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As soon as the Ebola outbreak started to spiral out of control in West Africa, Kwan Kew Lai felt obligated to help.

She's a physician who specializes in infectious disease. And for the last decade, she's dedicated herself to volunteering for international health emergencies. She works part-time at one of Harvard's teaching hospital just to have that flexibility.

But finding an organization to deploy her has proved challenging and time-consuming. The group she normally goes out with pulled the one doctor they already had in Liberia and shut down further operations in early July — after two American health workers from different organizations got infected. Lai's group didn't feel they were equipped to treat Ebola patients.

Lai didn't give up. She figured she'd just find another organization to work with. "I just said to myself, 'I can't be sitting here at home,'" she says. "'I really need to be there.'"

So she wrote the World Health Organization. She says she got one email requesting information she'd already given them — then never heard back. She also tried USAID, the agency that's leading the U.S. government's response in West Africa. They've set up an Internet portal for medical workers who want to volunteer.

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The U.S. Ebola Hospitals In Liberia Are Going Up ... Slowly

Medical professionals log in to the portal and enter their experience and contact information.

"Then every day we share the contents of the portal with about 150 non-governmental organizations that are either working in West Africa or supporting health sector work in West Africa," says Juanita Rilling, director of USAID's Center for International Disaster Information.

So far about 2,700 would-be volunteers have signed up. But Lai found that aid groups have been slow to sift through the list. She put in her application in early September. But she's only now hearing back from many groups, including a number she'd already contacted directly in the meantime.

And Lai says she thinks a lot of other volunteer hopefuls have been similarly "floundering," as she puts it.

Lai, at least, has finally found a placement. Nearly three months after she started her search, the aid group International Medical Corp, or IMC, signed her on to help run an Ebola treatment unit in a rural county of Liberia. But here, Lai ran into another issue. Whereas she was ready to leave in as soon as two weeks, IMC told her it would be more like a month and a half.

While IMC ultimately plans to operate four Ebola treatment units, it would be dangerous to ramp up the effort too fast, says Rabih Torbay, the group's senior vice president for international operations.

"We start small just to make sure that patients are coming and that we have all the protocols in place, and the staff are comfortable," he says. "Then we increase the bed capacity."

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On Front Lines Against Ebola, Training A Matter Of Life Or Death

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He adds: "We're not starting all four [treatment units] at the same time because that will be overwhelming."

Many would-be volunteers who have full-time jobs at hospitals are facing yet another obstacle: reluctance from their employers. This includes several dozen medical workers who've told the leadership at Mass General Hospital and an affiliated hospital in Boston that they want to go.

Mass General regards that kind of service as a core part of its mission. They often give incentives for people to volunteer, including time off and some pay.

But that's not on offer this time. The hospital isn't encouraging its employees to go.

"It is a pressing need, there's no doubt," says Miriam Aschkenasy, deputy director of global disaster response at the hospital's Center for Global Health. "But institutionally there's a hesitation because there are a lot of considerations."

Considerations like the amount of time staffers would need to take off. For most disasters two weeks is sufficient. But to work on Ebola, staffers need two weeks just to get trained. Then four weeks to work in an Ebola treatment unit, then three weeks off work to monitor their symptoms — just in case.

Just as importantly, Aschkenasy says, hospital officials worry there's no infrastructure to take care of their staff if they get sick — with anything, not just ebola. And there's no easy way to get them to another country for treatment.

"The institution is primarily responsible for the liability of their staff," she says. "It looks really bad if your staff goes off somewhere and something really bad happens to them."

And yet, she says, she still hopes medical workers across the United States will step up.

health care workers

USAID

ebola

World Health Organization

For the second consecutive year, a wide survey found people in Latin America are the least likely to say they live in countries where women are treated with respect and dignity, ranking below the Middle East and North Africa.

The Gallup survey found a wide range of opinions within Latin America: while 63 percent of respondents in Ecuador said women get respect, only 20 percent said the same in Peru and Colombia.

i i

A Gallup survey found that respect for women was strongest in Asia and Europe, and weakest in the Middle East, North Africa, and Latin America. Gallup hide caption

itoggle caption Gallup

A Gallup survey found that respect for women was strongest in Asia and Europe, and weakest in the Middle East, North Africa, and Latin America.

Gallup

"A median of 35 percent of adults across 22 Latin American countries said their women are treated [with respect] — about half as high as percentages in any other region of the world," Gallup says.

Asia ranked highest in the survey, with 76 percent saying women are respected. Europe wasn't far behind in second place, with 72 percent. The survey was conducted among thousands of people in some 150 countries in 2012 and 2013.

Update at 5 p.m. ET: The U.S. Results

Responding to a request for more information, Gallup says that in the U.S., 77 percent of respondents said women are treated with respect and dignity.

Our original post continues:

Ecuador was the only Latin American nation where more than 60 percent of respondents said women were respected, a result that Gallup's analysts attribute to new laws and awareness campaigns. It's one of just five countries in the region where more than 50 percent said women are treated with respect.

The survey also found an interesting disparity: In some countries, men were far more likely than women to say that women are respected. The widest gap was in Jamaica, where men were more than twice as likely to say women were respected (41 percent to 19 percent). Argentina had the second-largest gap (50 percent to 36 percent).

“Do you believe women in this country are treated with respect and dignity, or not?”

% Yes

% No

% Don't Know

Ecuador

63

35

2

Uruguay

57

38

5

Venezuela

54

43

3

Mexico

54

43

4

Panama

51

45

4

Suriname

47

49

4

Costa Rica

45

49

5

Argentina

43

54

3

Nicaragua

42

57

1

Chile

38

60

3

Haiti

37

59

4

El Salvador

32

63

5

Honduras

31

68

2

Dominican Republic

30

68

1

Jamaica

30

66

4

Bolivia

28

69

3

Paraguay

27

72

1

Brazil

27

69

4

Guatemala

27

72

1

Trinidad & Tobago

25

66

9

Colombia

20

78

2

Peru

20

76

4

Source: Gallup poll conducted in person and by telephone in 2012 and 2013. Margin of error ranged from ±3.5 percentage points to ±5.0 percentage points at the 95% confidence level.

Gallup says its survey was conducted through face-to-face interviews with around 1,000 people in 19 Latin American countries, and 500 in three others.

Latin America

women

polls

Which is the better story: a massive conspiracy to use CIA connections to import cocaine into the United States, or the efforts of one reporter to uncover that intrigue?

Gary Webb, the protagonist of Kill the Messenger, pursued the first topic, and rightly so — even if it did destroy him. Director Michael Cuesta went with the second, probably because it's more manageable.

The result is a taut, watchable thriller that sidesteps some of the more provocative aspects of Webb's mid-1990s reporting. Even viewers who enjoy the movie will probably imagine a half-dozen other, possibly better films that could be spun off from this one.

Peter Landesman adapted his script from Webb's own Dark Alliance and Nick Schou's Kill the Messenger. It follows the reporter, who worked at the San Jose Mercury-News, from a simple drug bust to revelations that shook the country. Well — parts of it, notably the African-American community, which was trying to make sense of the devastating crack epidemic that began in the late 1980s.

Webb's articles, which have been widely attacked but not substantially refuted in many respects, showed that the flow of cocaine was linked to the Reagan administration's search for off-the-books financing of the Contras' war on Nicaragua's leftist government. The mainstream press — notably the Los Angeles Times and the Washington Post — attempted to discredit Webb, basing its stories largely on anonymous intelligence agency sources. As his editors backpedaled, the reporter bailed. His 2004 death was ruled a suicide.

(One of the L.A. Times reporters who led the paper's attempts to discredit Webb's reporting later called his own efforts "overkill," and the Washington Post then-ombudsman Geneva Overholser accused that paper of "misdirected zeal" in its attack on Webb.)

The story essentially begins when Webb (Jeremy Renner) meets a drug dealer's sexy girlfriend (played by the unignorable Paz Vega). She beguiles him with a low-cut dress and a copy of a secret grand-jury transcript that mentions the dealer's CIA connections. For the accused, case closed; for Webb, a world opens.

Soon, he's off to a Nicaraguan prison to meet a former cocaine baron (Andy Garcia) who mentions his pal "Ollie" — Oliver North. Then to Washington, where he meets a National Security Council member (Michael Sheen) who warns him, "some stories are too good to tell."

Webb doesn't believe that, and neither, with some trepidation, do his editors (Mary Elizabeth Winstead and Oliver Platt). At home, Webb's wife (Rosemarie Dewitt) is mostly supportive, although also anxious. To show the spirit of his insurrection, the reporter pounds out his government-rocking 1996 story to the beat of the Clash's "Know Your Rights." (The film's use of music is not subtle.)

Then the counterattack begins, and the movie makes Webb's work seem more vulnerable than it really was. His chastened editors complain, for example, that he didn't record his interviews, but the real-life Webb posted recordings of some interviews online.

Kill the Messenger will be eye-opening for some, but also functions just as a great yarn. Renner delivers his hungriest performance in years, portraying Webb as a man fueled by outrage, but also ego and more than a little machismo. (He rides a motorcycle and is quick to reach for his gun.) The supporting cast, which includes many performers overqualified for their tiny roles, is excellent.

The director, whose credits include episodes of Homeland, is all too comfortable with the cliches of the new scary-Washington genre: When Webb and his NSC source chat, they do so with the U.S. Capitol as their backdrop.

Of course, it's hard to visualize stories about writing and reporting, secret documents and sealed transcripts. Kill the Messenger does a credible if not dazzling job. In fact, the movie is a lot like the reporting that inspired it: a good introduction to a diabolically tangled tale.

A group of hackers, allegedly from Russia, found a fundamental flaw in Microsoft Windows and exploited it to spy on Western governments, NATO, European energy companies and an academic organization in the United States.

That's according to new research from iSight Partners, a Dallas-based cybersecurity firm.

Last month, the U.S. and the U.K. were preparing to meet at a NATO summit to talk about Ukraine. Emails were flying back and forth. Different experts were offering to talk at the conference. And in the midst of all the digital traffic, hackers jumped into the conversation.

Patrick McBride, a spokesman with iSight, says the hackers targeted specific officials using a well-known kind of attack called spear-phishing. Hackers would craft a message with a PowerPoint document attached. For example, they'd say, "We'd like to be involved in the conference."

And when an unknowing recipient opened the corrupted PowerPoint, the file was exploited to load a piece of malware onto the computer that the attacker could then use later to "exfiltrate documents," McBride says.

The hacker group, dubbed the "Sandworm Team," allegedly pulled emails and documents off computers from NATO, Ukrainian government groups, Western European government officials, and energy sector and telecommunications firms.

In the mad dash to grab information, McBride says, the hackers got a little sloppy and dropped hints about their identity. He says they're Russian, "but we can't pinpoint if they work for the Russian government or work in a particular department in the government."

The Russian embassy did not immediately respond to NPR's inquiry. Microsoft says that Tuesday, it's patching the security flaw so that PowerPoint and other Office products can't be exploited again in the same way.

Lonnie Benavides, a researcher with the cybersecurity services firm DocuSign, says if the findings are true, they represent an interesting turn of events. "Typically Russians stick to making money, stick to stealing credit cards and identities as far as trends go," he says.

Federal authorities are investigating the role of Russian hackers in the major breach against JPMorgan Chase.

Benavides says Russia provides an enabling environment for cyber offenses — whether it's crime like stealing credit cards, or espionage to steal state secrets — because the country has some very talented hackers who do not get prosecuted.

"I'm certainly not seeing waves of people that are being put in jail, in order to send a message, in order for this to stop," he says.

Even though the iSight report points to code that was in the Russian language, Benavides would not jump to the conclusion that the hacker group is state-sponsored or even from Russia. "There's an attribution problem," he says.