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Storm Forecasters Adding Extra Layers to Warnings

The National Weather Service Storm Prediction Center said Monday it will add two threat levels to its weather outlooks so people aren't surprised by really bad storms on days with just a "slight risk" of tornadoes, hail or high winds.

Beginning Oct. 22, forecasters can say whether slight risk days are "enhanced" or "marginal" or just plain "slight." Other categories remain, including "high" and "moderate."

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Lebanese Man Linked to U.N. Deaths Agrees to be Deported

A man suspected in the deaths of two United Nations peacekeepers in 1980 admitted Monday that he entered the United States without proper documentation and agreed to return to his native Lebanon.

Mahmoud Bazzi, 71, wants to return to Lebanon through a route that does not take him through Europe, his attorney Karim Ajluni told immigration court in Detroit.

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Italians Go to School to Learn about Corruption

Is helping a pal win a contract just being friendly? What's wrong with taking the kids to the beach in the office car? And why not linger over lunch at the trattoria if things aren't too hectic at work? These are the kinds of questions that city bureaucrats pondered recently in Florence in what has been billed as Italy's first anti-corruption class for public officials.

Italy, the birthplace of the Mafia, is notorious for its problems with corruption — and these days it's awash with scandals that have tainted some of its most important public works projects. But the lessons in Florence took aim at more mundane problems: the little instances of everyday corruption that many Italians don't even recognize as being wrong.

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Nigeria Confirms One More Ebola Case

Nigeria's Minister of Health, Onyebuchi Chukwu, says that the West African country has one more confirmed Ebola case, a nurse who was treating Patrick Sawyer, the Liberian-American who flew into the country with the disease and died of it last month.

Chukwu told reporters in Abuja, the capital, that the nurse tested positive for the virus over the weekend. That brings the total of confirmed Ebola cases in Nigeria to 10, including two who have already died, Sawyer and another nurse. The other eight cases are being treated in isolation. He said all nine Nigerians were infected through direct contact with Sawyer.

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Many Kenyan Men Flee to Avoid Forced Circumcisions

The circumcision season among Kenya's Bukusu ethnic group brings a festive atmosphere: music, food and free-flowing beer. For the uncircumcised men from other tribes in the area, however, it is not time to party, it's time to flee.

At least 12 men from other tribes have been forcibly circumcised since the start of the circumcisions in August, according to police and local authorities. Others have sought refuge in police stations to avoid the knife's cut.

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Spanish Ebola Patient Gets Experimental Drug

Spain says it has imported a U.S.-made experimental drug to treat a Spanish missionary priest who was evacuated from Liberia last week after testing positive for Ebola.

A Health Ministry statement Monday said the ZMapp drug, made by Mapp Biopharmaceutical Inc. of San Diego, was obtained in Geneva this weekend and brought to Madrid to treat Miguel Pajares.

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'Mad Max' Director 'Heartbroken' over Mel Gibson

"Mad Max" director George Miller was "heartbroken" over Mel Gibson's string of scandals in recent years, and said plans for a new trilogy prompted him to pick a younger actor for revisiting the post-apocalyptic auto action franchise.

The 69-year-old Australian director helped launch Gibson to stardom three decades ago in the trilogy featuring stark desert landscapes, intense car chases and a bleach blonde Tina Turner. Miller had originally hoped to bring Gibson back for a fourth film in the role of Max Rockatansky. But a series of delays led to recasting, with Tom Hardy, 36, stepping into the road warrior's black boots.

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Afghan Actor Links Cultures as U.S. War Interpreter

Fahim Fazli's screen career was beginning to take off, with roles in blockbusters like "Iron Man," when the Afghan-born actor decided it was time to give back to the country that had taken him in after he fled Russian occupation a quarter century earlier.

Staring at his U.S. passport, he wondered: "Do I earn this?"

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25 Years Ago, A Different Ebola Outbreak in U.S.

It had all the makings of a public-health horror story: an outbreak of a wildly deadly virus on the doorstep of the nation's capital, with dozens of lab monkeys dead, multiple people testing positive, and no precedent in this country on how to contain it.

Americans' introduction to the Ebola virus came 25 years ago in an office park near Washington Dulles International Airport, a covert crisis that captivated the public only years later when it formed the basis of a bestselling book.

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Lawmakers Weigh U.S. Role against Islamic Fighters

Islamic militants' growing influence in Iraq and Syria is a threat to Americans, lawmakers from both political parties agreed Sunday even as they sharply disagreed on what role the United States should play in trying to crush them.

President Barack Obama last week approved limited airstrikes against Islamic State fighters, whose rapid rise in June plunged Iraq into its worst crisis since the end of 2011, when U.S. troops withdrew from the country at the end of an unpopular eight-year war. Obama said the current military campaign would be a "long-term project" to protect civilians from the deadly and brutal insurgents.

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