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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.

Goats and Soda

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."

Goats and Soda

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

Training Is Key In Lowering Risk For Health Care Workers Treating Ebola Oct. 12, 2014

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.

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World Health Organization

NPR producer Rebecca Hersher has reported on Ebola from Liberia for the past two weeks. She's just returned to the U.S. via Brussels and into Dulles — the same route flown by Thomas Eric Duncan, the Liberian national who went on to Dallas, where he was diagnosed with the virus. As her tweets reveal, she was screened. Sort of.

[View the story "Airport Screening from Liberia to Washington, D.C." on Storify]

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Hong Kong's police department says it is investigating reports of excessive use of force against pro-democracy demonstrators today following some of the most intense clashes since the protests ramped up last month.

As we reported earlier, in the past 24 hours "police [have] played a game of whack-a-mole with protesters. They cleared streets only to have protesters erect roadblocks elsewhere." They used pepper spray and batons, dragging off dozens of protesters who sought to set up roadblocks around an underpass near government headquarters, in the heart of the city's financial district. Authorities made 45 arrests for "unlawful assembly."

According to The South China Morning Post: "Most of the 45 Occupy [Central] protesters who were arrested during clashes around Lung Wo Road [in Admiralty] are expected to be bailed out, according to their lawyers."

Protesters had also gathered in the densely populated Mong Kok area of Kowloon.

Mong Kok protesters sitting down blocking Nathan Road, a hugely busy Kowloon thoroughfare. Quite a sight #HongKong pic.twitter.com/IKOajO79ID

— Katy Lee (@kjalee) September 28, 2014

The BBC reports:

"Local TV showed images of officers beating a handcuffed protester on Wednesday in some of the worst clashes since the protests began.

"Hong Kong's security chief said the officers had been 'temporarily removed from their current duties.'"

The Associated Press says:

"Outrage over their aggressive tactics exploded after local TV showed officers taking the protester around a dark corner and kicking him repeatedly on the ground. It's unclear what provoked the attack. Local Now TV showed him splashing water on officers beforehand.

"'Hong Kong police have gone insane today, carrying out their own punishment in private,' said pro-democracy lawmaker Lee Cheuk-yan. 'Hong Kong's values and its rule of law really have been completely destroyed by police chiefs.'"

"Police spokesman Steve Hui said seven officers who were involved have been temporarily reassigned, and that authorities will carry out an impartial investigation."

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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.