London - It is the job of David Smith to keep on top of his box of index cards marked "serious buyers."

But as tight loans and tumbling prices keep a stranglehold on Britain's once buoyant property market, hardly any of his clients bother to ring back.

Estate agents like Smith are nostalgic about the days of the property boom when interested viewers would rush to compete for appointments to see the best properties as soon as they were advertised.

Britain's obsession with home ownership in a market distorted and overheated by a drastic disproportion between supply and demand has come to a sudden stop with the credit crunch.

Amsterdam - Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi, who was convicted for the so-called Lockerbie disaster, is terminally ill with cancer and expected to die within "weeks or months," a Dutch documentary filmmaker told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa early Tuesday.

Libyan former intelligence agent al-Megrahi, 56, was sentenced for life imprisonment in 2001 for the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 in 1988.

A terrorist bomb on board the aircraft brought the plane down over the Scottish town of Lockerbie, killing some 270 people.

The Dutch documentary maker says he was given the information about al-Megrahi by "reliable sources close to a Libyan delegation."

London/Johannesburg - Former Botswana president Festus Gontebanye Mogae, who received the 5-million dollar Mo Ibrahim African leadership award Monday, is a British-educated economist credited with using his country's mineral wealth to advance the lot of the poor.

He is also a champion of struggle against HIV/AIDS and was the first African leader, in a bid to combat the stigma around the pandemic on the continent, to publicly test for the virus.

Kabul - Taliban fighters killed a Western female aid worker for "spreading Christianity" on Monday as she was going to her office in the western part of Kabul, officials said.

Gayle Williams, 34, who had dual British-South African citizenship and was working with Serving Emergency Relief and Vocational Enterprises (SERVE) was killed while she walked to work in the Carte Say area of Kabul, police and the aid agency said.

London  - A pilot for United Airlines was arrested in his cockpit shortly before take-off from London's Heathrow Airport on Sunday for alleged drunkenness.