The Epidemic: A second Texas healthcare worker who treated the Liberian man who died of Ebola in Dallas has tested positive for the virus. The new patient has not been identified.

   The Centers for Disease Control, admitting it was slow off the blocks on the Texas case, now says it will send an emergency response team to any American hospital that confirms an Ebola infection.

As the outbreak in West Africa grows, and grows more frightening, the World health Organization announced that the death rate has reached 70 percent. The organization previously said it was 50 percent. The WHO’s assistant director-general Dr. Bruce Aylward also said the rate of infection could rise from 1,000 a week to 10,000 per week within two months.

The official death toll has risen to 4,447 and Aylward said that if the response to the epidemic is not stepped up, “a lot more people will die.”

Here in the US, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan announced that they are giving $25 million to the CDC Foundation to help fight Ebola.

Battle for Texas: The Supreme Court has blocked a lower court ruling that led to the closing of all but seven of the abortion clinics in Texas. Thirteen clinics will be allowed to reopen. The Court vacated the portion of a Texas law that requires abortion clinics to meet the same standards as surgery centers, and for doctors to have admitting privileges at local hospitals. Legislators who voted for the law said it was to protect women’s health, but it is actually a veiled campaign to close abortion clinics.

ChemWeps: The NY Times reports that the government and military kept it a secret that American soldiers were injured by chemical weapons during the occupation of Iraq. US and Iraqi soldiers cleared about 5,000 chemical artillery shells, aerial bombs, and rockets. At least 17 Americans and seven Iraqis were exposed and injured. The Times says that because of the secrecy the injured soldiers were denied proper medical care and recognition of their injuries. But of greater concern now is that many of the weapons were found in areas now controlled by the Islamic State.

Obituary: David Greenglass, the spy who betrayed his own sister, Ethel Rosenberg, died quietly somewhere in New York on July 1 at age 92. Greenglass, a former army technician who spent 10 years in prison, admitted that he had passed nuclear secrets to his brother-in-law and sister, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. Their trial and 1953 execution were one of the notorious incidents of the Cold War. Greenglass later admitted that he lied about his sister’s involvement to save his own wife. He lived under an assumed name after his release from prison in 1960.

Literature: The Man Booker Prize was awarded yesterday to Australian author Richard Flanagan for “The Narrow Road to the Deep North,” which judges described as a “magnificent novel of love and war.” The novel is about prisoners of the Japanese in World War II building the Burma Railway. Flanagan’s father was one of those prisoners. Flanagan said, “I grew up, as did my five siblings, as children of the Death Railway.”

The Over/Under: At first ABC News was crowing, now it’s just eating crow after the Nielsen ratings admitted they got the numbers wrong and ABC World News is NOT the number one news show over NBC. With its new anchor David Muir, ABC still leads in the prized 25-54 demographic targeted by advertisers. Spokesmen for both networks issued statements about how great they are, but really, no one cares except them.

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