[John Winn](/columnists/John+Winn)  
2/17/2009

Yahoo, the online search engine, is not known for embarrassing spelling errors. But they got one, and now they're busy cleaning up the PR mess.

According to gossip site Gawker.com, a major error occurred Monday. In an article about a scientist attempting to pinpoint terror mastermind Osama Bin Laden's location, the article mistakenly referred to him as "Obama Bin Laden."  
  
A prominent screengrab on the site, time stamped February 17, 2009, features a photo of Bin Laden taken in the mid-'90s, alongside a sidebar indicating the article's source: USA Today.com.  
  
A glimpse of the article on *USA Today* suggests that the spelling error was corrected. As of 4:54 p.m. EST (1:54 PST), the article was not available on Yahoo's news site.  
  
Although the error is a first for Yahoo, it is not the only time that news agencies have confused the 44th President of the United States with the leader of Al-Qaeda. In 2007, CNN mistakenly aired a piece on Osama Bin Laden, entitled "Where's Obama?" The station later apologized for the error, yet as the presidential campaign heated up, the error occurred several times, most infamously in a TV interview with then-candidate Mitt Romney.