Excellent news.

Jawa‘s the place for all your Jill Carroll needs. Raw footage of her interview on Baghdad television, via CNN, is here. Updates are coming in intermittently to CSM, too, so stay tuned.

Nathan Goulding of NRO’s Media Blog questions the timing: “No media outlets have picked up on this: that perhaps the rescue of the peace activists frightened Carroll’s captors enough to let her go.” Judith Klinghoffer is less optimistic.

Finally, on an otherwise wonderful day for the Christian Science Monitor, this will probably end up getting lost in the news shuffle. It shouldn’t.

More hopeful news, via TV Newser: injured reporter Bob Woodruff said in a written statement to the RTCA last night that he’ll be “jumping on the trampoline again, I promise.” Fingers crossed.

UPDATE: Carroll isn’t the only big story Rusty’s working on. Val says it’s too good to be true.

UPDATE: Contra Klinghoffer, the latest item at CSM says the paper has no knowledge of anyone paying a ransom.

UPDATE: I was waiting for this shoe to drop. Well, there you go.

In fairness to Carroll, a lot of people would say a lot of things they didn’t mean in those circumstances. Let’s see whether she defends it now. Assuming, that is, that anyone in the media bothers to ask her.

UPDATE: Debbie Schlussel says the probability that the statements mentioned in the last update were coerced is low.