News Wrap: Taliban suicide bomber kills three NATO troops

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• JUDY WOODRUFF:

  The United States military is joining the fight to stop the spread of Ebola in Africa. President Obama laid out a plan today to send 3,000 troops, amid increasingly dire forecasts of the epidemic's potential to grow even worse.

• PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA:

  If the outbreak is not stopped now, we could be looking at hundreds of thousands of people infected, with profound political and economic and security implications for all of us.

• JUDY WOODRUFF:

  The president traveled to Atlanta this afternoon and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to announce the ramped-up American effort.

• BARACK OBAMA:

  And our forces are going to bring their expertise in command-and-control, in logistics, in engineering. And our Department of Defense is better at that, our armed services are better at that than any organization on earth.

• JUDY WOODRUFF:

  The focus is on helping overwhelmed local health care systems across West Africa. Under the president's plan, U.S. forces will build 17 new treatment facilities in the region, each with 100 beds.

  The U.S. military is also establishing an instruction facility to train up to 500 medical workers a week, deploying 65 officers to staff a hospital for treating health care workers, and airlifting hundreds of thousands of home health kits to the affected nations.

  While the president laid out that plan, top federal health officials appeared at a Senate hearing on the Ebola threat.

  DR. BETH BELL, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: There is a window of opportunity to control the spread of this disease, but that window is closing. If we do not act now to stop Ebola, we could be dealing with it for years to come, affecting larger areas of Africa.

• JUDY WOODRUFF:

  In all, the virus has infected nearly 5,000 people across five countries and left more than half dead.

  In Geneva today, the World Health Organization issued a stark new warning.

• DR. BRUCE AYLWARD, Assistant Director General, World Health Organization:

  With 5,000 now infected, twice the number when we met a couple of weeks ago, over 2,500 dead, nearly twice the number of when we met a couple of weeks ago, you start to get a sense of the rapid escalation now we're seeing of the virus at it moves from what was a linear increase in cases to now almost an exponential increase in cases.

• JUDY WOODRUFF:

  The grim forecast envisions the number of cases doubling every three weeks. And from medical supplies to health worker salaries to burial costs, the WHO estimates it will take nearly $1 billion to contain the outbreak. That's a nearly 10-fold increase from a month ago.

  DR. DAVID NABARRO, UN Coordinator for Ebola: The reason for that is the outbreak in last months has doubled in size. And we realize, because it's going to go on doubling in that sort of frequency if we don't deal with it, the amounts requested have increased dramatically.

• JUDY WOODRUFF:

  In addition to the U.S. response, China today dispatched a mobile laboratory and 59 medical experts to Sierra Leone to help speed up testing.

  We will examine the president's Ebola plan in detail after the news summary.

  In Afghanistan, a Taliban suicide bomber killed three NATO troops in Kabul. Nearly 20 other soldiers and civilians were wounded. The car bomb went off near the U.S. Embassy in Kabul, leaving behind mangled vehicles and debris. Reuters reported that two of the dead were Americans. The other was Polish.

  In Iraq, the U.S. military has expanded its airstrikes against Islamic State forces. Planes hit targets just outside Baghdad last night for the first time. Iraqi military officials said today it's just the beginning.

• BRIG. GEN. SA’AD MA’AN, Spokesman, Baghdad Operations Command (through interpreter):

  Through the joint air cell between America and Baghdad Operations Command, the American airstrikes started yesterday targeting chosen objectives in Southern Baghdad. The joint air cell will outline the targets. By so doing, the airstrikes are aimed at liquidating all Islamic militants in the areas nearby Baghdad.

• JUDY WOODRUFF:

  Meanwhile, political infighting in the Iraqi parliament kept two key cabinet posts in limbo. Lawmakers rejected nominees for the defense and interior ministers.

  Ukraine made a landmark deal with the European Union today, shifting closer to the West and away from Russia. Parliament cheered ratification of that agreement, but it went behind closed doors to approve laws that could spark opposition in Ukraine. Those measures are part of a peace deal that produced a cease-fire this month. They grant temporary self-rule to pro-Russian regions and they offer amnesty to rebels.

  Back in this country, crews mopped up a Northern California fire that wiped out part of a small town yesterday. The fire swept into Weed near the Oregon border and damaged or destroyed 100 homes and other buildings. Today, the charred remnants of homes and two churches were still smoldering. Firefighters hosed down the blackened landscape, as residents counted their losses.

• MAUREEN CAMPBELL, Music Minister, Holy Family Catholic Church:

  The house up there is no big deal. It can be rebuilt. But this is my family church, you know? It's much more endearing to me.

• JUDY WOODRUFF:

  In all, at least a dozen fires were burning in California fueled by severe drought.

  The Environmental Protection Agency is allowing more time for comment on a major step aimed at global warming. Americans will have another 45 days to address curbs on carbon dioxide emissions from coal-fired power plants. This step follows a request from 53 U.S. senators. The EPA said today it still expects to have final rules by next summer.

  Congressional Republicans charged today that federal safety regulators missed spotting ignition switch problems in General Motors cars for seven years. The accusation in a report by the House of Representatives targeted the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. The report also alleged that the agency didn't understand how air bags worked and failed to share vital information.

  In economic news, NASA chose Boeing and SpaceX to build capsules that will ferry astronauts to the space station starting in 2017.

  And on Wall Street, the Dow Jones industrial average gained more than 100 points to close near 17,132. The Nasdaq rose almost 34 points to close above 4,552. And the S&P 500 added nearly 15 points to finish just under 1,999.