VOL. CLXIV ... No. 56,648 + © 2014 The New York Times WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 8, 2014 U(DF463D)X+[!#!@!#!& The Lebanese Shiite group Hezbollah set off an explosive device that wounded two Israeli soldiers and rattled a rela- tively quiet Middle East border. PAGE A4 INTERNATIONAL A4-11 Hezbollah Blast Shatters Calm The Cardinals’ Matt Adams, above, hit a three-run homer that gave St. Louis a 3-2 win and a spot in the National League Championship Series for a fourth straight year. The Cardinals will face the San Francisco Giants, who beat the Washington Nationals, 3-2. PAGE B11 SPORTSWEDNESDAY B11-14 Cardinals and Giants Advance A federal appeals court struck down bans against same-sex marriage in Ida- ho and in Nevada. PAGE A19 NATIONAL A16-20 Two More Marriage Bans Fall With quinoa or freekeh, grain bowls are on the menus of trendy restaurants, or you can make them at home. PAGE D1 DINING D1-8 A Bowl of Flavor A regal presence on Broadway for more than a half-century who was especially known for her performances of Edward Albee’s work, she was 86. PAGE A20 OBITUARIES A20-21 Marian Seldes, Actress, Dies This article is by Mark Landler, Anne Barnard and Eric Schmitt. WASHINGTON — As fighters with the Islamic State bore down Tuesday on the Syrian town of Kobani on the Turkish border, President Obama’s plan to fight the militant group without being drawn deeper into the Syrian civ- il war was coming under acute strain. While Turkish troops watched the fighting in Kobani through a chicken-wire fence, Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdo- gan, said that the town was about to fall and Kurdish fighters warned of an impending blood bath if they were not reinforced — fears the United States shares. But Mr. Erdogan said Tuesday that Turkey would not get more deeply involved in the conflict with the Islamic State unless the United States agreed to give greater support to rebels trying to unseat the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad. That has deep- ened tensions with President Obama, who would like Turkey to take stronger action against the Islamic State and to leave the fight against Mr. Assad out of it. Mr. Erdogan has also resisted pleas to send his troops across the border in the absence of a no- fly zone to ward off the Syrian Air Force. Even as it stepped up air- strikes against the militants Tuesday, the Obama administra- tion was frustrated by what it re- gards as Turkey’s excuses for not doing more militarily. Officials note, for example, that the Amer- ican-led coalition, with its heavy rotation of flights and airstrikes, has effectively imposed a no-fly zone over northern Syria already, so Mr. Erdogan’s demand for such a zone rings hollow. “There’s growing angst about Turkey dragging its feet to act to prevent a massacre less than a mile from its border,” a senior ad- ministration official said. “After all the fulminating about Syria’s humanitarian catastrophe, they’re inventing reasons not to act to avoid another catastrophe. “This isn’t how a NATO ally acts while hell is unfolding a stone’s throw from their border,” said the official, who spoke anon- ymously to avoid publicly criticiz- ing an ally. Secretary of State John Kerry has had multiple phone calls in the last 72 hours with Turkey’s prime minister, Ahmet Davuto- glu, and foreign minister, Mevlut Cavusoglu, to try to resolve the border crisis, American officials said. For Mr. Obama, a split with Turkey would jeopardize his ef- forts to hold together a coalition of Sunni Muslim countries to fight the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL. While Turkey is not the only country that might put the ouster of Mr. Assad ahead of defeating the rad- TURKISH INACTION ON ISIS ADVANCE DISMAYS THE U.S. THREAT ACROSS BORDER Militants Move Against Kurdish Fighters in a Syrian Town Continued on Page A11 By TRIP GABRIEL NILES, Ohio — Just weeks be- fore elections that will decide control of the Senate and crucial governors’ races, a cascade of court rulings about voting rules, issued by judges with an increas- ingly partisan edge, are sowing confusion and changing voting procedures with the potential to affect outcomes in some states. Last week, a day before voting was scheduled to begin in Ohio, the United States Supreme Court split, 5 to 4, to uphold a cut in ear- ly voting in the state by one week; the five Republican ap- pointees voted in favor and the four Democratic appointees against. Cases from North Caroli- na and Wisconsin are also before the court, with decisions expect- ed shortly, while others are pro- ceeding in Texas and Arkansas. The legal fights are over laws that Republican-led state govern- ments passed in recent years to more tightly regulate voting, in the name of preventing fraud. Critics argue that the restrictions are really efforts to discourage African-Americans, students and low-income voters, who tend to favor Democrats. Ohio reduced early voting by a week early this year, including one day of Sunday voting when black churches conduct “souls to the polls” voter drives. An ap- peals court composed of three Democratic appointees had ruled that the cutbacks violated the Constitution’s equal-protection clause and the Voting Rights Act, and proponents went to the Su- preme Court. The result, here as elsewhere, has been an increas- ingly charged environment in which voting rules have been as enmeshed in partisan politics as the races themselves. “The new voter suppression in the 21st century is all this voter Ballot Rulings Sow Confusion In State Races On Vote Fraud, Courts Split on Party Lines Continued on Page A18 By SHERI FINK SUAKOKO, Liberia — The dirt road winds and dips, passes through a rubber plantation and arrives up a hill, near the grounds of an old leper colony. The latest scourge, Ebola, is un- der assault here in a cluster of co- balt-blue buildings operated by an American charity, Internation- al Medical Corps. In the newly opened treatment center, Liberi- an workers and volunteers from abroad identify who is infected, save those they can and try to halt the virus’s spread. It is a place both ordinary and otherworldly. Young men who feel well enough run laps around the ward; acrid smoke wafts from a medical waste incinerator into the expansive tropical sky; doctors are unrecognizable in yellow protective suits; patients who may not have Ebola listen to a radio with those who do, sep- arated by a fence and fresh air. Here are the rhythms of a sin- gle day: 7:20 A.M. Soon after their arrival, about a half-dozen doctors and nurses gathered near white- boards for the handoff from the night shift. There were 22 pa- tients, and no deaths overnight. The center — which includes a triage area, a restricted unit for patients suspected of having Ebola infections and another for those in the grip of the disease — is not teeming like some clinics in Monrovia, more than four hours west. It is designed to accommo- date up to 70 patients, but it is still scaling up after opening a few weeks ago and has just two ambulances to ferry patients. An 8-year-old boy had been too weak to lift a liter bottle of oral re- hydration solution to his mouth through the night. Bridget Anne Mulrooney, an American nurse, reported that she gave him a smaller bottle and sheets to keep warm. A woman who had lost both her baby and husband to Ebola and was suspected of hav- ing the disease herself was refus- ing food and medications for symptoms and other possible ill- nesses, such as malaria. A man in his 70s, a talkative staff favorite, was now confused, his sheet cov- ered in blood. He had been ad- mitted four days earlier, but lab- oratory tests confirming an Ebo- la diagnosis had not come back yet. “I think he’s positive,” said Dr. Colin Bucks, an American. “I think this will be an end-of-life event.” Eight patients needed intra- venous fluids to combat dehydra- tion. One patient was described as happy. Another was playing Life, Death and Careful Routine Fill the Day at a Liberian Clinic DANIEL BEREHULAK FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES The morning rituals at an Ebola clinic in Suakoko, Liberia, where a team of workers takes food, water and medicine to patients. Continued on Page A12 THE EBOLA WARD The Rhythm of Illness By JONATHAN MARTIN CHICAGO — When he soared to victory by almost 10 million votes in 2008, President Obama won in states like Virginia that Democratic candidates had not captured since 1964. He was trumpeted as a transformational leader who remade American politics by creating a new elector- al map and a diverse voter coali- tion to shape the Democratic Par- ty for the 21st century. But for now he has been re- duced to something else: an iso- lated political figure who is viewed as a liability to Demo- crats in the very states where voters by the thousands had once stood to cheer him. When Mr. Obama entered the campaign fray last week, he did so by returning to the uncondi- tional embrace of his own home- town, in a blue state where the in- cumbent Democratic senator faces scant opposition and the Democratic governor is running in part on his support for the Af- fordable Care Act. On Tuesday, the president attended private fund-raisers in Manhattan, to be followed by similar events in Los Angeles and San Francisco. Ar- kansas it is not. As November nears, Mr. Oba- ma and his loyalists are being forced to reconcile that it is not only Democrats in conservative- leaning states, like Senator Mark In This Election, Obama’s Party Benches Him Continued on Page A18 By MATT FLEGENHEIMER New York City is poised to re- define what constitutes a transi- tion from one sex to another, al- lowing a person’s own identity, not anatomy, to be the determin- ing factor. The change, which is being ad- vanced both by the City Council and the de Blasio administration, would allow alterations to birth certificates with the blessing of any of a broad range of health care professionals, including doc- tors and psychotherapists but also physicians’ assistants, nurse practitioners and midwives. The twin proposals, introduced on Tuesday, would allow some- one to amend the document so long as a qualified professional attests that the requested change “more accurately reflects the ap- plicant’s sex” and is consistent with “contemporary expert standards regarding gender identity.” Officials and advocates said the policy would be among the most progressive for transgender rights around the country, easing a long-established burden for many New Yorkers wading through bureaucratic labyrinths as they seek employment, driv- er’s licenses or pension benefits, among other things. Currently, under city law, any- one hoping to change the gender on a birth certificate must pro- Easing the Law For New Yorkers Shifting Gender ED JONES/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE — GETTY IMAGES Pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong on Monday. Recent weeks’ conflict with Beijing has served only to bolster Hong Kong’s identity as separate from the rest of China. Page A4. A People Apart By ALEXANDRA ALTER Of all the horrors Louis Zampe- rini endured during World War II — a plane crash into the Pacific, 47 days stranded at sea, two years in a prisoner-of-war camp — the one experience that truly haunted him was when a Japa- nese guard tortured and killed an injured duck. The episode, recounted in Lau- ra Hillenbrand’s best seller “Un- broken,” also traumatized many readers, Ms. Hillenbrand said. So when she was writing a new edi- tion aimed at young adults, she left that scene out. “I know that if I were 12 and reading it, that would upset me,” Ms. Hillenbrand said. Inspired by the booming mar- ket for young adult novels, a growing number of biographers and historians are retrofitting their works to make them palat- able for younger readers. Promi- nent nonfiction writers like Ms. Hillenbrand, Jon Meacham and Rick Atkinson are now grappling with how to handle unsettling or controversial material in their books as they try to win over this impressionable new audience. And these slimmed-down, sim- plified and sometimes sanitized editions of popular nonfiction ti- tles are fast becoming a vibrant, growing and lucrative niche. Publishers are unleashing a flood of these books. Mr. Meach- am recently published his first children’s book, a version of his 759-page biography of Thomas Jefferson tailored to readers 10 To Lure Young Readers, Nonfiction Writers Sanitize and Simplify Continued on Page A3 EBOLA IN SPAIN More people were quarantined as health workers criti- cized their training and the health minister was urged to quit. PAGE A12 CHECKING TRAVELERS Officials promised extra measures to screen air- line passengers arriving in the United States. PAGE A14 Continued on Page A23 Three physicists were recognized for enabling the production of white light from semiconductors. PAGE A7 LED Work Earns a Nobel A review board found that complaints of a banned police tactic increased as a disciplinary process fell short. PAGE A22 NEW YORK A22-23 Chokehold Report Is Released The I.M.F. says cash-rich nations like Germany have to increase spending to lift the flagging global economy. PAGE B1 BUSINESS DAY B1-10 Reversing a Global Slowdown A collection of Flannery O’Connor’s pa- pers is headed to the university. PAGE C1 ARTS C1-8 Emory Acquires Writer’s Trove Independent oil refineries worry that rising U.S. exports could mean higher gasoline prices while major energy com- panies argue the opposite. SECTION F SPECIAL TODAY Energy Thomas L. Friedman PAGE A25 EDITORIAL, OP-ED A24-25