.S. diplomat based in Jordan. “If ISIS used chemical weapons there
[Kobane], it begs the question why we didn’t know sooner.”

U.S. Govt Sought to Suppress Intel About Chem Weapons in Iraq
• A major NYT investigation has revealed that the U.S. govt has for years sought to suppress intelligence about thousands of chemical weapons uncovered in Iraq – a suppression that kept American soldiers wounded by gases from getting adequate treatment for injuries that, officially, do not exist

• The investigation, putting a harsh light on how the U.S. govt failed a group of injured veterans, also ignites fresh fears about access that ISIS may have to chemical agents, by suggesting Washington officials have long known that Iraqi territories seized by the Sunni Jihadist group contain such materials

• NYT reports that U.S. troops entering Iraq in 2003 didn’t find the official reason for their presence there: plants producing weapons of mass destruction. But troops found something else: abandoned plants still stocked with chemical weapons made in the 1980s, during the Iran-Iraq war

• C.J. Chivers reports that American troops and Iraqi allies from 2004 to 2011 tallied 5,000 chemical weapons materials. In six of U.S. troops’ repeated encounters with the stored weapons, soldiers were wounded, the paper says

Govt Kept Quiet Out of Embarrassment
• Yet the U.S. govt withheld intel about the identified mustard and nerve gas from the public, Congress, the troops it was sending into the blighted areas and military doctors, NYT says. “‘Nothing of significance,’ is what I was ordered to say,” Jarrod Lampier, a recently retired Army major who witnessed troops find some 2,400 nerve agent rockets in 2004, told NYT

• The U.S. govt allegedly kept mum in large part out of embarrassment, as troops were not finding the alleged active weapons plants that had justified the Iraq war, but instead were seeing defunct chemical weapons plants not active since 1991. Yet such secrecy meant that soldiers wounded by the chemicals struggled to get proper care for the wounds

• NYT continues that most of the chemical finds were around an old weapons manufacturing compound now absorbed into the proclaimed ISIS caliphate. Indeed, the paper says the Iraqi govt wrote to the UN this summer that some 2,500 corroded rockets were on the ground when ISIS militants grabbed the compound and were seen looting its equipment
• Ahmed Abu Khattala, a Libyan militant captured by U.S. special forced in June for his alleged role in the 2012 Benghazi attacks, was indicted on 18 new charges Tuesday, including multiple counts of murder, punishable by the death penalty (Hill, AP, me)

Biden Huddles to Help Long-Term Unemployed
• VP Joe Biden will meet with human resource officers from major U.S. companies at the WH today to discuss changes to hiring practices aimed at improving employment prospects for people who have been out of work for a while (Reuters, AP, Hill, me)

• Officials from companies such as Citigroup, CVS Caremark, Dow Chemical and Boeing will talk about steps they’ve taken when they meet with Biden, Labor Sec Tom Perez and Jeff Zients, head of President Obama’s National Economic Council

• Perez will announce $170 million in 23 grants to help train people from the ranks of the long-term unemployed and match them with jobs. Zients told reporters that qualified people who have a gap on their resume can face “significant artificial barriers” with certain screening practices used to sort through resumes

• Earlier this year, about 300 companies agreed to tweak their screening, advertising, interviewing and training practices so that candidates who had been out of work for months were not automatically excluded from opportunities. Progress has been made, Zients said, noting the number of long-term unemployed has dropped by 900,000 since December

• The WH said Frontier Communications, for example, hired more than 250 people from the ranks of the long-term unemployed since January – representing about 20% of the company’s hires – because it stopped using resume screens
• SCOTUS on Tuesday allowed more than a dozen Texas abortion clinics to reopen, blocking a state law that had imposed strict requirements on abortion providers. The order – with no explanation – represents an interim step in a legal fight that’s far from over (TRNS, NYT)
Obama Won’t Nominate AG Until After Midterms
• President Obama doesn’t plan to announce his choice for attorney general before the November elections, setting up a potential year-end showdown with the lame duck Senate. Senate Democrats have asked Obama to wait so controversy doesn’t arise over whether they’ll support a specific nominee (AP, Politico, me)

• A WH official told AP Tuesday that the president hasn’t yet decided who he wants to replace outgoing AG Eric Holder, a longtime friend who’s led the DoJ the entire time Obama’s been in office

• The WH wants to push through a nominee while Democrats still have a 10-seat majority in the Senate. Obama faces an even tougher challenge to win confirmation if he waits until the new Senate is seated early next year, since Republicans are expected to pick up seats, if not win outright control

• Iowa Sen Chuck Grassley, the leading Republican on the Judiciary Committee that will hold hearings on the nominee, said, “This timing shows, once again, that the president and Democrat Senate leaders are willing to play politics with important policy decisions.”

• There isn’t much time in the lame duck. The majority in the Senate might not be known for days or weeks, given some tight races. Obama’s scheduled to head off on a long trip to Asia just after the elections. And Senate Republicans could boycott the committee vote, forcing Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) to bring the confirmation up directly on the floor

• The state of Texas can use its new voter ID law again in next month’s election, a federal appeals court ruled Tuesday, putting on hold an order a district court issued just last week barring enforcement of the law (Politico)
Video of Apparent Beating of Protester in Hong Kong: Anger
• In a video that quickly transfixed and outraged many in Hong Kong and beyond, a group of police officers appeared to take a pro-democracy demonstrator into a dark corner early this morning and kick him repeatedly while his hands were bound (looks pretty clear what happened) (NYT, BBC, South China Morning Post, me)

• The Civic Party, one of the main pro-democracy political parties in Hong Kong, identified the man as Ken Tsang, a party member and volunteer social worker who specializes in helping street children. His lawyer said he had been taken to the hospital because he feared Tsang had suffered internal injuries

• Secretary for Security Lai Tung-kwok said later that some officers seen on the video would be removed from their current duties and that an investigation would be carried out. He didn’t say if they’ve been given other duties

&&&

• Hong Kong’s police force has for years prided itself on its professionalism, political neutrality and experience with crowd control, an image that dates from its days as a British colony. Now, citizens are asking, why did officers appear to behave with impunity toward a protester who had been subdued and whose hands were bound?

• In the last year, however, Beijing has sent growing numbers of its own security officers to work closely with the local police, partly in preparation for dealing with democracy protesters. Mainland security officials have a reputation for much rougher tactics – but no evidence yet that they were directly involved in the incident captured on video today

• The clashes came on the third day of operations that police say are necessary to ease traffic disruption, but which they insist are not aimed at clearing the protesters. (they seem to be and it seems as though China has had enough of the protesters, who are in their third week of occupying key parts of the city in a bid to get reform in voting in 2017)
• An investigation into the circumstance surrounding the capture of Arm Sgt Bowe Bergdahl by Taliban in Afghanistan has been completed, but it’s unclear when the military will complete its report, the Pentagon said on Tuesday (Reuters)
Malala Pleads for Nigerian Abducted Girls
• Malala Yousafzai has called on Nigeria to intensify efforts to free 219 schoolgirls who were abducted by Islamist militants six months ago. The Nobel Peace Prize winner said campaigners needed to raise their voices “louder than ever” to demand the freedom of the girls (BBC, Hill, me)

• Boko Haram fighters abducted the girls during a raid on their boarding school in Chibok town in north-eastern Nigeria in April. Malala said in a statement that the girls needed to be reunited with their families and receive a quality and safe education

• National security adviser Susan Rice said on Tuesday, “We have aided in the investigations, including by deploying personnel on the ground, facilitated strategic communications, and provided assistance to the families. We will continue to work toward the release of all the girls who remain in captivity.”

• Separately, the WH said Boko Haram had abducted hundreds of men, women, girls and boys and killed 3,000 people in Nigeria, and vowed the U.S. was looking “to dismantle this murderous group.”

• In Nigeria, the parents of the missing girls and their supporters used the six-month anniversary to refocus attention on the kidnapping. Activists tried to march to the official residence of President Goodluck Jonathan in Abuja, but an organizer said an “army of policemen” halted the protest. “They stopped us with heavy arms,” she said. No comment from the police
Halloween Howls
• What’s the costume flap of the year? There’s always something. It might just be Ebola, as in Ebola zombies, bloody Ebola patients and faux protective gear. Tasteful, yes? Not so much, people who work in the health care field are saying (Star Tribune, AJC, NYDN, KOCO, me)

• Still, some costume sellers have leftover yellow jumpsuits, rubber gloves and masks from the “Breaking Bad” craze last Halloween. Some sellers predict Halloweeners will repurpose those for takes on Ebola or make their own getups. Oh – worse – the costume site BrandsonSale says it has a toddler ISIS costume in the works…

• Meanwhile, Dwayne Dockens in Edmond OK has a Halloween decoration that’s a tombstone showing President Obama’s name and a question mark for his date of birth. It doesn’t show a death date, but it appears to have blood running down the tombstone. It’s pretty unpleasant. A neighbor is upset (can’t imagine why)

• Oh well. Good fun and all that. Dockens told KOCO: “[My family and I] made them a few years ago back when it was a big deal, questions up about [Obama’s] birth certificate.” “I certainly didn’t mean to offend anybody or cause any problems. Don’t know that I would take it down.” (get ready for that friendly Secret Service visit, then)

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______________

Victoria Jones

TRNS’ William McDonald, Shane Farnan, Celina Gore and United Nations Desk contributed to this report

 

The Talk Radio News Service is the only information, news booking and host service dedicated to serving the talk radio community. TRNS maintains a Washington office that includes White House, Capitol Hill and Pentagon staffed bureaus, and a New York office with a United Nations staffed bureau. Talk Radio News Service has permanent access to every breaking newsevent in the Washington, D.C. area and beyond.