Midday Roundup: CDC scrambles to keep up with Ebola

On the move. The second nurse from a Dallas hospital who tested positive for the Ebola virus has been transferred to a hospital in Atlanta for treatment. Though the nurse was being monitored after having cared for patient Thomas Eric Duncan, she took a weekend trip to visit her family in Cleveland. She boarded a Frontier Airlines flight to come home Monday while she had a low-grade fever, potentially exposing fellow passengers to the virus. Though an official from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention cleared Vinson to board the flight, CDC Director Tom Frieden said she should not have been traveling that day. He added the risk to fellow passengers was small because the woman, identified as 29-year-old Amber Vinson, was not vomiting or bleeding. (Ebola only transfers through the body fluids of a person with symptoms.) “We will, from this moment forward, ensure that no other individual who is being monitored for exposure undergoes travel in any way other than controlled movement,” Frieden said. Healthcare workers plan to transfer Nina Pham, the first nurse diagnosed with Ebola in the United States, from Dallas to a National Institutes of Health facility in Bethesda, Md., for care.

Meanwhile, the virus has appeared in the last unaffected district of Sierra Leone in West Africa.

Official acknowledgement. Federal prosecutors this week indicted a man for planning and participating in the 2012 attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya. The indictment details how Ahmed Abu Khattala, a member of a group of extremist militants, planned the attack because he believed the CIA was using the consulate as an outpost for collecting intelligence. It was the first time the United States government has acknowledged in open court documents that the Benghazi attack was orchestrated by terrorists and was not a spontaneous, violent response by an angry mob, as the administration initially claimed. Khattala was arrested in Libya earlier this year.

Highs and lows. All major stock indexes were down significantly on Wednesday, driven largely by poor economic data. A retail sales report from the Commerce Department showed consumer spending faltered in September, down 0.3 percent from August. European markets dropped as well. But the U.S. markets were relatively stable this morning, and the economy got some good news from a report showing applications for unemployment benefits are at a 14-year-low.

Gone girl. Toy company Mattel Inc. is struggling due to the plummeting sales of Barbie dolls. Mattel reported Thursday that Barbie sales fell 21 percent for the three months ending Sept. 30, even sharper than the 15 percent drop in the second quarter. The company’s stocks have declined about 38 percent so far this year. As Barbie’s popularity has waned, retailers had to figure out what to do with excess inventory from last year’s holiday season. So if your children are into Barbies, now is a great time to get them on clearance—before they start to disappear all together.

The Associated Press and WORLD News Group’s Warren Cole Smith contributed to this report.