Williams awarded...

NBC newsman Brian Williams received the first Walter Cronkite Award for his work in journalism Wednesday since the veteran anchorman’s death this summer.

Williams was given the honor from Arizona State University’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism at a luncheon in Phoenix.

In 2004, Williams succeeded Tom Brokaw as anchor of “NBC Nightly News.” In 2007, he became the first network anchor—active or retired—to host “Saturday Night Live.”

This year marks the first award ceremony since Cronkite’s passing. The longtime CBS news anchor died in July after a long illness.

Each year, the Cronkite School recognizes a notable media figure for excellence in journalism.

Webber rehospitalized...

Andrew Lloyd Webber has been readmitted to hospital after developing an infection following surgery for prostate cancer.

A statement on the composer’s Web site Wednesday said he had come down with a postoperative chronic infection that needed immediate treatment.

The 61-year-old artist announced last month that he had been diagnosed with early stage prostate cancer, and underwent surgery.

The statement says the operation was successful and Lloyd Webber hoped to be back at work in the new year.

Executive meeting....

President Obama said Wednesday that he met briefly with a half brother who lives in China and who recently wrote a semi-autobiographical novel about the abusive Kenyan father they share.

Obama, who spent three days in China during his first official tour of Asia, acknowledged the meeting in an interview with CNN. He offered no details.

The White House had declined to say whether the president and Mark Ndesandjo would meet. And no White House official mentioned the visit until Obama did when asked about it.

“I don’t know him well. I met him for the first time a couple of years ago,” Obama told CNN. “He stopped by with his wife for about five minutes during the trip.”

Describing the meeting as “overwhelming” and “intense,” Ndesandjo told the Associated Press in an interview Wednesday that he had long anticipated the chance to welcome his famous brother to China.

“I think he came directly off the plane, changed some clothes and then came down and saw us,” Ndesandjo said. “And he just gave me a big hug. And it was so intense. I’m still over the moon on it.”

The two men did not grow up together. Ndesandjo’s mother, Ruth Nidesand, was Barack Obama Sr.’s third wife.

President Obama’s father had been a Kenyan exchange student who met his mother, Kansas native Stanley Ann Dunham, when they were in school in Hawaii. The two separated two years after he was born.

The senior Obama married Ndesandjo’s mother after divorcing the president’s mother. They returned to Kenya to live, where Mark and his brother, David, were born and raised.

Obama Sr. died in an automobile accident in 1982 at age 46.