Current events of 20 August 2009 (2009-08-20) (Thursday) edit history watch

Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi, convicted of the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie in 1988, is released on compassionate grounds due to terminal cancer, and boards a flight to Libya. (BBC) A bicycle bomb explodes near a restaurant in Baghdad, killing two people. (Yahoo! news) 18 prospectors are killed overnight in a diamond mine in Kasai province in central Democratic Republic of the Congo. (IOL) Switzerland's president, Hans-Rudolf Merz, apologizes to the Libyan government for last year's arrest of a son of Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi. (MSNBC) Elizabeth Ramos and Louis Williams, owners of defense contracting company Technical Logistics, admit to bribing an employee of the U.S. Navy's Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command in exchange for defense contracts. (UPI)