CNN is having plenty of problems these days and there will have been plenty of red faces yesterday when the company's website published obituaries of several well-known people who are live and kicking.

US Vice President Dick Cheney, former US president Ronald Reagan, Cuban dictator Fidel Castro, Pope John Paul II, South Africa's Nelson Mandela and US comedian Bop Hope, who is due to celebrate his 100th birthday on May 29, all had their obituaries published.

"The CNN pages, which were discovered by the intrepid folks at fark.com, were yanked about 20 minutes after being exposed," The Smoking Gun website noted.

The premature obituaries, housed in a publicly accessible area of the CNN server and searchable via Google, were said to be the work of Peter Rentz, a senior multimedia designer at CNN.

It is usual for media organisations to prepare obituaries in advance and it is a good thing for CNN that these identities are still alive, as there is a lot of work to do on getting the information right.

The obituary of Castro, for instance, has information from Reagan's life mixed in.

Next to a dignified photo of the dictator it says, "Fidel Castro". Above that is a Castro quote: "History will absolve me."

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