More than a dozen states plan to cancel health care policies not in
compliance with ObamaCare in the coming weeks, affecting thousands of
people just before the midterm elections.
"It looks like several hundred thousand people across the country
will receive notices in the coming days and weeks," said Jim Capretta of
the Ethics and Public Policy Center.
The policies are being canceled because states that initially granted
a reprieve at the request of President Obama are no longer willing to
do so.
In coming weeks, 13 states and the District of Columbia plan to
cancel such policies, which generally fall out of compliance with the
Affordable Care Act because they don’t offer the level of coverage the
law requires.
Virginia will be hardest hit, with 250,000 policies expected to be canceled.
And because federal law requires a 60-day notice of any plan changes,
voters will be notified no later than November 1, right before the Nov.
4 midterms.
Many of those forced out of their current plans and into ObamaCare
may not be able to keep their doctors. They also could face higher
deductibles and out-of-pocket expenses, making ObamaCare an election
issue on the eve of voting.
Obama had originally unequivocally promised that underhis health care plan, everyone could keep their doctors and plans.
In 2009, he told the American Medical Association, "If you like your
doctor, you will be able to keep your doctor. Period.If you like your
health care plan, you will be able to keep your health care plan.
Period.No one will take it away. No matter what."
The president later was forced to admit that any plan without the
additional benefits required under ObamaCare faced cancellation.
But that unleashed a nasty political backlash, forcing him to back
down and call for states and insurers to extend those policies forthree
more years.
Some said he didn’t have much choice. "There were some five or six
million people who were at stake here and the federal exchange was in no
condition to even process a few hundred thousand people much less
millions," said Joe Antos of the American Enterprise Institute.
Many states flatly refused to extend and now comes the new round of states that plan to cancel policies.
A Wisconsin reporter says he was blocked Tuesday from covering a
Democratic rally in Madison headlined by first lady Michelle Obama -- a
week after another reporter claimed she was told at a similar event in
Milwaukee not to speak with people in the crowd.
The latest incident has raised concerns from free press groups.
The reporter, Adam Tobias, works for Wisconsin Reporter -- the
Wisconsin arm of the news site Watchdog.org. He was trying to attend a
rally for Democratic gubernatorial candidate Mary Burke and claimed to
have submitted his request for credentials on Saturday, "shortly after
the Burke campaign sent a news release outlining the logistics."
But the reporter was told he could not attend, and videotaped his encounter with a spokeswoman for the state Democratic Party on Monday.
Spokeswoman Melissa Baldauff initially did not give a reason for
denying entry to Tobias. But when the reporter told her they would write
a story on press being turned away, she suggested Watchdog.org was not
part of the press.
"Well, you're not the press though, so, thanks," Baldauff said, closing the door.
Wisconsin Reporter is one of more than two-dozen state news
organizations under the umbrella of the Franklin Center for Government
and Public Integrity.
Franklin Center President Jason Stverak blasted the state party for
preventing the site from covering Tuesday's rally -- one of two Michelle
Obama was headlining for Democratic candidates.
"The problem with our political process is a lack of transparency,
and the most recent move by the Democratic Party of Wisconsin is an
affront to free speech and the freedom of the press," he said in a
statement. "Having said that, I think we understand what's at work here:
Wisconsin Reporter has broken some of the most important stories in the
state, not all of them comfortable for the Democratic Party leadership.
We will continue to report the truth, and we won't be deterred by
petty, partisan politics."
According to Watchdog.org, free press groups voiced concern about the
decision. "It seems to me that Wisconsin Reporter ought to be able to
attend the event and report on it," Mark Pitsch, president of the local
chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists, said.
The incident comes after a reporter with the Milwaukee Journal
Sentinel claimed last week that she had an encounter with a White House
aide during a separate Michelle Obama rally for Mary Burke.
Meg Kissinger, a reporter for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, posted
on Facebook that she was "creeped out" after she was told by a White
House aide and an aide for Burke not to speak with people attending the
event.
"This is what reporters do in America: we speak to people," she
wrote. "At least that's how I've been doing things -- at all kinds of
political events -- since 1979."
Kissinger later said on Twitter that she did not comply with the
aides' rule, and spoke with "plenty" of crowd members. Her report from
the event contained interviews with multiple crowd members.
EXCLUSIVE: The U.S.
State Department has been handing over billions of dollars in grants for
foreign projects -- ranging from cultural exchanges to “climate
change” activities -- without adequate oversight or adequate assessment
of the risks involved, and sometimes without knowing whether the money
was actually spent, according to the department’s Inspector General.
Moreover, these money-management problems have been going on for
years, despite specific warnings, according to the watchdog IG’s office.
It says it has designated State’s oversight of grants, contracts and
“interagency agreements” (where State spends money on another
department’s behalf) as one of the department’s “major management
challenges” every year since 2008.
In a special “management alert” issued last month, the IG’s office
reports that 61 out of 156 of all the watchdog’s inspections since 2010
of the State Department’s widely varying branches have found “specific
grant-management deficiencies,” such as lack of oversight, absent or
incomplete documentation, or a lack of proper final closeout for the
projects.
The overall implication of the alert is that State’s top managers,
especially in the departments charged with administering the
bureaucracy, have not been doing anywhere near enough to clean up the
longstanding mess.
The alert cites around 20 critical audits and inspections in the
past two years alone -- not to mention a previous management alert last
March on “contract file management deficiencies,” which identified some
$6 billion worth of contracts where files were “incomplete or could not
be located at all.”
The State Department's top managers have not been doing anywhere near enough to clean up the longstanding mess
State’s outright bestowals of grant money to individuals and
organizations, as opposed to its broader aid and development programs,
has been growing: from $1.6 billion in fiscal 2012, to $1.8 billion
last year. The number of individual grants, meanwhile, rose from about
14,000 to 16,800 over the same period.
Grant-making has been on the rise in part because the State
Department has been moving, often with much fanfare, to rely more on
private individuals and non-governmental organizations to carry out a
wide variety of social, humanitarian and environmental tasks -- often
because of the corruption risks and inefficiencies associated with
governments in developing countries.
Spending on such new areas of business as “climate change” has also accelerated, with warnings of attendant widespread oversight problems getting flagged two years ago.
One of the main reasons for the continuing mess: the number of State
Department officers overseeing the cash gusher has been nowhere near up
to the task.
Only some 570 grant overseers work at State, with more than 500 of
them abroad. In many cases they are under-trained, and in virtually all
cases overworked -- the alert cites one overseer who is managing 500
grants -- and they usually perform their oversight part-time while doing
other Foreign Service jobs. Turnover among the overseers is high,
which, the alert notes, “hampers the development of institutional
memory.”
The continuing bureaucratic inaction, after numerous warnings about
the lack of proper care for a pile of cash that by definition is
bestowed without formal contracts, is the major reason behind the
special warning sounded by the department’s aggressive new Inspector
General, Steve Linick, who was appointed just more than a year ago.
Management alerts, an innovation under Linick, don’t break new ground
but are intended to underline the “serious nature” of the issues
involved, and flag the topmost reaches of the State Department about
problems.
The current management alert is essentially a lengthy compilation of
lapses, poor practices and inattention outlined in previous audits and
inspections that have failed to spur managers into changing the
situation, at least to the Inspector General’s satisfaction.
This particular alert goes further, by also citing a series of
reports from the independent Government Accountability Office, or GAO,
which run along similar lines.
In the most recent GAO report, published in July, the outside
watchdog noted that a numbing array of State Department offices were
authorized to hand out grants -- some 27 offices and bureaus, not to
mention a wide variety of consulates and embassies.
Much of the cash, however, was spent by fewer than a dozen bureaus
and agencies, including the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs
($397 million in 2012), the Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration
($352.6 million) and an office in the Bureau of Administration ($393
million).
GAO did not investigate all of the spending, but examined a sampling
of about $172 million worth of grants and similar hand-outs by State in
fiscal 2012. The result was not reassuring.
GAO’s bottom line: A combination of poor and often missing
documentation and “inadequate” analysis of the risks involved in handing
out the cash meant that State “cannot be certain that its oversight is
adequate or that it is using its limited oversight resources
effectively.”
CLICK HERE FOR THE GAO REPORT
For example, GAO noted that none of the State Department
risk-assessment checklists for evaluating grants mention corruption as a
factor for evaluating whether to award a grant, even though side notes
in a grant file might mention that corruption was rampant in the country
where the money was being handed over.
Since corruption wasn’t on the official checklist, any observations
about it did not factor into the overall determination of the riskiness
of the grant -- nor did they show up “anywhere else in the grant file
documentation,” the GAO observed.
Even when grant recipients themselves had bad records for prior
financial mismanagement, the GAO report noted, grants were awarded
“without addressing how the risk could be mitigated.” In many cases,
over plans for how to monitor grants both for performance and for
financial probity were simply missing.
The Inspector General’s alert found many of the same things in its
own review of the inspection record. Only 6 of 37 files examined to see
if they contained proper documentation to close out a grant award --
meaning that the project and the money had been properly accounted for
-- had anything like the proper paperwork, the alert discloses.
Even worse, out of 60 sample files requested for inspection, “10 had
been prematurely destroyed, 3 were missing and one was mislabeled.” In
another State Department office, intended to monitor and combat
trafficking in persons, more than 280 grant awards “could not be closed
out because of missing documentation.”
In all, the alert notes, “since 2013, nine inspections have identified grant documentation deficiencies.”
The lack of paperwork, the alert emphasizes -- citing its previous
management alert on contracts for emphasis -- “creates conditions
conducive to fraud, where corrupt individuals may attempt to conceal
evidence of illicit behavior by omitting key documents from grant
files.”
CLICK HERE FOR THE ALERT
What to do about it? Given the growing size of the problem, the
Inspector General’s office saw the solution as relatively simple,
starting with hiring more people to watch over the money.
The watchdog’s recommendations, addressed to State’s Under Secretary
of State for Management, Patrick Kennedy, and Assistant Secretary of
State for Administration, Joyce A. Barr, also called for more training,
and a quality-control program that would sample the paperwork on grant
projects to see that it was properly completed.
The results of the sampling, the alert said, should be fed back to
the bureaus that handed out the cash, to ensure that overseers “are held
accountable” for their performance.
The State Department’s response was also simple. All of the alert’s
recommendations have been accepted. What that means, however, will take a
while to tell.
To ensure that the number of grant overseers increases appropriately,
the State Department says it will create a portentiously-named Grants
Human Capital Plan to match spending with oversight capability on a
department-wide basis --something it has never done before.
The new plan, a State Department spokesman told Fox News, “will
provide information needed by bureaus to request staff and funding to
implement their individual needs, and allow the department’s management
to review individual bureau requirements in an overall context.”
The grants planning mechanism will start grinding into action in fiscal 2015.
The department also has developed a “mandatory internal control
documentation checklist” to be completed before any grant can be closed
out, and created a new job -- the File Audit Coordinator -- to audit its
treatment grant files.
Additional staffing will be “considered as needed,” the spokesman
told Fox News -- not exactly an enthusiastic affirmation of the
Inspector General’s concern about the size and importance of the State
Department’s cash giveaway problems.
George Russell is editor-at-large of Fox News and can be found on Twitter: @GeorgeRussell or on Facebook.com/George Russell
The pilot of an air tanker fighting a wildfire near California's Yosemite National Park died Tuesday when the aircraft crashed.
California Fire spokeswoman Alyssa Smith said in a statement that
crews reached the wreckage several hours after the crash and confirmed
the pilot's death. The pilot's identity was not released because all
immediate family had not yet been notified.
"This crash underscores just how inherently dangerous wildland
firefighting is and the job is further compounded this year by extreme
fire conditions," Chief Ken Pimlott, Cal Fire director, said in the
statement. "We have secured the crash site and will be cooperating with
the NTSB on their investigation."
Yosemite spokesman Scott Gediman told the Associated Press that the
plane went down at approximately 4:30 p.m. local time less than a mile
from the western entrance to the park.
California Highway Patrol Sgt. Chris Michael said he was stopping
traffic along state Route 140 at the west entrance to the park about
4:24 p.m. when he witnessed the crash.
"I heard a large explosion, I looked up on the steep canyon wall and
saw aircraft debris was actually raining down the side of the mountain
after the impact," he told The Associated Press by telephone. "It hit
the steep side of the canyon wall. It appeared from the direction he was
going, he was trying to make a drop down the side of the canyon when he
hit the canyon wall."
The fire was spreading up the canyon wall, and it appeared the pilot
was trying to lay down fire retardant to stop its progress, Michael
said.
"It most definitely did disintegrate on impact," he said. "It was nothing. I didn't see anything but small pieces."
Pieces of the aircraft landed on the highway and came close to
hitting fire crews on the ground nearby, but no one on the ground was
injured, he said.
"It came pretty close to hitting them, but they were far enough away that it missed them, fortunately," he said.
The airplane, manufactured in 2001, is an S-2T air tanker, which is
flown by a single pilot and normally has no other crew members. The
tanker uses twin turbine engines and is capable of carrying 1,200
gallons of fire retardant, said another CalFire spokesman, Daniel
Berlant.
Don Talend, of West Dundee, Illinois, said he also may have seen the
plane go down. Talend and friends were vacationing at the park when they
stopped to snap some photographs of the fire, which was several miles
away.
The plane "disappeared into the smoke and you heard a boom," he told The Associated Press by phone.
"I couldn't believe what I saw," Talend said. "There was actually a
ranger there behind us. ... He had a look of disbelief on his face."
The pilot is an employee of DynCorp., a contractor that provides the
pilots for all CalFire planes and maintenance for the department's
aircraft, California department of Forestry and Fire Protection
spokeswoman Janet Upton said.
The fire had broken out about 90 minutes earlier Tuesday near Route
140, which leads into the heart of the park. It had grown to about 130
acres by Tuesday evening and forced the evacuation of several dozen
homes near the community of Foresta.
FAA records show the plane is registered to the U.S. Forest Service, which originally provided the plane to CalFire, Upton said.
The last time a CalFire air tanker crashed was in 2001, when two
tankers collided while fighting a fire in Mendocino County, killing both
pilots, Berlant said.
The agency had another plane crash in 2006, when a fire battalion
chief and a pilot were killed while observing a fire in a two-seat plane
in Tulare County.
The White House is growing more frustrated with Turkish inaction
against Islamic State fighters as Kurdish forces desperately battle to
keep the Syrian border town of Kobani from falling into militants'
hands, according to a published report.
The New York Times quoted a senior administration official who
slammed the Ankara government for "dragging its feet to act to prevent a
massacre less than a mile from its border."
"After all the fulminating about Syria’s humanitarian catastrophe,
they’re inventing reasons not to act to avoid another catastrophe," the
official continued. "This isn’t how a NATO ally acts while hell is
unfolding a stone’s throw from their border."
The Times reported that Secretary of State John Kerry had spoken with
his Turkish counterpart Mevlut Cavusoglu and Prime Minister Ahmet
Davutoglu multiple times over the prior 72 hours in an effort to resolve
tensions between the two sides.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said the U.S.-led coalition's
air campaign launched last month would not be enough to halt the Islamic
State group's advance. Turkish troops have been massed near the border
since the assault on Kobani began, but have so far not taken an
offensive posture.
"Kobani is about to fall," Erdogan told Syrian refugees in the
Turkish border town of Gaziantep, according to The Associated Press. The
Turkish president called for greater cooperation with the Syrian
opposition, which is fighting both the extremists and forces loyal to
Syrian President Bashar Assad.
"We asked for three things: one, for a no-fly zone to be created;
two, for a secure zone parallel to the region to be declared; and for
the moderate opposition in Syria and Iraq to be trained and equipped."
The Times reported that President Obama prefers that Erdogan not
tether the fight against Islamic State, commonly known as ISIS, to the
effort to overthrow Assad. U.S. officials also tell the paper that
Erdogan's demand for a no-fly zone against the Syrian Air Force is
meaningless on the grounds that the airstrikes have created a no-fly
zone in all but name.
On Tuesday, U.S. Central Command said that five strikes against ISIS
positions and hardware near Kobani had been carried out over the past
two days. The BBC reported
that the strikes represented the most sustained coalition action in the
area since the airstrikes began Sept. 23. A BBC reporter said that
fighting in the city had died down Tuesday afternoon, and only
occasional gunfire could be heard. Reuters reported
clashes on the north and northeastern edges of Kobani, with one Kurdish
official saying ISIS was using heavy weapons and shells to hit the
city.
Also Tuesday, the United Nations envoy for Syria issued a call for "concrete action" to prevent "humanitarian tragedies."
"The world has seen with its own eyes the images of what happens when
a city in Syria or in Iraq is overtaken by the terrorist group called
ISIS or Da'esh: massacres, humanitarian tragedies, rapes, horrific
violence," Staffan De Mistura said. "The international community cannot
sustain another city falling under ISIS.
"The world, all of us, will regret deeply if ISIS is able to take
over a city which has defended itself with courage but is close to not
being able to do so," De Mistura added. "We need to act now."
The public perception of embattled running back Adrian Peterson —
already banned from NFL activities following allegations of child abuse —
has taken another hit as allegations surface that the former Minnesota
Viking’s charity had financial improprieties.
The Minneapolis Star Tribune reports
that Peterson was the center of an incident in an Eden Prairie hotel
room that ended with a rape accusation and a lengthy police
investigation that did not end in criminal charges. But, according to a
38-page police report on the 2011 incident, two relatives, including
Peterson’s brother, a minor, were involved in a night of drinking and
sex that Peterson’s relative told police was paid for using a company
credit card for Peterson’s All Day, Inc.
“As the night wore on, the report says, one woman who said she knew
Peterson previously became upset when she saw him having sex with
another woman,” the newspaper reports. “She started an argument that
lasted at least an hour. According to the report, when she told him that
she was ‘emotionally attached to him,’ Peterson reminded her that he
was engaged to another woman and had a baby.”
Prosecutors chose not to file charges following the rape accusation, which was first reported by TMZ on Sept. 26.
Peterson, who has fathered at least six children with six different
women, and those children live in at least three states — Minnesota,
Georgia and Texas — according to court records reviewed by the Star
Tribune. In a 2013 interview, Peterson declined to say how many children
he had.
“I know the truth,” he told ESPN. “I’m comfortable with that knowledge.”
Peterson’s indictment has also led to increased scrutiny of his
charity, which focuses on at-risk children, particularly girls. The
charity’s 2011 financial report showed $247,064 in total revenue, and
listed just three organizations that received money. A fourth outlay,
titled simply “clothing for needy families,” listed “unknown” for the
number of recipients, the newspaper reports.
In 2009, the charity said its largest gift, $70,000, went to Straight
From the Heart Ministries in Laurel, Md. But Donna Farley, president
and founder of the Maryland organization, told the newspaper it never
received any money from Peterson’s foundation.
“There have been no outside [contributions] other than people in my
own circle,” Farley told the newspaper. “Adrian Peterson — definitely
not.”
Furthermore, the East Texas Food Bank, based in Tyler, said it
received money from Peterson’s foundation in 2009, although the
foundation’s tax filing for that year listed just one donation to a food
bank — the North Texas Food Bank, based in Dallas.
Colleen Brinkmann, the chief philanthropy officer for the North Texas
Food Bank, told the Star Tribune that while her agency partnered with
Dallas Cowboys players, she could not recall ever getting money from the
All Day Foundation.
“Was he with the Cowboys before?” she asked of Peterson. “I’m not a football fan.”
Peterson is scheduled to make his first court appearance Wednesday.
The Supreme Court on Monday turned away appeals from five states
looking to prohibit gay marriage, effectively legalizing same-sex
marriage in those states and likely others -- but also leaving the issue
unresolved nationally.
The justices rejected appeals from Indiana, Oklahoma, Utah, Virginia
and Wisconsin. The court's order immediately ends delays on gay marriage
in those states.
Couples in six other states -- Colorado, Kansas, North Carolina,
South Carolina, West Virginia and Wyoming -- also should be able to get
married in short order. Those states would be bound by the same
appellate rulings that were put on hold pending the Supreme Court's
review. That would make same-sex marriage legal in 30 states and the
District of Columbia.
In Utah, Gov. Gary Herbert said he was "surprised" and "disappointed"
by Monday's development. But the Republican governor said that "while I
continue to believe that the states do have the right to define
marriage and create laws regarding marriage, ultimately we are a nation
of laws, and we here in Utah will uphold the law."
With no other state cases currently pending before the court, the
decision to reject the appeals means the justices -- for now -- will not
be considering the question of same-sex marriage nationwide.
Experts and advocates on both sides of the issue believed the
justices would step in and decide gay marriage cases this term. The
justices have an obligation to settle an issue of such national
importance, not abdicate that responsibility to lower court judges, the
advocates said. Opting out of hearing the cases leaves those lower court
rulings in place.
Evan Wolfson, president of Freedom to Marry, called on the high court
to "finish the job." Wolfson said the court's "delay in affirming the
freedom to marry nationwide prolongs the patchwork of state-to-state
discrimination and the harms and indignity that the denial of marriage
still inflicts on too many couples in too many places."
Ed Whelan of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, an opponent of
same-sex marriage, also chastised the court for its "irresponsible
denial of review in the cases."
However, several other lower-court cases still are percolating and eventually could make their way to the Supreme Court.
Two other appeals courts, in Cincinnati and San Francisco, could
issue decisions any time in same-sex marriage cases. Judges in the
Cincinnati-based 6th Circuit who are weighing pro-gay marriage rulings
in Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio and Tennessee, appeared more likely to rule
in favor of state bans than did the 9th Circuit judges in San Francisco,
who are considering Idaho and Nevada restrictions on marriage.
The situation, meanwhile, was changing rapidly Monday in the states affected by the court's latest announcement:
-- Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, a Republican, said the fight against
same-sex marriage "is over" in Wisconsin. "With the Supreme Court's
announcement today, it is clear that the position of the court of
appeals at the federal level is the law of the land and we're going to
go forward enacting it."
-- Virginia Attorney General Mark Herring, a Democrat, said marriage
licenses could start to be issued to same-sex couples as early as Monday
afternoon.
-- In North Carolina, lawyers for same-sex couples said they planned
to ask a judge Monday to overturn the state's gay marriage ban.
-- In Oklahoma, the clerk in the largest county said he would await a
formal order from the Denver-based 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals
before he begins issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples. That
court had placed its ruling striking down the state ban on hold.
It takes just four of the nine justices to vote to hear a case, but
it takes a majority of at least five for an eventual ruling. Monday's
opaque order did not indicate how the justices voted on whether to hear
the appeals.
A Spanish nurse who treated two missionaries for Ebola at a Madrid
hospital has tested positive for the virus, Spain's health minister said
Monday.
It is the first known transmission of the current outbreak of the disease outside West Africa.
The female nurse was part of the medical team that treated priests
Manuel GarcÃa Viejo, who died on Sept. 26, and Miguel Pajares, who died
Aug. 12, at the hospital Carlos III de Madrid.
The infection was confirmed by two separate tests, Health Minister
Ana Mato said after an emergency meeting held Monday afternoon in
Madrid.
According to El PaÃs newspaper
,
the woman checked herself Monday morning in a hospital in Alcorcón, a
suburb southwest of Madrid, with a high fever. The identity of the
woman, who according to El Pais is 44 years and has no children, has not been released.
Health officials quoted by the paper say 30 people are currently under surveillance, and it is still being determined who she has been in contact with.
Nobody apart from the woman is in quarantine at the moment.
They said the woman went on vacation after GarcÃa Viejo’s death, but
did not disclose the destination. She led a normal life in recent weeks
and her only symptoms were a fever and fatigue, Antonio Alemany, Madrid
director of primary health care, said in the news conference.
"We do not know yet what could have failed, we are investigating the mechanism of infection," he said.
The World Health Organization confirmed there has not been a previous
transmission outside West Africa in the current outbreak. WHO
spokeswoman Fadela Chaib told The Associated Press that so far there
have only been confirmed cases in West Africa and the United States, and
no known transmission outside West Africa. The organization is awaiting
official notification of the case from Spanish authorities.
The woman will be transferred for treatment to Madrid's Carlos III hospital, where she has been a nurse for 15 years.
The virus that causes Ebola spreads only through direct contact with
the bodily fluids of an infected person who is showing symptoms.
Spanish authorities said they were investigating how the nurse became
infected at a hospital with modern health care facilities and special
equipment for handling cases of deadly viruses.
More than 370 health workers in West Africa have become infected in
this outbreak, and more than half of those have died. Doctors and nurses
there have worked under difficult conditions, treating patients in
overflowing wards, sometimes without proper protection. But even under
ideal conditions, experts warn that caring for Ebola patients always
involves a risk.
WHO estimates the latest Ebola outbreak has killed more than 3,400 people.
