Obama names Ebola 'czar' as precautions expand

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama turned to a trusted adviser to lead the nation's Ebola response on today as efforts to clamp down on any possible route of infection from three Texas cases expanded, reaching a cruise ship at sea and multiple airline flights.

Facing renewed criticism of his handling of the Ebola risk, Obama will make Ron Klain, a former chief of staff to Vice President Joe Biden, his point man on the U.S. fight against Ebola at home and in West Africa. Klain will report to national security adviser Susan Rice and to homeland security adviser Lisa Monaco, the White House said.

Meanwhile, the World Health Organization admitted to mistakes of its own in failing to contain the outbreak still spreading out of control in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea.

"Nearly everyone involved in the outbreak response failed to see some fairly plain writing on the wall," the U.N. health agency said in a draft internal document obtained by The Associated Press. The response was marred by incompetency and ineffective bureaucracy, the document says, and experts should have realized that traditional containment methods wouldn't work in an African region with porous borders and broken health systems.