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BBC news 2013-04-20

BBC News with Nick Kelly

Thousands of heavily armed police are searching houses in Boston in an attempt to capture one of the two men suspected of bombing the city’s marathon on Monday. Reports name him as Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, a 19-year-old ethnic Chechen. Police believe he’s hiding in the Cambridge or Watertown neighbourhood of Boston. The suspect’s brother died after a shootout during a car chase with police overnight. Mark Mardell is in Boston.

In the dead of night, a ferocious gun battle began. It killed one suspect, but led to a massive manhunt. The city of Boston is frozen in lockdown. About the only people on the streets-- heavily armed police. But there are troops of them searching door-to-door for the bomber who’s still alive. They’ve warned he’s very dangerous. It’s feared he may be wearing a suicide vest. Boston police commissioner Ed Davis warned the people of Watertown not to venture out.

"We are concerned about securing that area and making sure that this individual is taken into custody. We believe this to be a terrorist. We believe this to be a man who’s come here to kill people. We need to get him in custody.”

That warning was then extended to cover the whole of the Boston area. Businesses are closed. Public transport is shut down. The city is living on its nerves locked inside as a desperate manhunt for a killer continues.

The suspect moved to America from the Caucasus about 10 years ago. He and his elder brother lived in Dagestan but are ethnic Chechens. Their father, who now lives in Dagestan, says his sons have been framed. But their uncle, who lives in the US, told an American television that his nephews had brought shame on the family and the Chechens. The Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov said the bombing suspects had no connection with his country.

"As far as the Tsarnaev is [the Tsarnaevs/ Tsarnaev brothers are] concerned, we do not know such people. They did not live here. According to the media, including American ones, they lived, studied and grew up in America. It means it’s their American upbringing not ours. Therefore, we bear no responsibility for this.”

Kosovo and Serbia have agreed to normalise their relations five years after Kosovo’s ethnic Albanian majority declared independence. The deal was agreed in Brussels after months of negotiations mediated by the European Union. Guy De Launey reports from Belgrade.

The deal has only been initialled, but already the spinning has begun. Kosovo’s foreign minister took to Twitter to declare that Serbia had recognised his country’s independence. Meanwhile, Serbian government officials told the media that Kosovo had yielded to all their demands. The agreement basically says that Serbs in northern Kosovo will have their own police and appeal court. But beyond that, there’s none of the autonomy that Serbia had originally been demanding, and certainly no recognition of Kosovo’s independence by Belgrade.

World News from the BBC

Nicolas Maduro has been sworn in as president of Venezuela after his narrow victory over the opposition leader Henrique Capriles last Sunday. Dozens of leaders from across the region, Iran and some Arab countries attended the ceremony. The United States, however, has not yet recognised the election.

The United States regulators have approved modifications made by the aircraft giant Boeing to the battery system for its 787 Dreamliner, a key step if the plane is to return to the sky after being grounded. The Federal Aviation Administration will now instruct operators to make changes to Dreamliner jets. Here’s our transport correspondent Richard Westcott.

The 787 Dreamliner was grounded around the world in January after two different aeroplanes had problems with their state of the old lithium-ion batteries. One of those batteries caught fire while the plane was being cleaned on the ground in Boston and it took crews more than an hour and a half to control the blaze. Since then safety regulators and Boeing have been working around the clock to find out what caused the fire and how to fix it. Now they still don’t know the cause they may never know, but Boeing has come up with a fix to make sure any future problem wouldn’t risk the safety of the plane.

Members of a French family released two months after being kidnapped in Cameroon have spoken of their relief for having been freed. Tanguy Moulin-Fournier, who was abducted along with his wife, four children and brother, said they were all happy to be reunited with their Cameroonian friends. Looking thin but apparently in good health, he thanked President Paul Biya.

And Ghanaian health officials have seized more than 100 million faulty condoms, which were given away as part of an Aids-prevention programme. A spokesman for the Food and Drug Authority in Ghana said laboratory tests revealed that the condoms contained holes and were liable to split. He told the BBC they were imported via Kenya from a Chinese manufacturer.

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