Top US journalist fabricated reports

USA Today, the vibrantly coloured "national" American newspaper, has revealed that its most famous correspondent fabricated stories in dispatches he sent from around the world. The news will likely further undermine an industry still dealing with the almost laughable saga of the lying journalist Jayson Blair, who resigned last year from the New York Times.

USA Today said Jack Kelley, 43, had faked details in at least eight major foreign stories, including a piece for which he was short-listed for the prestigious Pulitzer Prize.

One of the most shocking lies involved a Cuban refugee Mr Kelley claimed to have photographed shortly before she drowned while trying to escape. The woman was recently discovered alive and well and living in the US.

"We're all devastated by Jack's betrayal of the public trust and our trust," said the paper's editor, Karen Jurgensen. In a front-page story on Friday, USA Today revealed that Mr Kelley's deceit was perhaps more sweeping and substantial than that of Mr Blair, who fabricated stories while at home in his Brooklyn flat.

USA Today said its three-month investigation "strongly contradicted" Mr Kelley's claims that he spent a night with Egyptian terrorists in 1997, visited a suspected terrorist crossing point on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border in 2002, or went on a high-speed hunt for Osama bin Laden in 2003. It also said large portions of one of his most famous stories - an eyewitness account of a suicide bombing that helped make him a 2001 Pulitzer Prize finalist - were untrue.

Mr Kelley resigned from the newspaper in January.