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Overseas coverage was filed from the Bahamas, on Iraq and about a school in South Africa. ABC's Jeffrey Kofman was waiting for Tropical Storm Noel to arrive in Nassau after it dropped 20 inches of rain over two days on the island of Hispaniola. More than 60 people were killed in Haiti and the Dominican Republic, 12,000 homes damaged and 50,000 people displaced: "Authorities are having trouble reaching those in peril because so many bridges have been washed away." NBC contacted its Weather Plus meteorologist Jeff Ranieri (no link) by telephone. Ranieri forecast that Noel is such a stationary storm that it will likely linger over the Bahamas for 24 hours, depositing another five or ten inches of rain.
All three networks ran an audiotape soundbite of a State Department briefing of foreign service officers in which they were informed that jobs at the Baghdad Embassy would no longer be assigned to volunteers. "It is a diplomatic call-up," reported CBS' David Martin. Amb Ryan Crocker had cabled Foggy Bottom seeking "more and better qualified officers." On the audiotape, the foreign service complaints about compulsory tours were voiced by Jack Croddy: "I am sorry but basically that is a potential death sentence." Martin found that, of the 1,200 officers who have worked at the embassy in the Green Zone, three have been killed. NBC's Andrea Mitchell (at the tail of her Campaign 2008 videostream) noted that the last time diplomats were compelled to serve in a war zone was in Saigon. She found the diplomats' protest so "extraordinary" that her tongue slipped twice, locating Baghdad as the capital of Vietnam.
The South African story was covered In Depth by NBC's Dawn Fratangelo. It concerned the Leadership Academy for Girls, an elite school founded by TV talkshow host Oprah Winfrey and opened amid ribbon-cutting fanfare in January. At the time Winfrey grandiloquently asserted: "When you educate a girl you begin to change the face of a nation." When parents complained that discipline was excessive, she told them: "If you feel that the school is too strict you are welcome--I bless you--in removing your child from the school." Now police allege that some of that discipline amounted to abuse, both physical and sexual. Fratangelo reported that two employees have been fired and the principal is on leave. The publicist for Oprah announced "no plans to release any statement, or talk about the issue on her show, until the investigation is complete."
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