Hostage Killed: American journalist Luke Somers was fatally wounded during a rescue raid in Yemen late yesterday. US officials say Somers was shot by his captors as they were being attacked and died on the way to a naval ship. A South African hostage also died.

Somers was a freelance photographer abducted from a Yemen street in September 2013. US commandos tried to rescue him from a cave last month, but his al Qaeda captors moved him shortly before the raid. Earlier this week Somers appeared in a video and his captors said they would kill him in three days if their demands were not met. President Obama approved yesterday’s raid because Somers’ life was in danger. “It is my highest responsibility to do everything possible to protect American citizens,” he said in a statement.

Fact Check: Rolling Stone Magazine now doubts its own story published in November describing the gang rape of a woman named “Jackie’ in a University of Virginia fraternity house. Managing Editor Will Dana wrote in a note to readers, “In the face of new information, there now appear to be discrepancies in Jackie’s account, and we have come to the conclusion that our trust in her was misplaced.”

Among the discrepancies, according to the fraternity Phi Kappa Psi, they did not throw a party on the night of Sept. 28, 2012, the night Jackie claims she was lured into a gang rape by her date. At Jackie’s request, the reporter never contacted the students she accused. The fraternity says they had no member who fit the description of Jackie’s date.

The article made one of Rolling Stone’s biggest splashes in recent years and put UVA into a spin, suspending all fraternity activities at least until January. The article now has the unfortunate legacy of casting doubt on women who say they have been raped.

Signing Off: Candy Crowley, the smart, tough and respectable political reporter for CNN, is leaving the network after 27 years on the air. She’s the host of CNN’s Sunday political show “CNN State of the Union.” Crowley has defied the casting cliché for women reporters that you have to be young, blonde, and beautiful. She’s not a kid and she carries some extra weight, but most of it is in her skill, knowledge, and courage.

World: China has arrested its former security chief Zhou Yongkang on corruption charges and expelled him from the communist party. He’s one of the biggest figures to fall since Chinese President Xi Jinping started his anti-corruption campaign. Xi is weeding out the corrupt, but he’s also consolidating his power. Zhou is accused of taking bribes, disclosing state secrets and even of committing adultery, as if somehow sex is a shocking development in a country of 1.3 billion people.

Culture Wars: Greece is angry that some of the long-contested Elgin marbles, the relief sculptures taken from the Parthenon and other landmarks more than 200 years ago, are being sent on loan to Russia. The marbles grabbed by diplomat Thomas Bruce, the Seventh Earl of Elgin, have never left the British Museum in London since they were put on display. The Greeks want their marbles sculptures and their heritage back, but the works are a big tourist draw for the British.

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