Just in from AP:

Newsweek magazine, under fire for publishing a story that led to deadly protests in Afghanistan, said Monday it was retracting its report that a military probe had found evidence of desecration of the Quran by U.S. interrogators at Guantanamo Bay.

Earlier Monday, Bush administration officials had brushed off an apology that Newsweek’s editor Mark Whitaker had made in an editor’s note and criticized the magazine’s handling of the story.

“It’s appalling that this story got out there,” Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said as she traveled home from Iraq.

“People lost their lives. People are dead,” Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said. “People need to be very careful about what they say, just as they need to be careful about what they do.”

Following the criticism, Whitaker released a statement through a spokesman later Monday saying the magazine was retracting the article.

“Based on what we know now, we are retracting our original story that an internal military investigation had uncovered Quran abuse at Guantanamo Bay,” Whitaker said.

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More:

Veteran journalist Mark Tapscott weighs in.

Pakistan wants a probe of the now-retracted allegations of Koran desecration.

Ben Johnson at Front Page Magazine writes about Newsweek’s victims.

Paul Marshall at NRO: Deadly mistake

Ace of Spades renames Newsweek “Al-Newsweek.”

Jeff Harrell designs the cover you won’t see.

More from Pakistan via the NY Times:

An article published Monday in Jang, an Urdu-language daily in Pakistan, offered the most biting assessment of the political fallout of the Newsweek report: “Osama must be smiling victoriously in his cave,” it declared.

Newsweek lied*. People died.

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