From Our Own Correspondent - 17/06/2010

Delhi's weary rickshaw men look forward to an electrical future. The woman described as the "most powerful on the planet" runs into trouble. And why do boys sometimes disappear from a sleepy, beautiful Caribbean island...? Smoke hung in the air over the Central Asian city of Osh. And beneath it there was mob rule, murder and rape. Old tensions between the ethnic Uzbek and Kyrghyz communities had suddenly turned very violent. A quarter-of-a-million people have fled their homes, and more than a-hundred-and-seventy have been killed. Our Central Asia correspondent, Reyhan Demitri has been out on Osh's dangerous streets. All across India, cycle rickshaws are part of every street scene.... They're not a quick way to get around town. But you can hitch a ride for almost nothing, and you escape the milling masses on the pavements. But think of the drivers.... Peddling an overweight tourist, or a bank clerk through the heat of an Indian summer is no easy way to make a living. But Chris Morris has seen the future of the rickshaw, and he says things may be about to get a whole lot easier for some drivers..... She's never come across as the most charismatic politician. But many Germans came to see Chancellor Angela Merkel as astute and pragmatic, and just what the country needed. They returned her to power last year. And for a long time she made the business of running Germany look fairly effortless. But Steve Rosenburg in Berlin says that....suddenly....the Chancellor seems to have lost her touch.... The green hills of Providencia Island rise out of the blue of the Caribbean. It's a tiny piece of land lying way out in the vastness of the sea, hundreds of kilometres from the South American coast. But Providencia actually belongs to Colombia. And Will Grant says that for all its remoteness, the island hasn't escaped the nation's troubles....