KABUL - TALEBAN threats appeared to dampen voter turnout in the militant south on Thursday as Afghans chose the next president for their deeply troubled country. Insurgents launched scattered rocket, suicide and bomb attacks that closed some polling sites.
Low turnout in the south would harm President Hamid Karzai's re-election chances and boost the standing of his top challenger, former Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah. Turnout in the north appeared to be high, a good sign for Mr Abdullah.
EDINBURGH - SCOTLAND'S government freed the terminally ill Lockerbie bomber on compassionate grounds on Thursday, allowing him to die at home in Libya despite American protests that mercy should not be shown to the man responsible for the deaths of 270 people.
Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill said Abdel Baset al-Megrahi's condition had deteriorated from prostate cancer. Al-Megrahi had only served some eight years of a life sentence, but Mr MacAskill said he was bound by Scottish values to release him.
SEOUL - NORTH Korea struck a conciliatory note on Thursday after months of hostility, holding talks in the United States and announcing plans to ease border restrictions.
The North's military has said it will remove cross-border restrictions as of Friday, the South's unification ministry said.
North Korea also promised to restore temporarily a telephone hotline manned by the Red Cross which the neighbours used to communicate before it was axed last November, the ministry said.
OSLO - A SENIOR Norwegian diplomat has slammed Ban Ki-Moon as lacking leadership, ineffectual and prone to angry outbursts, a daily reported on Wednesday, just two weeks ahead of the UN chief's visit to Oslo.
Mona Juul, the Norwegian deputy ambassador to the United Nations, sent a damning confidential letter to her ministry half-way through Mr Ban's mandate, in which she said he had 'struggled to show leadership,' Aftenposten reported.
