grounded as volcanic ash clouds a continent. and nato keeps up the pressure on moammar gadhafi. tripoli comes in for more bombing. we begin in london where the u.s. president is kicking off day two of his state visit to britain. right now barack obama is at 10 downing street for talks with british prime minister david cameron. they've got lot on their plates, the talks mark a shift in tone for the president. tuesday was mostly about pageantry, meeting the royal family and getting the vip treatment over at buckingham palace. today it is all about politics. and washington's close ties with the uk, that's really going to be at the heart of mr. obama's address to parliament today. he's expected to say american relations with the uk and nato are essential to global security. to number 10 downing street and to our white house correspondent, brianna keeler. what is president obama's message going to be to david cameron? >> we're just a short distance away from 10 downing street for this hour. one of the big things, in fact the biggest item on the agenda today is going to be libya. this is what prime minister cameron and president obama will be discussing at length. different ways that they can, as we heard the white house say yesterday, keep the pressure on gadhafi, help the rebels. perhaps by using some of the money that has been seized through sanctions. and also looking toor more support from european allies, who perhaps have not been as robust on their commitment as the u.s. and britain. also they'll be talking a lot, certainly about the arab uprisings in general and egypt and tunisia. this is one of the president's items that he really wants to discuss. he announced last week sort of his plan for how he wants to insure that democracy can take hold in the middle east. in north africa. his plan for egypt and tunisia, which has to do with billions of dollars of assistance. in debt forgiveness and guaranteed loans. so that's certainly going to be one of the big items as he looks for support on that, zain. and those are areas where they may find more agreement. >> what kind of a personal dynamic do they have? >> you know, it's interesting, because obviously they come from different political traditions. i think if you were just sort of watching them yesterday, they're sort of experience together. it's not long-lasting at this point. there isn't a really long history. so this is sort of about building, i guess some of that rapport. it seemed to be pretty good. i can't certainly speak to it, i wish i had been able to be a fly on the wall during their meeting yesterday. i had an opportunity, when you look at the way the president interacts with other leaders. we saw yesterday, they went over to a school and played ping pong or table tennis as they call it in britain. and they seem to have a very good rapport. they were goofing off, there was a high five. so publicly, the rapport was very good. but make no mistakes, they're going to be dealing with tricky topi. one is going to be the middle east peace process when it comes to israel and palestine, britain more amenable to recognizing the palestinian government as it looks for recognition before the u.n. in september, something that the u.s. is very staunchly opposed to, zain. >> brianna, when we were looking at the video of them playing table tennis there, i have to ask you, did they win? >> no. zain, it was hilarious, as it turns out, it was a doubles match. and i think their contestants were two young boys, maybe 11 or 12 years old. they got clobbered, it was the president holding up the team and the prime minister is just awful at ping pong. >> what does that say about the state of the trans-atlantic relationship there, brianna keiler? >> let's just hope they're better at diplomacy than ping pong. >> thank you, brianna. well president obama has made no secret of the fact that america's focus in the future will be turning increasingly to asia and not europe. so where does that leave the whole idea of a special relationship with the uk? a little bit later in our show. we're also going to bring you president obama's speech to both houses of parliament live at 3:30 p.m. london time. so make sure to join us for cnn's special coverage of the event starting today at 3:00 p.m. in london, at's 10:00 a.m. in washington. severe storms have ripped through the u.s. midwest, claiming at least eight lives in the past day. a major tornado touched down in arkansas just after midnight last night. killing two people. earlier, homes and vehicles were test toyed as a series of tornadoes struck central oklahoma. at least five people were killed, and a 3-year-old child is missing. in kansas, two motorists died when a tree slammed into their van. twisters were reported in dallas and in northern texas. let's get more information on all of this and go straight to our meteorologist jen dell guardo. how hard do we have to brace today? >> we're going to be dealing with another day of severe weather across parts of the u.s. but the overnight hours have continued to be deadly through parts of the midwest. we're talking about areas including arkansas. we do have a report now that two people died, through a report of a tornado, that possibly touched down in denning, arkansas. as i show you on the google earth, this is denning, arkansas, located about 158 kilometers to the northwest of little rock. here's denning, the area very rural. about 300 residents there. we do have reports that homes were actually demolished there. there's trees down, as well as power lines. and the national weather service said to us we talked to them, they said based on tvs, tornado vortex signature. it looks like a tune may have touched down across the region. and they said they saw debris being reflected on the radar. they have to go back later today to survey the area. in fact whether or not it was a tornado. right now we're still dealing with severe weather, you can see tornado watch in place for parts of missouri. some stronger storms going to be moving into areas, including st. louis. and we're still dealing with the tornado watches in place. and those are going to last until about 8:00 a.m. and then we're going to go through the afternoon hours with some afternoon heating and we're going to deal with another threat for severe weather. anywhere you're seeing in orange. we have the moderate risk. including parts of missouri, arkansas, tennessee, as well as kentucky. and yesterday was a deadly day indeed. reportedly we have a total of eight people were killed. and that includes deaths from actually parts of oklahoma. let's go to this aerial video, showing you areas where homes were damaged and destroy. you're looking at what appears to be a very big tornado. this is out of oklahoma. you have to keep in mind, oklahoma, they are very used to tornadoes coming through. but even still, it was a deadly situation. even reports of a woman actually was holding on to her kids, and she still reported looking for her 3-year-old after she took shelter in a bathtub. as i take you back to our graphic. just under 500, this is the deadliest since records were taken. 60 years, back 1953. typically we see about 55 deaths due to tornado on a yearly basis. so we are way off the charts right now. such a sad story out there and of course they're cleaning up in joplin and they had a tornado warning in joplin yesterday, luckily a tornado did not pass through that region. >> jen delgado, thank you. more storms are lashing the city of joplin as she was saying, where a tornado killed 124 people on the weekend. gary tuchman reports from a shelter where hundreds are taking refuge. >> reporter: this is the largest shelter in the city of joplin. missouri's southern state university. we're in the basement because of a tornado warning on tuesday night. there are more than 400 people in the cots above us, sleeping in many cases, having their dinners. all of a sudden authorities came into the shelter and started yelling "down in the basement." people started running down in the basement. but a lot of people are in no condition to run. some people were hurt during the tornado and other people are elderly. people have oxygen tanks, people have wheelchairs and are very scared as they tried to come into the basement shelter as quickly as they could. ironically, the children were having a good time, because they didn't know what was going on. right now they still remain here, even though we've gotten the official word that the tornado warning has been canceled. they want to play it very careful here because the people here in joplin have been through so much trauma. what's amazing about this particular shelter is that 48 hours after the tornado, it was more crowded than 24 hours after the tornado because of fears of another tornado. so far, everything is okay here this time. this is gary tuchman, cnn, in jopl joplin, missouri. you're watching "world one" live from london. nato bombards tripoli for the second night running as moammar gadhafi gets ready for a high-profile visitor. and iceland's volcano, thank goodness, calms down. but the ash is already thrown out and is throwing travel schedules, too. we'll have the latest. 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[ male announcer ] ge technologies help doctors detect cancer early so they can save more lives. bringing better health to more people. ♪ no matter when you get around to booking, hotels.com will have a great last minute deal waiting for you. like at the hotels.com 48 hour sale. this tuesday and wednesday only. hotels.com. be smart. book smart. this is "world one," live from london. our top stories -- u.s. president barack obama is meeting the british prime minister, david cameron, in london. they're talking about libya, afghanistan and a lot of other issues. later, mr. barack obama will speak to british lawmakers where he's expected to say the u.s. and europe must play a leading role in global security. a cloud of ash from a volcano in iceland is now affecting german air space, a day after hundreds of flights to and from scotland were grounded, all airports in berlin were due to closed for takeoffs and landings just a few minutes ago. hamburg international airport and bremen international airport were closed today and the cloud is expected to affect other parts of northern and eastern europe, including scandinavia, poland and russia. the uk's official weather center says the plume will cover all of british air space on wednesday, that does not necessarily mean that there will be masses of flights canceled. because of the different levels of ash density, airlines can still apply to fly in some places. a british airways plane made a test flight on tuesday, b.a. says it's expecting to operate normal flights today. in iceland, the grimsvotn volcano is calming down. officials in the country are saying that the eruption itself is almost over. let's get more on the situation in germany, where it's not over yet for so many travelers. fred platkin is at cnn in berlin. fred, how long are the airports going to be closed and how long are travelers going to wait? >> reporter: zain, for some travelers, the nightmare is just beginning. two berlin airports, among the largest in germany, just shut down a couple of minutes ago, the airspace closed at 11:00 a.m. local time. which indeed happened a couple of minutes ago, hamburg and bremen airports remain closed since the early-morning hours. 600 flights will be canceled throughout germany today. there will be a lot of very annoyed travelers. the interesting thing about this, zain, is these really aren't the biggest airports in germany. the major ones are frankfurt and munich airport. if those were to shut that would bring massive travel chaos, not only here in germany, but in all of europe. it looks as though right now those two airports are not going to be affected by the ash cloud. to get back to your question, the german authorities are saying they believe, if the weather holds the way it is right now, that the airports here in northern germany could also reopen sometime in the afternoon hours. however right now they're not willing to say when that's going to be. one of the other interesting things about germany is also that the country actually has a blanket rule for a ceiling level of ash density within the air. it's 2 milligrams of ash per cubic meter of air that's allowed after that or above that level, no planes are alloy loued to fly. that's why there's no flights from there. when the flights do resume there will be a big backlog, especially if berlin with the big airport, zain? >> and what are the airlines themselves saying? are they okay with the ruling with the density of ash? or are they challenging it like some airports in the uk have? >> they're certainly not happy. they are saying that they believe first of all that it's not scientifically proven that these 2 milligrams of cubic meter per air will harm airplanes. they're saying this is a ruling that is only for germany and other countries in europe are not doing the same thing. so in that sense they don't feel it's a fair deal for them. so there is some criticism of this. but by and large, especially considering the fact that this seems to be quite a short volcanic eruption and we're already hearing that the volcano seems to be dying down, there's not as much criticism as you would expect to see if the cancellation of flights were to last several days or even a month like it did last time so right now the averills have a fair bit of criticism. the airports as well. but it's not very big and it seems they're going to sit this one out and try to resume flights once the ash density in the skies above germany permit that. zain? >> fred platkin in berlin. where is the ash heading and how bad is it going to be? our meteorologist jen delgado is keeping track of it. president obama is scheduled to go to poland later in his trip. is he going to be able to make it? is the ash heading there? >> is the ash going to be a problem there? i have to tell you parts of poland actually under that advisory. of course it's just to the east of germany, but we have this graphic for you. and this graphic is going to give you an idea about the ash plume. now here is iceland. and then grimsvotn, the volcano located about here. as i put this into play for you, i want you to notice something. yesterday we showed you all the ash being reflected. it was showing up in yellow as well as orange. right now we're not seeing that. that right there is actually an old image. so things a lot better. the ash plume not visible. but we still have to wait from the vacc to confirm whether or not the volcano has stopped erupting. we're seeing some steam there, a sign of good things. as we take you back to the weather graphics, we want to point out where the volcano is the area in red is the warning area, for the surface, up to 20,000 feet. that's important because that's where planes take off. now the area a little bit higher up, 35,000 to 55,000 feet, that's where planes generally fly. of course now say if you were on a trans-atlantic flight, coming from england, going over towards the u.s., you would typically fly to the south of greenland so it looks like you'll be able to avoid the ash plume. that's good news, but still we're talking about problem, that includes parts of germany, potentially even into poland. the graphic that you're seeing in the yellow shading, that indicates the low density amount of ash. in the orange as well as the red, that's the higher density. and you can see the spread through parts of germany, as well as into poland. and even potentially we could see some of it going into denmark, but overall things are looking betterment and as fred said, you need to check ahead with your airport. it depends on the country you're flying into and out of, whether or not they impose some flying bans due to the volcanic ash in the air. zain, very happy that this is grimsvotn, a much easier name to say than the other one we won't mention from last year. >> what was it? 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(announcer) everything you need to stretch out on long trips. residence inn. what's the most amazing ...was it something big? ...or something small? ...something old? ...or something new? ...or maybe, just maybe... it's something you haven't seen yet. the 2nd generation of intel core processors. stunning visuals, intelligent performance. this is visibly smart. south africa's president, jacob zuma is planning to travel to libya for talks with embattled leader, moammar gadhafi. he's going to be arriving on monday. explosions have rocked tripoli with nato airstrikes hitting the same target with a second consecutive night. rockets struck a building near gadhafi's compound, which his government claims is used for military volunteers. nato says it's a vehicle storage facility. gadhafi's government says 19 people have been killed and 150 wounded in the attacks. cnn's nema al bagir is in tripoli and joins us now. >> there is of course an historical relationship between jacob zuma, members of the anc, the african national congress and moammar gadhafi. libyans are proud of the support they provided to the anc during the apartheid years. so perhaps there's a sense this this is a friend coming to speak frankly with another friend. the fact that mr. zuma will be arriving during the heaviest bombardment we're having to date is perhaps now being seen as a carrot and a stick approach. jacob zuma will be looking to find a zig fied way, we're being told for moammar gadhafi to step aside. that's really a lot of the conversation that's being had here in tripoli. even amongst some of those within the inner circle is how can the leader step aside or step down or be found an alternate role that will allow him to save face. but still be in keeping with what the rebels want for there to be a cease-fire negotiation moving forward. zain? >> how long can gadhafi even hold out under all this bombardment? >> at the moment the sense is that the biggest threat to the libyan authority's ability to stay in power and to hold tripoli, is this issue of fuel. the sanctions are hitting fuel ships coming in. which probably sounds slightly strange. we all know that libya is a massive fuel producer. but what they do produce, because it's very high quality they refine for jet fuel, for the more expensive types of fuel. the cheaper fuel, benzene, petrol fuel, they actually import. that's what's hitting tripoli very hard. we're seeing petrol queues, but three lines deep. people telling us they're spending two or three nights waiting to get fuel. that of course is affecting everything. nato says as far as they're concerned, it's important, because affecting gadhafi's forces ability to move around. and it's also affecting people's ability to go on with their daily life. it's