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U.S. President Barack Obama says the U.S. military would help in the fight against the Ebola virus in West Africa, which has killed more than 2,000 people. Speaking on NBC's Meet the Press, Obama said U.S. military assets were needed to set up isolation units and equipment, and provide security for international health workers. He said he believed the United States needed to make dealing with the Ebola outbreak a national security priority. He warned that it would still take months to control the epidemic and said that if efforts were not made now the outbreak could spread across Africa...

A morbidly obese rescue cat named Little Dude is eating healthy and working on his fitness in preparation of being put up for adoption, said shelter officials in Orange County. Handlers said the 10-year-old short-haired feline arrived to WAGS Pet Adoption in Westminster in August weighing a hulking 36 pounds - roughly three times what his normal weight should be. ... It could be weeks before he's ready to be put up for adoption. "He's fabulous," Dorney said. "He's very laid back and easy going - because of his size he doesn't have a choice. He's a lap cat. He...

The virus causes symptoms like a cold, except worse, and is prompting up to 30 children a day to seek care at one Kansas City hospital, where about 15% of the youngsters were placed in intensive care, officials said. In a sign of a possible regional outbreak, Colorado, Illinois and Ohio are reporting cases with symptoms similar to the same virus and are awaiting testing results, according to officials and CNN affiliates in those states. In Kansas City, about 450 children were recently treated at Children’s Mercy Hospital, and at least 60 of them received intensive hospitalization, spokesman Jake Jacobson...

... part of the population in West Africa is immune to the Ebola virus, according to virologists who specialize in the disease. Assuming they are correct, and if those people can be identified... Immune persons could safely tend the sick and bury the dead just as smallpox survivors did in the centuries before smallpox vaccine. ...antibodies could be harvested from their blood to treat new Ebola victims. But many factors remain unclear, including which Africans have antibodies and how much antibody is needed to be protective.... “It's fair to say that some people are immune,” said Robert F. Garry Jr.,...

Two months before Californians go to the polls to choose a governor, the state's top elections official tearfully acknowledged Friday that she has been consumed by a "debilitating" depression that has often kept her away from the office.. Secretary of State Debra Bowen, who oversees statewide voting, told The Times that she has a history of depression and has moved out of the two-story country home she owns with her husband. She now resides in a trailer park on the outskirts of Sacramento. "I have suffered from depression since I was in college, and I am having a more difficult...

Beginning September 18, the nation will prohibit residents from leaving their homes for four days, with the hopes that health officials will be able to detect early-stage cases, Ibrahim Ben Kargbo, a presidential advisor in Sierra Leone, told Reuters. “The aggressive approach is necessary to deal with the spread of Ebola once and for all,” he said. Unfortunately, the news was accompanied by worsening statistics from the World Health Organization (WHO), which announced on Friday that out of the roughly 4,000 people that have been confirmed to have the virus, 2,105 people have died in Guinea, Liberia, Sierra Leone, and...

Dr Kurt Retherford of the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio told Space.com that he thought this was unlikely. ‘The best explanation still is plumes for that [December 2013] dataset, no doubt about it,’ he said. Another suggestion is that the plumes may be too small to see; indeed, even Cassini has struggled to spot vapour associated with the plumes being expelled into space. The previous evidence for the jets had come in the form of water vapour spotted by Hubble above Europa. Although several explanations were offered, Nasa was pretty sure this vapour was due to erupting plumes on...

A conviction on the attempted murder charge is punishable by up to life in prison. No court dates were immediately set for Englert. But her bail has been doubled, from $250,000 to 500,000, cash-only. She remains incarcerated at the Salt Lake County jail. According to court documents, Englert allegedly admitted to police that on Aug. 24, she gave birth to the baby in the bathroom of her Kearns home. She wrapped the infant in a towel, left her on the floor, and went to bed, according to charges. The next day, a Monday, she went to work, leaving the child...

RIVERSIDE (CBSLA.com) — A serial arsonist was sentenced Friday for setting a series of nine fires in Riverside and San Bernardino counties. According to the Riverside County District Attorney’s Office, Steven Taylor Rutherford, 49, of Banning was ordered to spend 45 years in state prison. “Serial arsonists like Mr. Rutherford present a continual danger and threat to everyone in the Inland Empire region,” Riverside County District Attorney Paul Zellerbach said. Rutherford was arrested June 28, 2013, after a lengthy investigation by California fire arson investigators. He was convicted of intentionally starting nine fires from Sept. 6, 2011, to June 28,...

NEWPORT BEACH (CBSLA.com) — Investigators with the Orange County Health Department were working Friday to determine what may have caused several people to get sick after eating at an upscale Newport Beach restaurant. KNX 1070’s Ron Kilgore reports authorities say six diners came down with the intestinal bacteria Shigella after eating at the True Food The self-billed healthy living restaurant was shut down on Aug. 28 for two days over what county inspectors labeled an “imminent health risk” due to at least one confirmed case of Shigella. Following the closure, True Food reopened after the entire restaurant was sanitized and...

The albino monocled cobra had been on the loose since at least Monday evening, when it confronted a dog in Thousand Oaks. The veterinarian who treated the animal said it appeared that the dog wasn’t bitten but was hurt while evading the snake. The cobra apparently escaped from captivity, although authorities have not found the owner. Los Angeles County spokesman Brandon Dowling said investigators were following leads on where the snake came from. ... On Friday, zoo staffers released a video showing a handler using the same tonglike tool to remove the snake from a narrow wooden box that resembles...

Hidden among the four new images of Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko released by ESA this week are a pair of dusty jets shooting from the nucleus of Comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko. The photos were taken September 2, 2014 and posted as a mosaic of four separate images. I re-assembled the four, albeit imperfectly, and added some additional contrast to better show the dual geyser of ice crystals mixed with dust venting from the nucleus. ... Jets or sprays of vaporizing ice are what gives a comet its lively appearance. Dust released with water vapor is ultimately pushed back by the pressure of sunlight to...

Now we can see there are bright points in the solar atmosphere, which act like buoys anchored to what's going on much deeper down. They help us develop a different picture of the interior of the sun." ... Beginning in 2010, McIntosh and his colleagues began tracking the size of different magnetically balanced areas on the sun, that is, areas where there are an equal number of magnetic fields pointing down into the sun as pointing out. The team found magnetic parcels in sizes that had been seen before, but also spotted much larger parcels than those previously noted—about the...

NASA’s planetary senior review panel harshly criticized the scientific return of the Curiosity rover in a report released yesterday (Sept. 3), saying the mission lacks focus and the team is taking actions that show they think the $2.5-billion mission is “too big to fail.” While the review did recommend the mission receive more funding — along with the other six NASA extended planetary missions being scrutinized — members recommended making several changes to the mission. One of them would be reducing the distance that Curiosity drives in favor of doing more detailed investigations when it stops. The role of the...

VICTORVILLE (CBSLA.com) — A Victorville father with cancer who gave his daughter away last month from his hospital bed will be laid to rest Sunday. David Wilson passed away Tuesday night after a battle with a rare cancer, his son, Bob Brice said. Wilson had been moved home to spend his final days peacefully with family. But it was from his hospital room at UCI Medical Center in Orange that he watched his daughter, Laura Wilson, and her fiancé, Robert Pantoja, exchange vows after the couple moved up their wedding so he could attend. “No, it’s not a bride’s dream,”...

Recent experiments offer tentative support for time travel's feasibility—at least from a mathematical perspective. The study cuts to the core of our understanding of the universe, and the resolution of the possibility of time travel, far from being a topic worthy only of science fiction, would have profound implications for fundamental physics as well as for practical applications such as quantum cryptography and computing. Closed timelike curves The source of time travel speculation lies in the fact that our best physical theories seem to contain no prohibitions on traveling backward through time. The feat should be possible based on Einstein's...

THOUSAND OAKS (CBSLA.com) — A poisonous albino monocled cobra was loose in Thousand Oaks after it bit a dog Wednesday morning, officials said. The attack happened late Monday afternoon in the backyard of a home in the 1300 block of Rancho Lane. The dog was taken to a veterinarian and its condition was unknown. The cobra, which was photographed by the dog’s owner, is venomous and very dangerous, according to the Los Angeles County Department of Animal Care and Control. State Fish and Wildlife and the LA animal services responded to the area in an effort to find the snake....

Given the option, would you want to think faster and have sharper attention? Research suggests that electrical brain stimulation kits could have just those effects. But now some companies are selling such devices online, leading to calls to regulate the technology. It may sound too good to be true but scientists say the technology is promising. Transcranial direct current stimulation (TDCS), which passes small electrical currents directly on to the scalp, stimulates the nerve cells in the brain (neurons). It's non-invasive, extremely mild and the US military even uses TDCS in an attempt to improve the performance of its drone...

Scores of staff went on strike at the John F. Kennedy Medical Center (JFK) in Monrovia in a protest over unpaid bonuses and working conditions. More than 120 healthworkers have died in West Africa during the Ebola outbreak amid shortages of equipment and trained staff. "Health workers have died (fighting Ebola), including medical doctors at ... JFK and to have them come to work without food on their table, we think that is pathetic," George Williams, secretary general of the Health Workers Association of Liberia, told Reuters. Williams said healthcare workers at JFK, the country's largest referral hospital, had gone...

LOS ANGELES (CBSLA.com) — Would adding a more complex pricing structure at the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (DWP) encourage customers to cut back on their water usage? KNX 1070’s Jon Baird reports a recent UCLA study found that while some residents have stepped up conservation efforts, others have leveled off as the statewide drought continues to worsen. Last month, City Councilmen Felipe Fuentes and Mike Bonin introduced a motion (PDF) to have the DWP explore a number of conservation policy changes, including “an increasing block rate structure for DWP customers with more than two tiers, in which...