a very warm welcome to the programme, we begin in sri lanka where the president got a buy read your has not honoured his promise to resign, he flew to the mall deves 2a hours earlier but in the public letter he said he was appointing the prime minister to be the acting head of state while he was absent. and she drank a curfew is in force with suzuki forces clashing with protesters. prompting the un security secretary general in the last few minutes to tweet saying it s important the root causes of the conflict and the grievances of protesters are addressed, i urge all party leaders to embrace the spirit of compromise for a peaceful and democratic transition. their target heavily guarded. their mood determined. as news spread that prime minister ranil wickremesinghe had just been made acting president, crowds gathered in front of his office, one of the few government buildings not yet occupied by protesters. protesters are lined up along this avenue. on the other side you can
of voting in the contest to become the next conservative party leader and prime minister will be held today. it will see the six remaining candidates whittled down to five is our political correspondence reports. now there are six candidates to be the next prime minister, by the next end of the day there will be five. this is how the first round of voting ended yesterday. tiara voting ended yesterday. two candidates voting ended yesterday. two candidates will voting ended yesterday. two candidates will be voting ended yesterday. twr candidates will be eliminated, jeremy hunt and nadhim zahawi. 0f jeremy hunt and nadhim zahawi. of the a2 made it onto the ballot to knocked outjust six contenders for the race to number ten. jeremy hunt you came second to borisjohnson in 2019 told the bbc he will now back rishi sunak. the 2019 told the bbc he will now back rishi sunak. back rishi sunak. the big challenge back rishi sunak. the big challenge we back rishi sunak. the big challenge