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UNITED NATIONS (AP) — A U.N. envoy says up to 700 children have been killed or maimed in Iraq since the beginning of the year, "including in summary executions."

Leila Zerrougui, the secretary-general's special representative for children and armed conflict, told the U.N. Security Council on Monday she is "appalled" at the killing of civilians, including children, by the Islamic State militant group which now controls a large swath of Iraq and Syria.

She said the extremist group has ordered boys as young as 13 years old to carry weapons, guard strategic locations or arrest civilians, and has used other children as suicide bombers.

Zerrougui said her office has also received report of militias allied to the Iraqi government using children in the fight against extremists from the Islamic State group.

BOSTON (Reuters) - The widening gap between America's wealthiest and its middle and lower classes is "unsustainable", but is unlikely to improve any time soon, according to a Harvard Business School study released on Monday.

The study, titled "An Economy Doing Half its Job", said American companies - particularly big ones - were showing some signs of recovering their competitive edge on the world stage since the financial crisis, but that workers would likely keep struggling to demand better pay and benefits.

"We argue that such a divergence is unsustainable," according to the report, which was based on a survey of 1,947 of Harvard Business School alumni around the globe, and which highlighted problems with the U.S. education system, transport infrastructure, and the effectiveness of the political system.

Some 47 percent of respondents in the survey said that over the next three years they expected U.S. companies to be both less competitive internationally and less able to pay higher wages and benefits, versus 33 percent who thought the opposite.

The results marked an improvement from a 2012 Harvard Business School survey of its alumni showing 58 percent of respondents expecting a decline in U.S. competitiveness, according to the survey.

But Harvard wrote, respondents of the 2014 survey "were much more hopeful about the future competitive success of America's firms than they were about the future pay of America's workers."

Harvard called on corporate leaders to help solve America's wealth gap by working to buttress the kindergarten-to-12th-grade education system, skills-training programs, and transportation infrastructure, among other things.

"Shortsighted executives may be satisfied with an American economy whose firms win in global markets without lifting U.S. living standards. But any leader with a long view understands that business has a profound stake in the prosperity of the average American," according to the report.

"Thriving citizens become more productive employees, more willing consumers, and stronger supporters of pro-business policies," it said. "Struggling citizens are disgruntled at work, frugal at the cash register, and anti-business at the ballot box."

(Reporting by Richard Valdmanis; Editing by Sandra Maler)

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CONAKRY, Guinea (AP) — Doctors Without Borders shuttered one of its Ebola treatment centers in Guinea in May. They thought the deadly virus was being contained there.

The Macenta region, right on the Liberian border, had been one of the first places where the outbreak surfaced, but they hadn't seen a new case for weeks. So they packed up, leaving a handful of staff on stand-by. The outbreak was showing signs of slowing elsewhere as well.

Instead, new cases appeared across the border in Liberia and then spread across West Africa, carried by the sick and dying. Now, months later, Macenta is once again a hotspot.

The resurgence of the disease in a place where doctors thought they had it beat shows how history's largest Ebola outbreak has spun out of control.

It began with people leaving homes in Liberia to seek better care or reunite with families back in Guinea, a pattern repeating itself all over.

"Currently in Guinea, all the new cases, all the new epidemic, are linked to people that are coming back from Liberia or from Sierra Leone," said Marc Poncin, the emergency coordinator for Doctors Without Borders in Guinea.

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In this photo taken on Sunday, Sept. 7, 2014, a health worker, left, uses a thermometer to screen a …

The epidemic also has touched Nigeria and Senegal while killing more than 2,000 people across West Africa. Never before has the disease struck such a densely populated region, where so many people are on the move. For four decades, the virus struck in relatively remote areas, where doctors could quickly isolate communities and stop its spread.

In previous outbreaks, a cleared pocket like Macenta would be easy to keep clear.

This time, the virus is traveling effortlessly across borders by plane, car and foot, shifting from forests to cities and springing up in clusters far from any previously known infections. Border closures, flight bans and mass quarantines have been ineffective.

"Everything we do is too small and too late," said Poncin. "We're always running after the epidemic."

Ebola has been able to follow its own course because West Africa lacks the health care workers it needs to monitor potential carriers and train communities in how to avoid catching the disease. People in contact with the sick have evaded surveillance, moving at will and hiding their illnesses until they infect others in turn. Whole villages, stricken by fear, have repeatedly shut themselves off for days or weeks, giving the virus more opportunities to whip around and skip someplace else.

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In this photo taken on Sunday, Sept. 7, 2014, traffic is stopped at a makeshift road block run by Gu …

Dr. Peter Piot, who co-discovered Ebola, said Ebola isn't striking in a "linear fashion" this time. It's hopping around, especially in Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone.

"The epidemic is now so vast and so extensive that one should consider that in the three (hardest-hit) countries, everybody is now at risk and it won't be over until the last case has survived and six weeks have passed," said Piot, who runs London's School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

In mid-August, Guinea's health ministry announced 30 new cases in the Macenta region, the first recorded in months. Many were Guinean citizens who had been living in Liberia and were therefore allowed to return through closed border crossings. These returnees infected their families and neighbors, and so now there is active transmission in Macenta, said Michael Kinzer, who has led the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's team in Guinea in recent weeks.

Doctors Without Borders has returned to Macenta as well, opening a transit center more than a week ago at the site of its old clinic where it screens patients. As of the beginning of this month, the Health Ministry said 45 people from Macenta were being treated at an expanded treatment center at Gueckedou. The charity would like to open treatment centers in both towns, but it does not have enough staff.

Authorities are now restricting access to the region's main city, also called Macenta, where fear has again taken hold.

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In this photo taken on Saturday, Aug. 30, 2014, Doctor Tom Frieden, left, from the Center for Diseas …

"I have the impression that time has stopped in Macenta, that the city has shrunk," said Siniman Kouroumah, a 42-year-old teacher. "We are afraid to walk the city, to eat anywhere, to drink anywhere."

Poncin said he, too, has felt a shift, but for the better: People in Macenta are now afraid of dead bodies, running away from them rather than scooping them up for traditional burials. Villagers who used to throw stones at the health workers tracing contacts now seek their help.

Communities in many parts of Guinea are Ebola-free now, said Dr. Tom Frieden, the CDC's director, said on a recent visit to Guinea. "The challenge is that the region is really one entity, and it's so important that we get it right in all places."

"This is really the first epidemic of Ebola the world has ever known," Frieden said. "By epidemic what we mean is it's spreading widely through society, but not spreading through new ways according to everything we know. It's spreading from just two roots: people caring for other people in hospitals or homes, and unsafe burial practices where people may come in contact with body fluids of someone who has died from Ebola."

Getting it right in all places requires simultaneously imposing the same three measures anywhere Ebola appears, Poncin said: isolating the sick, tracing and monitoring everyone they have come into contact with, and ensuring infected bodies are buried safely.

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In this photo taken on Wednesday, Sept. 3, 2014, a health worker, left, uses a thermometer on a man …

Guinea is doing this fairly well, but Sierra Leone isn't doing enough, and Liberia is barely doing any contact-tracing, Poncin said.

That means officials don't know where people are at risk, making it almost impossible to prevent or at least contain new cases. The World Health Organization says it believes that the true spread in hard-hit areas may be two or four times bigger than what's known.

And if Liberia and Sierra Leone aren't keeping up, the public health work in Guinea — and Nigeria and Senegal — is for naught.

"As long there is one case of Ebola virus disease anywhere in the world and people are allowed to travel," Nigeria's health minister, Onyebuchi Chukwu, said recently, "every country in the world remains at risk."

___

DiLorenzo reported from Dakar, Senegal. Associated Press journalists Maria Cheng in London; Youssouf Bah in Conakry, Guinea; and Bashir Adigun in Abuja, Nigeria, contributed to this report.

The Dalai Lama has told a German newspaper that he should be the last Tibetan spiritual leader, ending a centuries-old religious tradition from his Himalayan homeland.

His comments to the Welt am Sonntag newspaper echo his previous statement that "the institution of the Dalai Lama has served its purpose", but were even more explicit.

"We had a Dalai Lama for almost five centuries. The 14th Dalai Lama now is very popular. Let us then finish with a popular Dalai Lama," he said.

"If a weak Dalai Lama comes along, then it will just disgrace the Dalai Lama," he added with a laugh, according to a transcript of the English language interview.

He also said: "Tibetan Buddhism is not dependent on one individual. We have a very good organisational structure with highly trained monks and scholars."

China has governed Tibet since 1951, a year after invading, and the Dalai Lama fled across the Himalayas to India after a failed 1959 uprising against Chinese rule.

The Nobel Peace Prize winner in 2011 retired from political duties and has upgraded the role of prime minister of the Tibetan exile community.

But he is still the most powerful rallying point for Tibetans, both in exile and in their homeland, and remains the universally recognised face of the movement.

Asked by the German newspaper how much longer he may carry on his advocacy duties, the 79-year-old said: "The doctors say I could become 100 years old. But in my dreams I will die at the age of 113 years.

"I hope and pray that I may return to this world as long as sentient beings' suffering remains. I mean not in the same body, but with the same spirit and the same soul."

On the question of whether he may ever be able to return to Tibet, he said: "Yes, I am sure of that. China can no longer isolate itself, it must follow the global trend towards a democratic society."

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