Ebola Therapy From an Obscure Biotech Firm Is Hurried Along

A Reynolds American plant in Owensboro, Ky., makes ZMapp inside the leaves of tobacco plants, but production is very limited.

Inside special isolation units at an Atlanta hospital on Wednesday, Kent Brantly and Nancy Writebol, the two Americans infected with Ebola in West Africa, appeared to be responding to an experimental medicine devised by an obscure biotechnology company with ties to the Defense Department.

In West Africa, the estimated death toll from the outbreak kept rising, to 932, by the latest official count.

How and why Dr. Brantly and Ms. Writebol received the drug, ZMapp, is one of the many mysteries surrounding what has been called a “secret serum,” including the big one: Does it really work? The Americans are the only two patients who have been treated with the medicine, out of perhaps thousands who might have benefited so far, raising old questions about who does — and does not — have access to medications, including experimental drugs.

In Iran, the Jockeying Behind a Foreign Journalist’s Arrest

Jason Rezaian knew he was being watched. A man on a motorcycle had been following him and his wife for weeks, his colleagues said. The tail was so blatant that Mr. Rezaian, The Washington Post correspondent in Tehran, had even managed to take a picture of the license plate.

Like many foreign journalists accredited by the Iranian authorities, Mr. Rezaian had grown painfully accustomed to being under constant suspicion. Opponents of Iran’s leaders accuse correspondents of soft-pedaling to avoid being expelled, while conservatives inside Iran often call them spies. Some hard-liners even say they should be executed.

2 Senior Khmer Rouge Leaders Are Convicted in Cambodia, Decades After Rule

This combination photo released on Thursday by the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia shows Khieu Samphan, left, and Nuon Chea as their verdicts were delivered.

 Cambodia — A court on Thursday found the two most senior surviving leaders of the Khmer Rouge regime, which brutalized Cambodia during the 1970s, guilty of crimes against humanity and sentenced them to life in prison.

The chief judge, Nil Nonn, said the court found that there had been “a widespread and systematic attack against the civilian population of Cambodia” and that the two former leaders were part of a “joint criminal enterprise” that bore responsibility. They were convicted of murder and extermination, among other crimes.More than 1.7 million people died under Khmer Rouge rule between 1975 and 1979.

Mam Sonando, at a birthday celebration, has been arrested three times over reports on his Beehive Radio program that offended the government.In Cambodia, Voicing the StruggleMARCH 13, 2014
The Lede Blog: The Economist Behind the Khmer RougeJUNE 27, 2011

ISIS Forces Appear to Capture Iraq’s Largest Dam

People carried a wounded victim at the scene of a car bombing outside a Shiite prayer hall on Thursday in Kirkuk.

Sunni militants appeared on Thursday to have captured the Mosul dam, the largest in Iraq, as their advances in the country’s north created an onslaught of refugees and set off fearful rumors in Erbil, the Kurdish regional capital.

An official in the office of Massoud Barzani, the president of the Kurdish regional government, said Thursday afternoon that Kurdish forces, or pesh merga, were still fighting for control of the dam. But several other sources, including residents of the area and a Kurdish security official, said it had already been captured by the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, or ISIS, a potentially catastrophic development for Iraq’s civilian population.

Ebola emergency turns spotlight on experimental drugs

A health worker, wearing personal protection gear, offers water to a woman with Ebola virus disease (EVD), at a treatment centre for infected persons in Kenema Government Hospital, in Kenema, Eastern Province, Sierra Leone in this August, 2014 handout photo provided by UNICEF August 6, 2014.

With hundreds of patients in Africa suffering the devastating effects of Ebola, health experts are scrambling to determine which drugs might offer the best experimental treatment, and researchers are being pressed by government officials to speed up their work.

Three treatments have shown especially promising results in monkeys, the researchers said. One, produced by tiny California biotech Mapp Biopharmaceutical, gained international prominence this week when it was given to two U.S. aid workers who contracted Ebola in West Africa and have since shown signs of improvement.

Others are from Vancouver-based Tekmira Pharmaceuticals and privately-held Profectus BioSciences, of Tarrytown, NY.