2010-04-16 BBC
BBC News with Iain Purdon
The President of Kyrgyzstan Kurmanbek Bakiyev has left the country and flown to neighboring Kazakhstan almost a week after his political opponents seized power. The authorities in Kazakhstan said his departure had been organized with the help of Russia and the United States. Rayhan Demytrie reports.
A plane carrying the ousted Kyrgyz President Kurmanbek Bakiyev took off from Jalalabad Airport on Thursday evening. Within an hour, the foreign ministry of Kazakhstan issued a statement, saying Mr Bakiyev landed in the Kazakh city of Taraz. His departure, the statement said, was a result of negotiations between the US, Russia, Kazakhstan and a number of other international diplomats. And it was done for the prevention of civil war and further unrest in the country.
A huge plume of drifting ash from a volcanic eruption in Iceland has disrupted air transport across much of Europe. Flights have been grounded in countries as far apart as Ireland, Norway and Poland. Tens of thousands of passengers are stranded and international flights to and from Europe have also been affected. In an unprecedented move, Britain closes its entire airspace to all but emergency flights. Dave Reynolds is the flight safety officer for the pilots union, the British Airline Pilots Association.
"The major issue, which has been highlighted, is the fact that this volcanic ash can get inside the aircraft engines and can make them cease to operate, but also significantly, the ash can get inside the aircraft's instrument systems and under conditions where the pilots are using their instruments to fly the aircraft, they will find themselves in the very dangerous situation, not being able to have reliable instruments."
The first ever television election debate has been taking place between the leaders of Britain's three main political parties. The Prime Minister Gordon Brown and his rivals, the Conservative leader David Cameron and the leader of the Liberal Democrats Nick Clegg, took questions from an invited studio audience. Ian Watson reports.
With the polls pointing to the possibility of a hung parliament, the party leaders wanted to avoid slip-ups and none of them committed obvious gaffes They addressed each other in first name terms but after 15 minutes the interruption's begun. The prime minister clearly decided that the best form of defence was attack, delivering his first drive when he told David Cameron that it wasn't question time but answer time over police funding. The Conservative leader was far less confrontational, but consistently reminded voters that Labour had 13 years to implement better policies but it failed to do so.
In one of his most direct references to the widening Roman Catholic Church sexual abuse scandal, Pope Benedict has said Christians need to do penance for sins. During a private mass inside the Vatican, the Pope said the Church had come under attack from the world. and needed to recognize its mistakes. Hundreds of people in North America and Europe have accused priests of child abuse.
World News from the BBC
There has been a bomb explosion in the Afghan city of Kandahar. Initial reports said at least six people were killed and that some of them were foreign workers. Several other people were wounded. The Foreign Office in London said it was investigating unconfirmed reports that British citizens were among the casualties.
The former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has denied allegations that he took bribes to facilitate the building of a controversial residential complex while he was mayor of Jerusalem. He's been named by Israeli investigators as a prime suspect in a multimillion-dollar corruption scandal. Appearing on national television, Mr Olmert, who is already on trial in another corruption case, urged people not to jump to conclusions and said he would cooperate with the police investigation.
President Obama has announced plans for new space exploration, saying they could lead to landings on an asteroid and the planet Mars within 25 years. Speaking at Cape Canaveral, Mr Obama said he was fully committed to the American space agency NASA despite the coming end of its space shuttle program. President Obama also said he wanted to see a successor developed to the Hubble Telescope.
"NASA from the start, several months ago when I issued my budget was one of the areas where we didn't just maintain a freeze but we actually increased funding by six billion dollars. By doing that, we'll ramp up robotic exploration of the solar system, including a probe of the sun's atmosphere, new scouting missions to Mars and other destinations and an advanced telescope to follow Hubble, allowing us to peer deeper into the universe than ever before."
Teachers in a town in Somalia say Islamist militants have told schools to stop ringing bells to summon children because they sound like those used in Christian churches. A teacher said the militant group al-Shabab had told schools in the town of Jowhar that if they failed to comply, they would be taken before an Islamic court.
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