US colleges to screen some W. African students over Ebola fears

College students from West Africa may be subject to extra health checks when they arrive to study in the US because of Ebola outbreak in Guinea, Liberia, Sierra Leone and Nigeria, AP said. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have issued no specific recommendations for colleges. However, health departments in South Carolina, North Dakota and other states have spelled out for administrators what symptoms to look for and how to react.

09:21

Iran hopes to reach ‘positive result’ in nuclear talks

Tehran hopes to reach a “positive result” in talks with world powers on its nuclear program, thanks in part to support from Russia, Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said. November was earlier set as deadline to reach an agreement on the nuclear issue. “In that short period of time that is left, we hope that we can reach a positive result,” Reuters quoted Zarif as saying Friday.

07:13

3 weeks ahead of Scottish referendum, support for independence growing - poll

Support for Scottish independence is increasing three weeks ahead of a referendum, according to a poll published Friday. A Survation survey found 47 percent of respondents would vote ‘Yes’ to independence, while 53 percent would vote ‘No’, excluding people who were undecided, AFP said. British Prime Minister David Cameron on Thursday urged Scottish people to reject independence in a rare speech in Glasgow. The union is a strong economic advantage, he said.

06:40

Flights diverted after volcanic eruption in Papua New Guinea

A volcanic eruption in Papua New Guinea on Friday sent smoke and ash spewing high over the Pacific island nation, Reuters reported. Mount Tavurvur on East New Britain Island erupted hours before dawn, according to the Rabaul Volcanological Observatory. Qantas has altered flight paths between Sydney and Narita (Tokyo) and Sydney and Shanghai. Some other aircraft also had to alter their flight paths.

06:17

US labs ordered to take inventory of infectious agents

The White House has ordered federally-funded labs working with infectious agents to conduct an immediate inventory of the pathogens in their labs. Their safety and security protocols must be reviewed, according to a special memo. The order follows a trio of high-profile mishaps at federal labs in recent months, Reuters said. They included the mishandling of anthrax and bird flu by researchers at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta. Decades-old samples of smallpox were also discovered in a US Food and Drug Administration lab on the campus of the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland.

05:59

Number of Syrian refugees soars to 3 million - UN

Three million Syrians, or half of the country’s population, have been forced to flee their homes by the ongoing military conflict, the UN refugee agency reports. “One in every eight Syrians has fled across the border, fully a million more than a year ago,” the report reads, adding that 6.5 million are displaced within Syria. The refugee crisis has been described by the agency as “the biggest humanitarian emergency of our era.” The majority of refugees have found shelter in Lebanon (1.14 million), Turkey (815,000) and Jordan (608,000). Some 215,000 refugees are in Iraq with the rest in Egypt and other countries.