10 things you need to know today: September 23, 2014

(Image credit: (AP Photo/Hasan Jamali))

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1. U.S. targets ISIS with airstrikes inside Syria
2. WHO warns that Ebola cases could rise to 20,000 by November
3. Obama joins fellow leaders at U.N. Climate Summit
4. Islamists kidnap Frenchman at ISIS' urging
5. Vet who ran past White House security had weapons in his car
6. Treasury Department moves to discourage corporate tax-avoiding "inversions"
7. Turkey disperses Kurds' protests over border closings
8. Suspects in Israeli teens' murder die in gun battle
9. Jury links Arab Bank money to Hamas attacks
10. Justice Kagan officiates at her first gay wedding

last updated 13 January 2015

1. U.S. targets ISIS with airstrikes inside Syria

The U.S. and five Arab allies launched airstrikes against ISIS in Syria early on Tuesday, marking a new phase in the fight against the Islamist extremist group. Warplanes, cruise missiles, and drone strikes targeted bases, training camps, and other facilities near the Iraq border. The strikes came 13 days after President Obama said in a televised address that he was expanding U.S. military involvement in the effort to defeat the group.

Without a massive effort to fight the spread of Ebola in West Africa, the number of people stricken by the disease could triple — even quadruple — from 5,800 to more than 20,000 by early November, World Health Organization researchers warned in a report published in the New England Journal of Medicine on Tuesday. The findings came as the death toll from the Ebola outbreak rose to 2,800. Ebola cases are doubling every two weeks in Guinea, every 24 days in Liberia, and every 30 days in Sierra Leone, the report said.

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President Obama will address more than 100 world leaders on Tuesday at the United Nations' one-day Climate Summit. U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon organized the gathering in an effort to bolster support for negotiations on a draft global agreement in time for a December meeting in Lima. The Obama administration has been calling for action, too. "The worst impacts can be prevented still — there is still time — if we make the right set of choices," Secretary of State John Kerry said in New York.

Militants in Algeria reportedly took a French mountain guide hostage on Monday in response to a call from the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria for Islamists to attack French nationals in retaliation for France's airstrikes against ISIS in Iraq. The terrorists threatened to kill the Frenchman, 55-year-old Herve Gourdel, unless France bails out of the international coalition against ISIS. In a video, Gourdel asked French President Francois Hollande to "do everything you can to get me out of this ordeal."

Iraq war veteran Omar Gonzalez had 800 rounds of ammunition, as well as two hatchets and a machete, in his car when he was arrested on Friday for jumping a fence and dashing past security into the White House, carrying a folding knife. President Obama and his family had just left for Camp David when Gonzalez was tackled and arrested. Authorities also said that Gonzalez had been arrested in July after a high-speed chase, and was caught with 11 guns in his car.

The Obama administration is imposing new rules to limit the ability of multinational corporations to avoid paying U.S. taxes on the earnings of overseas subsidiaries through so-called corporate inversions. Over the summer several big-name corporations, including Burger King and medical device company Medtronic, moved their corporate headquarters abroad, allowing them to avoid paying U.S. taxes on international earnings. Treasury Secretary Jack Lew says the companies are exploiting a loophole and "leaving the middle class to pay the bill."

Turkish security forces used tear gas and water cannons to break up protests by Kurds over the closure of border crossings being used by refugees fleeing an offensive by ISIS fighters in neighboring Syria. Since Friday, at least 130,000 Syrian Kurds have fled the Syrian border town of Ayn al-Arab, known as Kobani in Kurdish, fearing an imminent attack by ISIS forces. The Islamist militants have already seized dozens of villages as they advanced toward the town.

Israeli soldiers on Tuesday killed two Palestinians suspected of killing three Israeli teens in June. The men, Marwan Kawasme and Amar Abu Aysha, were shot dead in a shootout with troops who surrounded a house in the West Bank city of Hebron before dawn. "We opened fire, they returned fire, and they were killed in the exchange," an Israeli military spokesman said. Israel also announced that it shot down a Syrian warplane that flew over the Golan Heights, possibly by accident, on Tuesday.

A U.S. jury on Monday ruled that Arab Bank was liable for providing funding that helped Hamas launch attacks in Israel and Palestinian territory. The unprecedented verdict covered some of Hamas' most notorious attacks, including the 2001 Sbarro suicide bombing that killed or wounded 130 people in Jerusalem, and 24 other attacks between 1998 and 2004. The decision capped a 10-year legal battle over the case, which was filed by 297 plaintiffs.

Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan presided over her first same-sex marriage over the weekend. The ceremony was for Kagan's former law clerk, Mitchell Reich, who wed his now-husband Patrick Pearsall in Chevy Chase, Maryland. Kagan's fellow justice, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, as well as retired justice Sandra Day O'Connor, also have performed same-sex wedding ceremonies. The high court could consider potential landmark cases on gay marriage in its next term, which begins Oct. 6.

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Harold Maass is a contributing editor at The Week. He has been writing for The Week since the 2001 debut of the U.S. print edition and served as editor of TheWeek.com when it launched in 2008. Harold started his career as a newspaper reporter in South Florida and Haiti. He has previously worked for a variety of news outlets, including The Miami Herald, ABC News and Fox News, and for several years wrote a daily roundup of financial news for The Week and Yahoo Finance.