Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi, the former Libyan intelligence officer convicted of murdering 270 people when a bomb he planted on Pan-Am Flight 103 blew up over Lockerbie, Scotland, on Dec. 21, 1988, has been released from prison after serving eight years of a life sentence. Making the announcement on Thursday, Justice Secretary of Scotland Kenny MacAskill said that Al-Megrahi was released on compassionate grounds because he has terminal prostate cancer and is unlikely to live past the next three ...

In 2007 and 2008, photojournalist Tomas Van Houtryve visited North Korea by infiltrating a communist solidarity delegation. In the second story in his three-part TIME.com series, Van Houtryve describes the surveillance he was subjected to and the bizarre majesty of the mausoleum of Kim Il Sung. After dinner at the end of my second day, I was pulled aside by my guides. The interrogation lasted for four hours. The most grim-looking of our minders, Mr. Chung , was bad ...

A Scottish court is expected to release convicted Lockerbie bomber Abdelbeset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi on compassionate grounds, senior State Department officials tell CNN. Al Megrahi, 57, is suffering from terminal prostate cancer. He is serving a life sentence for bombing Pan Am Flight 103 over the town of Lockerbie, Scotland, which killed 270 people. The Scottish government has informally notified the U.S. State Department of the decision, the senior officials said. But they added that the conditions of his ...

Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi's fate hangs in the balance. The Libyan man convicted for the 1988 Lockerbie bombings has terminal prostate cancer and, according to his lawyers, just weeks to live. Scotland's Justice Minister Frank MacAskill is weighing up whether to release him on compassionate grounds so he can die at home; to transfer him to a Libyan jail under a prisoner transfer agreement drawn up between Libya and the UK; or whether to keep him in a ...

Kenneth Bacon, a former reporter and Pentagon spokesman who later served as a top advocate of displaced people all over the world, died Saturday, according to Refugees International. He was 64. Bacon had served as the president of Washington-based Refugees International since 2001, the group said in a statement Saturday. The former Wall Street Journal reporter died Saturday morning from an aggressive melanoma that spread to his brain, the statement said. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called Bacon, who was ...

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton arrived in Cape Verde on Friday, the final stop on her seven-nation Africa tour in which she emphasized good governance and urged officials to implement reforms. Clinton is scheduled to meet with Prime Minister Pedro Maria Neves before returning to the United States. The Obama administration describes the island nation on the western coast as an African success story. "Cape Verde enjoys a stable democratic system, high transparency and low corruption," said Marianne M. Myles, ...

The United Nations Security Council on Thursday expressed "serious concern" over the conviction of Myanmar pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi while the European Union adopted additional sanctions against the nation. "The members of the Security Council express serious concern at the conviction and sentencing of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, and its political impact," John Sawers of Britain, Security Council president for the month of August, told reporters. Members of the council noted that the Myanmar government reduced Suu ...

In a country built on a system of checks and balances, it's intriguing to have an award that allows the President to reveal some personal preferences. Since February 1963, when John F. Kennedy's executive order made bestowing the Medal of Freedom a Presidential privilege the highest civilian honor in the nation has offered unique insight into the elite group of people who inspire our Commanders-in-Chief. Officially, the award, which President Obama is scheduled to present to 16 people on ...

The head of a humanitarian agency in Chechnya and her husband were found dead early Tuesday, their bodies stuffed in the trunk of their car, a prosecutor's spokeswoman said. "These two soldiers nabbed her, put a bag over her head and pulled her into the bushes. She explains it as, 'They got me,' " says Sherrlyn Borkgren, who spent a month in the Democratic Republic of the Congo late last year. Borkgren, a wedding photographer and freelance journalist, traveled to ...

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton travels to the epicenter of Africa's longest war Tuesday to try to help victims, especially those of sexual violence, of a regional conflict that's dragged on more than a decade. Taking a smaller U.N. plane on the 1,000-mile trip from Kinshasa to Goma, in the eastern part of the Democratic Republic of Congo, was necessary because the U.S. plane being used on her seven-nation Africa trip is too big for the local ...