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BBC chief resigns after network wrongly implicated politician in sex abuse scandal
• LONDON (AP) -- The BBC's top executive resigned Saturday night after the prestigious broadcaster's marquee news magazine wrongly implicated a British politician in a child sex-abuse scandal, deepening the crisis that exploded after it decided not to air similar allegations against one of its own stars who police now say was one of the nation's worst pedophiles.
• In a brief statement outside BBC headquarters, George Entwistle said he decided to do the "honorable thing" and step down after just eight weeks in the job.
• "The wholly exceptional events of the past few weeks have led me to conclude that the BBC should appoint a new leader," he said.
• It was a rapid about-face for Entwistle, a 23-year BBC veteran who earlier Saturday had insisted he had no plans to resign despite growing questions about his leadership and the BBC's integrity in the wake of the scandals.
• Lawmaker John Whittingdale, who chairs a parliamentary committee on the news media, said Entwistle had no choice but to go, as the BBC's management appears to have "lost their grip" on the publicly funded organization.
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From a more West-leaning generation, next China premier a cautious bureaucrat, former enforcer
• BEIJING (AP) -- The man in line to oversee China's massive but rapidly slowing economy for the coming decade speaks English and comes from a generation of politicians schooled during a time of greater openness to liberal Western ideas than their predecessors.
• But Li Keqiang also has been a cautious career bureaucrat who rose through, and is bound by, a consensus-oriented Communist Party that has been slow to reform its massive state-owned enterprises while reflexively stifling dissent -- and he has played the role of enforcer to keep a lid on bad news.
• Li, to be promoted within the leadership's top council after a pivotal party congress closes later this week and expected to take the economy-focused post of premier from outgoing Wen Jiabao next spring, was governor of the agricultural province of Henan in 1998 during an unusual explosion of AIDS cases.
• Tens of thousands of people had contracted HIV from illegal blood-buying rings (Continued on page 28)
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