The contrast between the Lockerbie bomber's release from prison in Scotland, and his homecoming in Libya, couldn't be greater. Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi, a former Libyan intelligence agent who was the only person convicted in the deaths of 270 in the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, was granted a "compassionate release" from a Scottish prison and departed via plane for his home country of Libya on Thursday morning, amid protest and outrage from American leaders, including President Obama. Al-Megrahi's arrival in Tripoli, however, was that of a hero: Al-Megrahi exited the plane to a tarmac full of cheering crowds, waving flags and pumping their fists in support of the cancer-stricken terrorist. The New York Times reports that Washington had pressured Libya not to permit a hero's welcome for Al-Megrahi, leaving D.C. with two diplomatic failures: one with Scotland, which permitted the bomber's release, and one with Libya, which permitted the jubilant public homecoming. The father of one Al-Megrahi victim, an Army specialist, spoke against the bomber's "compassionate release": "He didn't show our kids any mercy so I have a hard time feeling compassion for him."

Can President Obama put our money where his mouth is? He guaranteed on Thursday that his health-care overhaul will pass during an interview with conservative radio host Michael Smerconish at the White House. When a caller said he thought the administration’s “knees are bucklin’ a little bit,” Obama said, “I guarantee you, Joe, we are going to get health-care reform done.” He also spoke to the DNC Thursday afternoon, to shore up his liberal base, but in both appearances he refused to commit unequivocally to a public option. "What we've said is that there are a number of components to health care," he told Smerconish. "I see nothing wrong with having [a] public option as one choice."

Investigating acts perpetrated by secret agents in secret prisons has never been easy—and The Washington Post reports that attorneys for Gitmo detainees may have broken the law while investigating interrogation techniques at the CIA's "black site" facilities. The Justice Department recently questioned the lawyers about whether they unlawfully provided their clients with photographs of CIA personnel, including undercover agents. The agents' photos were provided by the John Adams Project, an organization affiliated with the ACLU and the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers; the attorneys were apparently trying to identify their clients' interrogators. ACLU Director Anthony Romero says he does not know which laws the government thinks the military lawyers have broken: "That is the most vexing part of it. Usually when you're read your Miranda rights or visited by the Justice Department or the FBI, you are given some indication as to what laws are at stake." A John Adams Project spokesman said, "The lawyers have a duty to find out what happened to their clients," and blamed the new charges on “certain agencies” wanting "to insulate themselves from accountability." The Justice Department has not yet determined whether the lawyers breached laws governing classified information.

After 10 hours of voting, the polls have closed in Afghanistan’s presidential elections. The Taliban followed up on weeks of threats with gun, rocket, and suicide attacks throughout the country that left 26 people dead. Overall turnout is low—especially in the south, which bodes poorly for President Hamid Karzai. One official in Kandahar, the south’s largest city and birthplace of the Taliban, thought that turnout was 40 percent lower than the 2004 presidential election. Stronger turnout in the north should favor Karzai’s top rival, former foreign minister Abdullah Abdullah. Official results aren’t expected until Saturday.

Law-enforcement agencies "working closer than ever before" have launched drug-trafficking charges against 43 people in the U.S. and Mexico, including several suspected cartel leaders. Attorney General Eric Holder Jr. appeared alongside U.S. Attorneys Patrick Fitzgerald and Benton Campbell to announce court filings that Campbell said were "among the most significant drug-conspiracy charges ever returned" in his home state of New York. Fitzgerald said the suspects had used "practically every means of transportation imaginable" for smuggling cocaine and heroin into the U.S., including planes, submarines, trains, fishing vessels, and tractor-trailers. Among the indictments unsealed Thursday were Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman-Loera, Ismael "El Mayo" Zambada-Garcia and Arturo Beltran-Leyva. El Chapo's notoriety precedes him: He was No. 701 in this year's Forbes magazine list of the richest people in the world, with an estimated net worth of $1 billion. He has been indicted before but has repeatedly eluded capture.

As if the CIA’s secret assassination program couldn’t get creepier: The New York Times reports that the intelligence agency’s program to seek and kill jihadists employed none other than infamous military contractor Blackwater. The CIA did not have a formal contract with Blackwater but used “individual agreements” with company heavyweights, including Blackwater founder Erik Prince. It is unclear whether the agency intended to pay Blackwater for assassinations and captures, or for help with training and surveillance. Senior CIA officials, apparently realizing that “assassin for hire” has a certain unsavory ring to it, ended Blackwater’s partnership in the assassination program years before Leon Panetta took over the agency. However, the Times reports that Blackwater’s involvement may have played a role in Panetta’s decision to come clean on the death squad. Last week, Joseph Finder suggested in The Daily Beast that Panetta had jumped the gun in disclosing the secret program to Congress.

As the manhunt for model-murder suspect and reality-TV contestant Ryan Alexander Jenkins crosses the border into Canada, police have released grisly new details on the murder of swimsuit model Jasmine Fiore. In an apparent attempt to conceal Fiore's identity, the killer cut off the model's fingers and removed her teeth before stashing the suitcase containing her naked body in a trash bin in Buena Park, California. Jenkins has been missing since the body was discovered Saturday, and police warn that he may be armed. Jenkins allegedly married Fiore in Las Vegas after meeting her at a strip club where she was performing, shortly after he was booted from VH1 reality show Megan Wants a Millionaire. Fiore's mother says the pair married in March but had a "big blowout" in May. Jenkins, a native of Calgary, is now being pursued by law enforcement on both sides of the border. "There will be no stone unturned and we'll look under every rock for him," said the chief inspector of the U.S. Marshals.

Life as a millionaire music legend married to an ex-Playboy model apparently does not prepare you a life behind bars. Phil Spector has been complaining about his “snake pit” of a prison and his fellow inmates who would “kill you in here for a 39-cent bag of soup!” In a letter to Bay Area music manager Steve Escobar, Spector gripes that the authorities have sunk “low” by putting him in the same prison as killers Charles Manson and Sirhan Sirhan, despite the fact that he is actually in a different institution. It is not all bad news, however, as Spector's 29-year-old ex-Playmate wife, Rachelle Short, began an 800-mile round-trip drive to visit him. Spector calls this a “Darwinian blessing."

Are you going to school? An everyday question that became a once-in-a-lifetime horror for students of Mirwais Mena School for Girls in Afghanistan, who were attacked with battery acid by masked Taliban members last fall. Veteran New York Times war correspondent Dexter Filkins returns to the town outside Kandahar where the girls live to check in on how they've recovered. With Afghanis voting Thursday to elect their next president, Filkins finds "one unambiguously positive change" in a country with few reasons to be optimistic about the future: the education of girls. In the last eight years, the number of girls receiving schooling has grown from nearly zero to 2.6 million. But Filkins' story is not a completely happy one, as he confronts the complex politics which prevent a family from accepting the charity that he has come to offer.

So the blind can lead the blind. Jayson Blair, the New York Times reporter who resigned in 2003 after being caught plagiarizing and fabricating articles, is now a certified life coach. For the last two years he has been successfully working at one of the most respected mental health practices in northern Virginia, according to the Associated Press. "People say, 'Wait a minute. You're a life coach?' That makes no sense,'" said Blair. "Then they think about my life experiences and what I've been through and they say 'Wait a minute. It does make sense.'" His boss agrees. "He can relate to patients just beautifully," explained the psychologist who hired Blair.

A bombshell from another Bush administration tell-all: Former Department of Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge says in his upcoming book that President Bush manipulated the terror-threat alert system for political gain. Ridge says that he was pressured to raise the alert level on the eve of President Bush’s reelection in 2004. “Journalists, including myself, were very skeptical when anti-Bush liberals insisted that what Ridge now says is true, was true,” Marc Ambinder writes. “We were wrong.”

Evidently, Michelle Obama is more influential than Queen Elizabeth, but less important than Hillary Clinton. At least, that's how Forbes sees it. Reuters reports that German Chancellor Angela Merkel topped the list of the world's 100 most powerful women for the fourth year running. Sheila Blair, chairwoman of the FDIC clocked in at No. 2, while CEOs of corporations including PepsiCo, Sunoco, Temasek, Kraft Foods, and WellPoint rounded out the rest of the top ten. Nancy Pelosi, Hillary Clinton, Michelle Obama, and Oprah clocked in at Nos. 35, 36, 40, and 41 respectively. The list takes factors such as economic impact, media reach, and career accomplishments into account.

Is there a revolving door for NFL stars at prison? Just as Michael Vick begins rebuilding his career, another football player, Plaxico Burress, has pleaded guilty to attempted gun possession and received a two-year sentence. The former Giants wide receiver got in trouble with the law after accidentally shooting himself in the thigh outside of a Manhattan nightclub in November. Burress will start serving time in late September and will miss the birth of his second child, the New York Post reports. Burress' lawyer said that the harsh sentence reflected prosecutors' desire to make him an example to others. "If he was John Q. Public he would have never been arrested. This was never a level playing field," the lawyer said. Burress could get out of prison in 20 months with good behavior.

The U.K. police are being tight-lipped about the nation's largest jewelry heist. The BBC reports that two men have been arrested in connection with an August 6 robbery from Graff Jewelers in London. During the robbery, two men in disguises held up the store with hand guns and made off with $66 million in jewelry. They used a female hostage to exit the store, then sped off in a BMW before switching to a Mercedes and passing something to a man on a motorcycle. Forensic specialists have been examining the cars, the motorbike, a discarded handgun, and the makeup materials used to change the their appearance. Although the Metropolitan Police confirmed the arrests, they gave no further details for "operational reasons."

The White House and Democratic leaders in the Senate may abandon efforts at achieving bipartisan support and split their health-care overhaul into two parts with the most costly pieces passed with only Democratic votes, according to the Wall Street Journal. With public support waning, giving Republicans less incentive to reach across the aisle, splitting bills could allow Democrats to pass legislation by the end of the year, the goal set by Barack Obama. This strategy still leaves a window open to establishing a public option, the Journal said. "Patience is not unlimited," a spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said, "and we are determined to get something done this year by any legislative means necessary." Obama will meet with aides next week to discuss the possibility of this new plan. Said one Democratic aide, "It's fair to say the steam is going out of these bipartisan negotiations."

Ted Kennedy is coming to grips with his own mortality. The Boston Globe reports that the senator, who is suffering from brain cancer, has written a letter to Mass. Governor Deval Patrick, Senate President Therese Murray, and House Speaker Robert A. DeLeo asking that the law be changed so that Patrick can appoint a temporary senator to serve the state during the 5-month gap between Kennedy's potential death and the ensuing special election. The governor had this authority until 2004, when the legislature changed the law to prevent then-Governor Mitt Romney from filling John Kerry's seat with a Republican, should Kerry win the presidency. Kennedy never liked the new law, but is particularly averse to it now, as Senate Democrats try to rally the troops in advance of a health-care vote. Kennedy and his advisers adamantly denied that the timing of the letter corresponded to any immediate worsening of the senator's condition.

The ex-Soviet state of Lithuania provided the CIA with a ‘black site’ for detaining high-value al Qaeda suspects, former CIA officials have told ABC news. Eight suspects were held at a site provided by Lithuanian officials on the outskirts of the country’s capital, Vilnius, until 2005 when they were moved after news leaked of the program. Flight logs viewed by ABC News confirm that CIA planes made repeated visits to Lithuania during that period. Lithuania denies the allegation. The CIA accused ABC News of being “irresponsible” in reporting the location of the site. It also claims that ABC’s assertions could potentially “expose millions of people to direct threat,” although does not explain exactly how.

There's a different kind of manhunt on for "Megan Wants a Millionaire" star Ryan Alexander Jenkins. TMZ reports that Jenkins is a potential suspect in the killing of his wife, model Jasmine Fiore, whose body was found in a suitcase in Orange County last weekend. But Jenkins, who is Canadian, has been on the lam and police believe he's slipped into Canada. The Whatcom County Sheriff's Department in Washington State has a witness who saw someone who looked like Jenkins driving a black SUV toting a boat in a marina close to the border, and deputies later found the rig abandoned. They now suspect he fled across the border on foot, and have launched a massive search.

David Copperfield is no doubt wishing he could disappear right now: A 22-year-old fashion model has just filed a federal lawsuit against the magician and entertainer, alleging he sexually assaulted and threatened her while she was visiting his private island in the Bahamas, back in 2007. The woman, a Seattle native, says she met the magician during one of his shows earlier that year, and was invited to his island that summer. After watching a movie, he attacked and threatened to kill her if she didn't comply, the suit claims. Copperfield's lawyers deny the accusations and have issued a forceful response: "This lawsuit is extortion for money, plain and simple," read a statement. "Unfortunately, false claims like this only hurt the women who really have been abused, women who really need our help."

CBS and Pepsi are bringing new media to next month's dead-tree version of Entertainment Weekly. Readers will open their magazines to find full-motion video ads for the two companies, playing on a wafer-thin screen embedded into the page. The screen will be about the size of those found on mobile telephones, according to the Financial Times. Entertainment Weekly has a circulation of 1.8 million, although it's unclear how many copies would contain the new promotions. One magazine executive estimated that running a video ad in 100,000 copies would cost in the low seven-figure range, while a full-page color ad would cost a mere 9 cents per page per copy. CBS and Pepsi are jointly paying for the promotion, and justified the cost by saying the ads would create "buzz."

Elizabeth Edwards is legendary for her optimism, but given the media frenzy surrounding her husband, her hope that the paternity issues surrounding him and the daughter of his mistress get done "in a quiet way" seems like a fantasy. On Wednesday, Larry King asked Edwards, currently ill with terminal cancer, if she knew whether her husband John would take a paternity test, and she responded with the vague expectation that "at some point, something happens." North Carolina TV station WRAL reported last week that John was expected to claim paternity of the infant daughter of his ex-mistress, Rielle Hunter, and the National Enquirer claimed that Hunter is moving into his neighborhood. Elizabeth is standing by her man, though. Of her home life she said, "Things are going fine. We're getting the children ready for the new school year. Everything is going smoothly at my house."

Lest anyone call him a hypocrite for demanding Bill Clinton's resignation over Monica Lewinsky—then having an affair of his own—Nevada Senator John Ensign offered his defense today: His relationship with a friend's wife was a mistake, but not as bad as Clinton's affair, because he didn't lie about it under oath. "I haven't done anything legally wrong," Ensign said. "President Clinton stood right before the American people and he lied to the American people." Ensign was speaking at a Nevada Chamber of Commerce luncheon, in his first public appearance in his home state since admitting to his relationship with former campaign aide Cynthia Hampton.

Maid service and a private beach might be expected for a Clinton getaway—but a clothing-optional sky deck? The Bermuda Sun reports that Bill and Hillary flew via private jet to a Bermuda resort on Wednesday for a short vacation, returning to the island where daughter Chelsea, 29, was apparently conceived three decades ago. (In his biography, Bill confessed that he learned Hillary was pregnant via the Arkansas Gazette.) The Sun reports that, though the former first couple had hoped to stay at Horizons, the cottage colony where they stayed back in 1979, the resort could no longer accommodate them, forcing the couple’s staff to book at Cambridge Beaches, a "plush, adult-only resort" that boasts the aforementioned deck and sometimes hosts sex seminars to improve couples' relationships. CNN reports that the State Department declined to comment on the trip.

Has Karl Rove finally reached his breaking point? In an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal, the former George W. Bush adviser vents that The New York Times, The Washington Post, and Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) all owe him an apology. The newspapers have published a combined 18 editorials pointing a finger at him for the prosecution of Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman in 2004, and the firing of eight U.S. attorneys in 2006, Rove writes. And Conyers once told two members of the House Judiciary Committee: "We're closing in on Rove. Someone's got to kick his ass." The problem, according to Rove? They're all wrong, as new material released by the House Judiciary Committee last week allegedly reveals: "Judging from the evidence released, it uncovered facts that show that my role in the U.S. attorneys issue was minimal and entirely proper," Rove writes. "I did not conceive of the idea of removing certain U.S. attorneys, did not select those to be removed, and did not see the lists of U.S. attorneys Justice was considering to replace... No fair-minded person can review the thousands of pages of documents and testimony and conclude that I drove the process."

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who triumphed in Iran's disputed election this June, has submitted a list of new cabinet members which would solidify his circle of supporters and remove those who have been critical of him. But there are signs that members of parliament, which must approve the list, will resist his suggestions, according to The New York Times. All ten ministers who recently challenged the appointment of a controversial deputy have been dropped from Ahmadinejad’s slate. Parliament members have publicly accused the president of privileging loyalty over experience in his selections.

Millions went to the polls in Afghanistan Thursday even while the Taliban upped its efforts to disrupt the country’s presidential election. Two Taliban insurgents were killed in a gun battle in Kabul, the capital, and rockets fell on some towns. The U.N. expressed optimism about the turnout. "The vast majority of polling stations have been able to open and have received voting materials," a spokesman said. Afghanistan's president Hamid Karzai faces an unexpected challenge from former foreign minister Abdullah Abdullah, with many predicting that a run-off may be necessary to determine the winner. A Kabul student told Reuters that the violence would not keep voters away: "The Afghan people are used to living under the worst circumstances of insecurity and fighting, why should they be afraid to come out and vote?"

As the health-care debate rages through Congress, the number of poor and uninsured Americans has increased. The Associated Press reports that 38.8 million Americans are believed to live in poverty, making less than $13,540 for a family of two or $21,203 for a family of four, according to preliminary numbers from the 2008 census. The Commerce Department undersecretary of economic affairs said that the poverty rate underwent a "statistically significant" increase to at least 12.7 percent, a jump of more than 1.5 million people over the previous year. Rising unemployment and waning private coverage are also expected to swell the rolls of uninsured considerably, despite the fact that in 2007 those numbers fell by more than 1 million with the help of government programs like Medicaid picking. The final census numbers will be released next month.