CNN Apologizes for Mistaken Headline

CNN apologized Tuesday for mistakenly promoting a story on the search for Osama bin Laden with the headline "Where's Obama?"


A spokesman for Illinois Sen. Barack Obama said the apology was accepted.


The blunder came Monday evening on Wolf Blitzer's news show "The Situation Room." Both Soledad O'Brien and Blitzer offered separate apologies during CNN's morning show Tuesday.


CNN called it a "bad typographical error" by its graphics department.


"We want to apologize for that bad typo," Blitzer said. "We also want to apologize personally to Sen. Barack Obama. I'm going to be making a call to him later this morning to offer my personal apology."


Tommy Vieto, Obama's press secretary, said he appreciated the bloggers and activists who brought the error to light so quickly and helped make sure it was corrected.


"Though I'd note that the `s' and `b' keys aren't all that close to each other, I assume it was just an unfortunate mistake, and don't think there was any truly malicious intent," Vieto said.[/q]

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Oprah's £20m ($40m) school proves she's not all talk

Oprah Winfrey, the talk show star and media mogul, likes to make friends through generosity, famously once giving every member of her studio audience a free car to take home. Yesterday, however, she celebrated giving of a slightly less frivolous kind.


Surrounded by American celebrities, Winfrey, listed as the richest black person on the planet, presided over the opening of a school for disadvantaged girls just outside Johannesburg, South Africa, built with $40m (£20m) of her own money and set to begin classes on Friday.

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One Killed in Southern Indiana Plane Crash

A small plane crash in southern Indiana killed a prominent businessman and philanthropist Tuesday afternoon. The accident happened about a mile east of Washington near the Daviess County Airport. Authorities say something went wrong shortly after take-off when a twin-engine Beechcraft crashed into a farm field.


Bits and pieces of tangled metal filled the bean field where the plane went down in Daviess County. The wreckage gave only a hint that this was once a plane, but the amount of damage showed every indication that something bad happened to the plane and its pilot.


"At some point that aircraft started to go west and it went down in an open field and unfortunately the pilot was pronounced dead at the scene," Todd Ringle with Indiana State Police said.


Authorities aren't releasing a lot of details on what happened with this crash, but a witness said he saw the plane go over the shops at Boyd Grain, then he heard the engine rev up and then he heard a bang.


That bang turned out to be the plane smashing into the field. Emergency crews moved out to begin recovering the body. Their task made worse because the pilot was someone they knew well.


64-year-old Abe Knepp of Montgomery was a local businessman who doubled as a chaplain at the Daviess County Jail.


"He's made a lot of contributions to the local sheriff's department here and I know from talking to some of the deputies here. He's going to be greatly missed," Ringle said.


And now it's up to the investigators to find out why this plane went down in the field. The Federal Aviation Administration and the National Transportation Safety Board will be conducting an investigation into the crash. They are expected to arrive Wednesday

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Saddam co-defendants to be executed Thurs.



QASSIM ABDUL-ZAHRA,
Associated Press

An Iraqi government official told The Associated Press on Wednesday that preparations were under way to hang two of Saddam Hussein's co-defendants on Thursday.

Al-Arabiya satellite television and Al-Furat TV, run by Iraq's major Shiite Muslim political organization, both also reported that Saddam's half brother Barzan Ibrahim, a former intelligence chief, and Awad Hamed al-Bandar, the former chief justice of the Revolutionary Court, would be put to death Thursday.

The government official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to release the information, said the exact place and time of the hangings had not been set.

The two co-defendants were originally scheduled to hang last Saturday along with Saddam.

The former Iraqi leader and the two co-defendants were convicted and sentenced to hang on Nov. 5 and the verdict was upheld by the appellate court on Dec. 26.

The hanging of Barzan and al-Bandar was delayed, however, until after the Eid al-Adha holiday, which ends Wednesday for Iraq's majority Shiites.

The holiday marks the end of the annual Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca in Saudi Arabia.

The three men were sentenced to death for the killing of 148 Sunni Muslims from the town of Dujail after a failed 1982 assassination against Saddam in the northern city.

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Man Leaps In Front of Subway Train to Save Fellow Passenger-- Both Survive Unharmed!


CARA BUCKLEY
NYTimes

It was every subway rider’s nightmare, times two. Who has ridden along New York’s 656 miles of subway lines and not wondered: “What if I fell to the tracks as a train came in? What would I do?”

And who has not thought: “What if someone else fell? Would I jump to the rescue?”

Wesley Autrey, a 50-year-old construction worker and Navy veteran, faced both those questions in a flashing instant yesterday, and got his answers almost as quickly.

Mr. Autrey was waiting for the downtown local at 137th Street and Broadway in Manhattan around 12:45 p.m. He was taking his two daughters, Syshe, 4, and Shuqui, 6, home before work.

Nearby, a man collapsed, his body convulsing. Mr. Autrey and two women rushed to help, he said. The man, Cameron Hollopeter, 20, managed to get up, but then stumbled to the platform edge and fell to the tracks, between the two rails.

The headlights of the No. 1 train appeared. “I had to make a split decision,” Mr. Autrey said.

So he made one, and leapt.

Mr. Autrey lay on Mr. Hollopeter, his heart pounding, pressing him down in a space roughly a foot deep. The train’s brakes screeched, but it could not stop in time.

Five cars rolled overhead before the train stopped, the cars passing inches from his head, smudging his blue knit cap with grease. Mr. Autrey heard onlookers’ screams. “We’re O.K. down here,” he yelled, “but I’ve got two daughters up there. Let them know their father’s O.K.” He heard cries of wonder, and applause.

Power was cut, and workers got them out. Mr. Hollopeter, a student at the New York Film Academy, was taken to St. Luke’s-Roosevelt Hospital Center. He had only bumps and bruises, said his grandfather, Jeff Friedman. The police said it appeared that Mr. Hollopeter had suffered a seizure.

Mr. Autrey refused medical help, because, he said, nothing was wrong. He did visit Mr. Hollopeter in the hospital before heading to his night shift. “I don’t feel like I did something spectacular; I just saw someone who needed help,” Mr. Autrey said. “I did what I felt was right.”

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Saddam execution video draws criticism


ANITA CHANG,

Associated Press Writer

Grainy cell phone video of Saddam Hussein's execution triggered international criticism Tuesday, with Britain's deputy prime minister calling the leaked images "unacceptable" and the Vatican decrying the footage as a "spectacle" violating human rights.

Meanwhile, the Italian government pushed for a U.N. moratorium on the death penalty, Cuba called the execution "an illegal act," and Sunnis in Iraq took to the streets in mainly peaceful demonstrations across the country.

The unofficial video showed a scene that stopped just short of pandemonium, during which one person is heard shouting "To hell!" at the deposed president and Saddam is heard exchanging insults with his executioners. The inflammatory footage also showed Saddam plummeting through the gallows trapdoor and dangling in death.

The grainy video appeared on the Internet and Al-Jazeera television late Saturday. On Tuesday, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki ordered an investigation into the execution to try to uncover who taunted the former dictator, and who leaked the cell phone footage.

At the United Nations, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon ran into trouble on his first day of work when he failed to state the U.N.'s official stance opposing capital punishment and said it should be a decision of individual countries.

"Saddam Hussein was responsible for committing heinous crimes and unspeakable atrocities against Iraqi people and we should never forget victims of his crime," Ban said in response to a reporter's question about Saddam's execution Saturday for crimes against humanity. "The issue of capital punishment is for each and every member state to decide."

His ambiguous answer put a question mark over the U.N.'s stance on the death penalty, although Ban's spokeswoman said there was no change in policy.

British Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott said those who leaked the footage should be condemned.

"I think the manner was quite deplorable really. I don't think one can endorse in any way that, whatever your views about capital punishment," Prescott said in an interview with British Broadcasting Corp. radio.

"Frankly, to get the kind of recorded messages coming out is totally unacceptable and I think whoever is involved and responsible for it should be ashamed of themselves."

The Holy See's daily, L'Osservatore Romano, lamented that "making a spectacle" of the execution had turned capital punishment into "an expression of political hubris."

The execution "represented, for the ways in which it happened and for the media attention it received, another example of the violation of the most basic rights of man," L'Osservatore wrote.

The office of Italian Premier Romano Prodi said Italy would seek the support of other countries that oppose capital punishment to put the issue of a moratorium to the U.N. General Assembly. Italy and all other European Union countries ban capital punishment.

Italy, which is one of the rotating members of the U.N. Security Council, has lobbied unsuccessfully for U.N. action against the death penalty.

On Monday, a crowd of Sunni mourners in Samarra marched to a bomb-damaged Shiite shrine, the Golden Dome, and were allowed by guards and police to enter the holy place carrying a mock coffin and photos of the former dictator.

The shrine was bombed by Sunni extremists 10 months ago, an attack that triggered the current cycle of retaliatory attacks between Sunnis and Shiites.

Communist Cuba, which allows capital punishment, called Saddam's execution "an illegal act in a country that has been driven toward an internal conflict in which millions of citizens have been exiled or lost their lives."

The Foreign Ministry statement Monday said the island nation "has a moral duty to express its point of view about the assassination committed by the occupying power."

The U.S. military had held Saddam since capturing him in December 2003 but turned him over to the Iraqi government for his execution.

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