August 20th, 2009
World Links: Lockerbie Bomber Released, Ballots Counted in Afghanistan Election

Abdul Baset Ali al-Megrahi, the “Lockerbie bomber,” convicted in the deaths of 270 people in the 1998 bombing of Pan Am flight 103, is released from a Scottish prison and flown to his native Libya. Megrahi is terminally ill with prostate cancer and is expected to live at the most three months.

Millions of ballots are being counted in Afghanistan’s second presidential election. Afghan officials say that voter turnout was good despite violence targeted at polling stations, but election observers suggest less than 50 percent of eligible voters went to the polls.

North Korea plans to send a high-level delegation to South Korea to pay respects to former South Korean President Kim Dae-jung, who died Tuesday.

More than 1,300 children are poisoned by lead pollution from a new, unlicensed manganese smelter in China’s Hunan province. This is the second mass lead poisoning incident in China in the past month.

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