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The Ebola outbreak in West Africa is putting off thousands of tourists who had planned trips to Africa this year, especially Asians, including to destinations thousands of miles from the nearest infected community such as Kenya and South Africa. The bulk of the cancellations are from Asia, which has had its own share of health crises, but visitors from the United States, Brazil and Europe have also scrapped their plans or delayed trips, they said. Besides tourism, Ebola fears are also hitting business travel and investment events in Africa, threatening the continent's image as a rising economic star.

State Attorney General Kamala Harris is asking private law firms to provide free legal help to the wave of Central American children pouring into the state. Harris has called for a sit-down Wednesday in her San Francisco office with attorneys from a dozen firms, as well as with representatives of nonprofits, legal-aid groups and charities. The attorney general's office itself is legally barred from representing the youngsters, so Harris is using her "convening power" to pull together private help. The exact number of unaccompanied children showing up at the California border is hard to come by, but we're told that...

Lawrence Livermore and Lawrence Berkeley lab researchers, along with scientists from six other national laboratories, will take part in a state-of-the-art supercomputing project designed to model, simulate and predict the effects of climate change on Earth. The 10-year Energy Department project -- Accelerated Climate Modeling for Energy (ACME) -- will develop and apply advanced climate system models on cutting-edge high-performance computing machines as soon as they become available, lab officials said. "The (complex scientific) challenge simulations are not yet possible with current model and computing capabilities," Livermore National Laboratory atmospheric scientist and ACME council chair David Bader said. "But we...

Islamic State militants have released a video purportedly showing the beheading of a US journalist who went missing two years ago. The footage appears to show a masked man - speaking in English with traces of a British accent - killing James Foley, who was seized by armed men in Syria in November 2012. In the five-minute video, posted on social media sites by Islamic State sources, the group declares that Mr Foley was killed after Barack Obama ordered airstrikes against IS positions in northern Iraq. The group also claimed to be holding another American journalist, Steven Sotloff, and said...

The White House has rejected a request to publicly disclose documents relating to the kinds of security software and computer systems behind the federal health care exchange website on the grounds that the information could "potentially" be used by hackers. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services denied a Freedom of Information Act request made late last year by the Associated Press amid concerns that Republicans raised about the security of the website, which had technical glitches that prevented millions of people from signing up for insurance under ObamaCare. In denying access to the documents, including what's known as a...

The two star general tasked with investigating Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl’s disappearance from an U.S. Army outpost in Afghanistan has completed his interviews with Bowe Bergdahl, the Department of Defense confirmed on Tuesday. Maj. Gen. Kenneth Dahl “is in the process of completing his report” and expects to submit it for review next month, the DOD said in a statement. While Dahl is wrapping up his report, the DOD said “it is possible that he will have to follow up on issues that may require additional witness interviews.”

The Environmental Protection Agency’s public release of farmers’ and ranchers’ personal information violates basic tenets of federal law, the American Farm Bureau Federation told a Minnesota federal court late Friday. The EPA surprised the farming and ranching community in early 2013 when it publicly released a massive database of personal information about tens of thousands of livestock and poultry farmers, ranchers and their families in 29 states. The information was distributed to three environmental groups that had filed requests under the Freedom of Information Act. The database included the names of farmers, ranchers and sometimes other family members, home addresses,...

In 2011, President Barack Obama famously called for “shared sacrifice” in America. Three years later, his wish might just become the Environmental Protection Agency’s command. In the coming months, Obama’s EPA will decide whether to further tighten air quality requirements, known as the National Ambient Air Quality Standards. If the EPA gets its way (to which it is accustomed), the vast majority of the country, including Las Vegas and nearly all of Nevada, would fall into so-called “non-attainment” — when the EPA deems air pollution levels “persistently exceed” limits. This is up from a few isolated regions just five years...

The flood of migrant children that sparked a humanitarian crisis this summer was mostly a near-shore affair. Almost all of those children — 98 percent — caught and processed by U.S. Border Patrol this fiscal year came from Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador or Mexico. But kids coming from Central America aren't the only ones trying to slip across the border. According to data obtained by Fusion from U.S. Customs and Border Protection, border agents have caught unaccompanied children arriving from as far away as China, India, Albania and Morocco. More than two-thirds of these kids caught and processed by U.S....

WASHINGTON -- Private car-hailing service Uber has hired President Barack Obama's former campaign manager David Plouffe to be its senior vice president of policy and strategy. Uber co-founder Travis Kalanick said Plouffe will oversee all global policy and political activities, communications and branding efforts. The company has faced resistance from taxi companies in cities including Miami and Washington.

Democrats running for re-election in California’s parched San Joaquin Valley are refusing to link the state’s historic drought to climate change, despite the direct connection drawn by President Obama and his chief scientist, Stanford University physicist John Holdren. Politically, most Democrats have come to see climate change as the new same-sex marriage – an issue moving irreversibly in their favor. But not in the Central Valley, where Republican climate-change denial apparently still holds sway. Amanda Renteria, a Democrat challenging freshman Rep. David Valadao, R-Hanford, told the Hill, “Climate change doesn’t really belong in the question, or answer.”

Many businesses said Obamacare is jacking up their employee health coverage costs, and they expect it to do so even more next year, two new surveys of businesses by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York have found. Not all firms surveyed said the Affordable Care Act (ACA) is to blame for those cost increases to date. But a majority did. About 20 percent of respondents to both surveys said they were reducing their number of workers and/or raising the share of part-time workers as a result of the ACA. "A similar proportion said they were paying less compensation per...

NELIGH, Neb. — Willie Nelson and Neil Young will headline a concert next month in a Nebraska cornfield organized by opponents of a proposed pipeline that would carry oil from Canada south to the Gulf Coast. Bold Nebraska said Monday the concert will be held Sept. 27 on a farm near Neligh in northeast Nebraska. Tickets go on sale Wednesday.

The Obama administration is preparing the nation’s schools to accept thousands of new students who illegally crossed the southwest border and are now awaiting trials on their possible deportations. A fact sheet from the Department of Education sent to states and schools on Monday highlights the children’s right to attend public school. It says all children in the United States “are entitled to equal access to a public elementary and secondary education, regardless of their or their parents’ actual or perceived national origin, citizenship, or immigration status.” The prospect of tens of thousands of children mostly from Central American countries...

A Texas judge opted Monday not to issue an arrest warrant against Gov. Rick Perry, but the Republican still faces the unflattering prospect of being booked, fingerprinted and having his mug shot taken — and has assembled a team of high-powered attorneys to fight the two felony counts of abuse of power against him. "This is nothing more than banana republic politics," Tony Buzbee a Houston-based defense attorney who will head a cadre of four lawyers from Texas and Washington defending Perry, said at a news conference. A grand jury in Austin, a liberal bastion in otherwise largely conservative Texas,...

Attorney General Eric Holder released the following statement Monday following his briefing of President Obama on the latest developments in the federal civil rights investigation in Ferguson, Missouri: “As I informed the President this afternoon, the full resources of the Department of Justice are being committed to our federal civil rights investigation into the death of Michael Brown. “During the day today, more than 40 FBI agents continued their canvassing of the neighborhood where Michael Brown was shot. As a result of this investigative work, several new interviews have already been conducted. “Moreover, at my direction, an additional medical examination...

SANTA FE, N.M.—A new school year is about to start for kids across New Mexico. That includes the children staying in the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center in Artesia, which has been remodeled to house up to 700 immigrants, nearly all of whom came to the United States from Central America. But who has been contracted to teach and how much it will cost is not so easy to discover. Multiple attempts emailing and calling federal officials at the facility as well as the office of Artesia Mayor Phil Burch produced no response. Shortly after the facility was refurbished in...

And on Saturday, there was no golf. The President and First Lady, known recently in these parts, by the White House Press Pool at least, as POTUS and FLOTUS, went to a private beach on Martha’s Vineyard’s south shore. After rinsing the sand off, the President and First Lady attended a cocktail party at the home of Broderick Johnson, and his wife Michelle Johnson. Mr. Johnson was an advisor on the President’s 2012 reelection campaign. The press pool had a lovely dinner respite at the Homeport Restaurant in Menemsha, reported MV Times staff reporter Steve Myrick, where Chef Josh Aronie...

Three people were killed and sixteen others injured in shootings across the city between late Saturday morning and early Sunday morning, police said.

More than 100 people marched through the streets of Oakland on Friday evening, protesting police brutality in solidarity with those in Ferguson and calling for justice in the name of Bay Area victims of violence at the hands of law enforcement. The march was billed as a "F- the Police" action by organizers, but "FTP" meant different things to different people. Patricia Williams, 17, of Oakland said "FTP" for her and many others meant "For the People." There were windows broken and property damage during the march. One person was arrested in Berkeley. Police faced off with protesters near a...