The hospital's explanation
The virus that causes Ebola is not airborne and can only be spread through direct contact with the bodily fluids — blood, sweat, vomit, feces, urine, saliva or semen — of an infected person who is showing symptoms.
Duncan arrived in Dallas on Sept. 20 and fell ill a few days later. After an initial visit to the emergency room at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital, he was sent home. He returned to the hospital two days later, last Sunday, and has been kept in isolation ever since.
The hospital's explanation about what they knew about his travel history has changed in the time since his diagnosis was revealed on Tuesday. Federal health officials have advised hospitals to take a travel history for patients with any Ebola-like symptoms.
When Duncan's diagnosis was first disclosed, the hospital said it wasn't till he came back Sunday that they discovered he had been in West Africa. The hospital later acknowledged that Duncan had told a nurse his travel history on his first visit but said the information hadn't been fully communicated to the whole team.
Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital Dallas
Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital Dallas didn't provide any further details or respond to questions about Duncan's health on Saturday. The hospital has previously said Duncan, who was being kept in isolation, was in serious but stable condition.
Duncan traveled from disease-ravaged Liberia to Dallas last month before he began showing symptoms of the disease that has killed some 3,400 people in West Africa.
Health officials said Saturday that they are still monitoring about 50 people who may have had contact with Duncan for signs of the deadly disease. Among those are nine people who are believed to be at a higher risk. Thus far none have shown symptoms.
Included in the group being monitored are people who later rode in the ambulance that took Duncan to the hospital last Sunday, said Dr. Tom Frieden, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
After first launching strikes
After first launching strikes against IS in Iraq in August, Washington has built a coalition of allies to wage an aerial campaign against the group.
Britain and France have joined the strikes in Iraq and five Arab nations -- Bahrain, Jordan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates -- have taken part in the raids in Syria.
Turkey's parliament last week authorised the government to join the campaign, but so far no plans for military action have been announced.
Ankara warned on Saturday though that it would not hesitate to strike back if IS attacked Turkish troops stationed in a tiny exclave inside Syria containing the tomb of Suleyman Shah, the grandfather of the founder of the Ottoman dynasty Osman I.
The patch of land around the tomb is considered Turkish territory under a 1920s treaty and about 40 lightly armed Turkish soldiers are based there.
Syrian media on Sunday accused Ankara of using the tomb as an excuse to intervene in the country.
Fighting raged
Fighting raged around Kobane as the jihadists pressed their nearly three-week siege of the town, which saw them make some progress late Saturday, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based monitoring group.
The battle was continuing early on Sunday, with shelling echoing from Kobane -- also known as Ain al-Arab -- and fighter jets roaring overhead, an AFP reporter just across the border in Turkey said.
Standing on the roof of a building overlooking the town, 55-year-old Turkish Kurd Mahmut Yildirim said the fight for Kobane was a "do or die battle".
The Observatory, which relies on a network of local sources, said at least 33 IS fighters and 23 of the town's Kurdish defenders were killed on Saturday.
IS began its advance on Kobane on September 16, seeking to cement its grip over a long stretch of the Syria-Turkey border.
The offensive prompted a mass exodus of residents from the town and surrounding countryside, with some 186,000 fleeing into Turkey.
The group has been accused of carrying out widespread atrocities, including attacks on civilians, mass executions, abductions, torture and forcing women into slavery.
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