US reporter faked major stories

Kelley fabricated stories and plagiarised other accounts

A leading American newspaper, USA Today, has said one of its star foreign correspondents made up substantial elements of a number of major stories.

Jack Kelley had been nominated five times for the most prestigious award in US journalism, the Pulitzer Prize.

USA Today said it had found strong evidence contradicting some of Kelley's supposed eye-witness accounts, including that of a suicide bombing.

Kelley resigned in January after admitting to misleading editors.

Painstaking investigation

A team of journalists carried out a seven-week investigation into more than 720 stories Kelley filed for USA Today over the past 10 years.

The investigation found strong evidence that he had made up substantial portions of at least eight major stories and lifted quotes and material from other competing publications.

One example was an eyewitness account that Kelley gave of a suicide bombing in Jerusalem in 2001.

The story helped him to become a Pulitzer Prize finalist, but the investigation found that the man Kelley described as a bomber could not have been the culprit.

It also found that Kelley made up a story about a woman who died fleeing Cuba by boat.

The photo used to illustrate that story was a snapshot taken by Kelley of a Cuban hotel worker who is still alive.

It also found evidence contradicting his account of a meeting with a Jewish vigilante settler in 2001 and a high-speed hunt he said he went on for Osama Bin Laden in 2003.

Last year, two senior staff members on the New York Times stepped down in a scandal over plagiarism and fabrication by one of the paper's reporters, Jayson Blair.