Midday Roundup: Nurses head home from Ebola treatment, quarantine

Treated and quarantined. The second Dallas nurse diagnosed with the Ebola virus after treating a patient who died of the deadly disease will be released from the hospital today. Doctors at Emory University Hospital in Atlanta announced this morning that Amber Vinson is virus-free. Her co-worker, Nina Pham, left a hospital in Maryland last week after also being declared cured from Ebola. The two women are the only American healthcare workers to catch the disease while treating patients in the United States. But doctors and nurses who come home after traveling to West Africa to help fight the Ebola epidemic continue to face extra scrutiny and fear. Although New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo modified his quarantine policy after the White House suggested it might be a bit harsh, he defended the need to demand that those returning from the Ebola hot zone be confined at home for 21 days. New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie issued a similar edict. Kaci Hickox, the nurse who spent part of the weekend quarantined in a tent outside a New Jersey hospital plans to sue. She was released after 24 hours and continued on her journey home to Maine. Health officials there have asked her to stay at home for 21 days, a restriction she plans to fight.

Mopping up? ISIS militants battling to establish an Islamic caliphate in Syria and Iraq have released a new propaganda video featuring British journalist John Cantlie. In the video, which is styled like a news report, Cantlie says the militants have taken the town of Kobani on the border between Syria and Turkey. Cantlie scoffs at Western reports that U.S.-led airstrikes have created any setbacks for the militants, who are in the process of “mopping up” in street-to-street combat in the city. Despite the video’s claims, Kurdish fighters are ramping up efforts to drive the militants out of the border town. Iraqi officials announced today that about 150 Kurdish Peshmerga fighters will fly from Erbil, Iraq, to Turkey to join the fight. Weapons also are on their way to the town. Cantlie was taken hostage with American reporter James Foley in November 2012. This is the second time he’s appeared in an ISIS propaganda video.

Series offense. A Boston jury has convicted Robel Phillipos of lying to federal investigators looking into his friend Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s involvement in last year’s Boston Marathon bombing. The charges carry a maximum combined sentence of 16 years. Phillipos, 21, eventually admitted to going to Tsarnaev’s apartment with two other friends and watching as they collected evidence that might incriminate him, including bomb-making materials and his laptop. The three men then dumped the items in a trash container. Phillipos’ defense team claimed he was too high to have made a legally binding confession.

Minor surgery. South Korean intelligence officials say North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un disappeared from public view for more than 40 days because he was recovering from ankle surgery. In the days leading up to his disappearance, Kim was seen limping at several public events. A foreign doctor, whose nationality was not given, flew to North Korea in September or October to remove a cyst from the dictator’s foot, a member of the National Intelligence Service told South Korean legislators. Kim’s conspicuous absence sparked worldwide speculation that he might be gravely ill or have been forced from office in a secret coup. He reappeared in public on Oct. 14, using a cane.