´óÏó´«Ã½

Here's a look ahead to this evening's programme:

We at Newsnight are imagining WANTED posters all over town. The face is , the sum is £16m. And, if my tone is somewhat flippant, it's because the story, for all that it says about negligence and grim avarice, now has a kind of cartoon quality to it. Today, the sheriff, one G. Brown, . Does he have a hope in hell of getting it back? Doubtful. Is Fred Goodwin going to sit out the media storm on a nice beach somewhere? Highly possible. So what happens after the empty rhetoric? And, key to all this, how many more other pension promises are already in the pipeline?

And from Mark Urban:

"As I'll be looking at whether plans that reportedly could keep 35,000+ there as 'advisers' invalidate his campaign promise. Evidently the Iranians, who used their considerable influence in Iran to try to de-rail last year's Status of Forces Agreement between the US and Iraq will not be happy. Will they use their proxy forces in Iraq to step up military pressure on the US to withdraw completely?"

And, congratulations is in order after Newsnight triumphed at the . You can watch the award winning films again .

Do join us at 10.30pm.

Here's with details of what's coming up in Newsnight Review tonight:

Tonight's programme has a distinctly combative edge to it as . Given the vast number of exhibitions devoted to the greatest artist of the twentieth century it is odd to think that Picasso's relationship to the past has never been explicitly confronted before now, but finally there is a chance to see just how much he relied on, cannibalised, obliterated, reconstructed, transformed and occasionally paid homage to the art of the Old Masters and, of course, how he measures up. Sitting in judgment and going head to head will be , and .

In addition to an attack on the Old Masters (which Picasso described as 'a battle to the death'), there's the week's big film which unravels a global conspiracy involving the self-professed masters of the universe, or just "bankers" now to you and I. stars Clive Owen and Naomi Watts as the literary-named double-act of Salinger and Whitman on the trail of a multi-national bank whose portfolio of operations includes embezzlement, extortion, arms-dealing and murder.

The International is a fictional thriller but distantly alludes to certain historical facts, particularly the collapse of the BCCI in the early nineties. , a powerful new Channel Four drama series, is more consciously ambivalent in its blurring of fact and fiction and suggests that the West Yorkshire Police Force were not just institutionally corrupt but ran a kind of paramilitary murder squad at the time of the Ripper inquiry. Just how far our panel feel it played fast and loose with history and how much it used the past as an effective creative springboard remains to be seen.

We will also be discussing one of the most ambitious operas of the past decade by the Pulitzer-Prize winning American composer John Adams. , which has its UK premier this week at the London Coliseum, charts the final stages of the development of the atom bomb in the New Mexico desert in the summer of 1945. The opera seeks to examine the uneasy alliance between the US military and the thousands of scientists led by Robert Oppenheimer at Los Alamos, and to wrestle with the ethical dilemmas of a project which fundamentally changed the world. It also attempts the seemingly impossible task of conveying the sensation of a nuclear test on stage. Explosive, or just, as the scientists feared, a 'mere fizzle'?

Join us on the purple sofa at 11pm to find out.

Here's Paul Mason with news of tonight's programme:

"A bit nonplussed" is how one city banking analyst described his mood today, after . The reason? Well, corporate losses you can understand: "B-shares", insurance schemes and financial toxic waste are things most bankers have never seen before, let alone government. But what we've had today is the government's last throw of the dice. We the taxpayer will insure £325bn worth of RBS bad loans, and if they all go bad we could lose £305bn. If we lose it we will end up paying it out in cash, which will be inconvenient, as the sum is more than a quarter of the UK's national output. RBS will pay a fee of £6.5bn for this, but it will pay in shares. Meanwhile, the government injects £13bn in new capital and ends up owning 85% of RBS. This complex arrangement looks to many analysts like an "anything but nationalisation" strategy. The question is... will it work? The answer is RBS doesn't know, Alistair Darling doesn't know, and I don't know. We'll be speaking to politicians and experts and trying to get beyond the nonplussed stage.

Also on the programme, . Amongst those convicted are men close to the former Yugoslav President Milosevic, three generals, the chief of police and the Vice President. John Sweeney gave evidence against them in the Hague after witnessing the aftermath of a massacre. Tonight he'll give his reaction to the verdicts. .

We'll be interviewing the pioneer of micro-finance on the credit crunch and how it's affecting the third world.

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Here's news of what's coming up in this evening's Newsnight:

From Political Editor Michael Crick:

"Being leader of the opposition is generally regarded as the hardest job in politics. Doing it with a young family all the harder, especially when one of your children is severely disabled. I'll be exploring how David Cameron was changed personally and politically by the experience of looking after ."

Also tonight: just how poorly were our banks regulated before the crash? Today we heard some from the head of the Financial Services Authority who painted a damning picture of the regulatory regime constructed by Gordon Brown. Adair Turner blamed "a philosophy rooted in political assumptions which suggested the key priority was to keep it light rather than to ask more questions,"

We've also got a full analysis of President Obama's last night, and an exclusive film on a controversial murder conviction and possible miscarriage of justice involving the forensic analysis of a piece of CCTV evidence.

Tonight at 10.30pm.

Here's a look ahead to what's happening on tonight's Newsnight:

Mark Urban writes..."The British War Cemetery in Gaza is an oasis of greenery and calm, or at least it used to be. In January the place was hit with tank, artillery and mortar fire. As we've discovered, the Commonwealth War Graves Commission is now pressing the Israeli government for £95,000 compensation. I've been to the cemetery to find out what happened, but also on a personal quest. It's not long since I discovered my own great uncle, Walter Holmes, a soldier of the Isle of Wight Rifles was killed in Gaza in 1917. His grave is one of near 3,700 in that graveyard, and I wanted to know whether it had been damaged."

Read more about Mark's journey and watch a clip of his film .

Also tonight, the Justice Secretary, . He told MPs he would use a clause in the Freedom of Information Act to block their release. We will have more on that with Michael Crick.

And our Economics Editor, Paul Mason says market analysts have been telling him the "technical support points" for the world's stock markets are being breached, meaning trillions of dollars more of the world's financial wealth is set to be wiped out. He will be assessing the day's damage to the financial markets.

And we'll debate .

Join Jeremy at 10.30pm.

presents tonight's programme and we're leading on a story our Science Editor Susan Watts has been following for some time. Here's her thoughts on tonight's programme.

Do Britain's health ministers bear any responsibility for the deaths of nearly 1,800 haemophiliacs?

Today was a day many of Britain's haemophiliacs thought they might not live to see. The publication of into how thousands of haemophiliacs became infected with viruses including Hepatitis C and HIV from contaminated blood products used to treat them. Close to 1,800 have already died. Lord Archer's inquiry began almost two years ago to the day.

Some 20,000 documents and 300 witness statements later, and he says he has now set out what went wrong. He concludes that delays in replacing high risk blood products from overseas had disastrous consequences, yet there's no mention in his report of who's to blame. So was it all an accident? We'll be looking at the evidence and asking if Lord Archer should have gone further. (You can watch .)

Also on the programme: Michael Crick goes in search of the truth about the controversial Tory donor Lord Ashcroft; we have the latest on released Guantanamo detainee ; and Slumdog Millionaire - why was it so successful and is the start of a beautiful relationship between Hollywood and Bollywood. Watch the Review .

Here's Kirsty:

Hello viewers

How many alarm bells have to ring before America's financial regulators take their fingers out of their ears? , and served him with civil legal papers, but it has been alleged that the SEC had early warning signals coming at them from all directions for some time. From former employees, investors, and from very agitated, savvy . The SEC finally started investigating last July. but why on earth has it taken them so long to act on the Stanford allegations? We'll be speaking to the bloggers who were ahead of the curve.

On Wednesday the and would be looking for help from the IMF. One problem is that some Eurozone countries, terrified their new European partners might be going broke, are pulling out their money. Alex Ritson examines the financial health of Hungary, the Czech Republic and Poland, to find out if the fault lies with Brown, Sarkozy and Merkel for failing to agree a European response to the crisis.

Our Diplomatic Editor, Mark Urban analyses the impact of Israeli President Shimon Peres's decision to break with the tradition that always gives the governing mandate to the leader of the first placed party after elections. Benjamin Netanyahu's hawkish Likud party won one fewer seat than the centrist Kadima party of Tzipi Livni. . If he succeeds, how would second time Prime Minister Netanyahu deal with Gaza and Iran?

Was the Justice Minister Jack Straw right to change , to allow them to spend their wedding night together? Was it a humane act, or a sign that the government wants to promote a more populist image in this time of economic crisis? As Jade Goody tries to secure her children's future, what does our interest in her tell us about ourselves? One of my guests on Review, writer and commentator will be discussing this before we both join Booker winner , and Iranian comic to review Lenny Henry's dramatic stage debut (excepting panto) as . Shakespeare's Moorish tragi-hero raises all sorts of questions for a 21st century audience. Henry says as one of just three black kids in his class in Dudley he identifies with Othello. There's no doubt Lenny Henry is a huge draw. When Liz Gibbons (Newsnight Review's Editor) and I went to see the Northern Broadsides production at the West Yorkshire Playhouse it was packed out. But can he act?

The rapper Akala believes there are direct parallels between hip hop and the Bard... in the universality of Shakespeare's themes, the rhyme, and the rhythm. He enlisted the help of Sir Ian McKellen for the launch of the this week. Akala, who's the brother of Ms Dynamite, believes that his venture can engage hard to reach, troubled teenagers. He'll be performing a sonnet tonight in the studio for Newsnight Review.

The rich cultural mix of a Parisian classroom is the setting for , the French film which beat off a host of more mainstream contenders to win the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival, and is now being tipped for an Oscar this weekend. The film is based on the account of the challenging year Francois Begeadau spent in an inner city school where his pupils included North African, Caribbean, and Chinese teenagers. He stars in the film, and pupils in the school who'd never acted before, play his unruly students.

A world away from the headline warnings of Iran's nuclear ambitions, is the , the result of an extraordinary partnership between Iranian historians, curators and academics, and their counterparts here in Britain at the British Museum. Shah 'Abbas is the third of the museum's exhibitions on great rulers of the world and it includes many treasures which have never left Iran before. The 17th century ruler forged the identity of what is modern day Iran by military success, promoting Shiism as a national ideology, creating a cultural renaissance, and promoting trade with the West.

So do join us for a packed programme...

And on Sunday night on ´óÏó´«Ã½2 at 23.30, when we'll be interviewing the directors of the five films shortlisted for this year's Oscar for Best Film: Ron Howard (Frost/Nixon); David Fincher (The Curious Case of Benjamin Button); Gus Van Sant (Milk); Danny Boyle (Slumdog Millionaire); and Stephen Daldry (The Reader).

So get out the popcorn and champagne, or cocoa, and relax!

Kirsty

For your delectation, half an hour of pre-Oscar, post-Match of the Day II viewing in an Oscars Newsnight Special on Sunday, 22 February, 2009 at 11.30pm on ´óÏó´«Ã½ 2.

In a special edition of Newsnight Review, Martha and I will be talking to the five directors of the films nominated in this year's best picture category.

So, if you want to know whether Danny Boyle really thinks Slumdog Millionaire is the "feel good movie" of the decade, how David Fincher got Brad Pitt to age backwards in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, how Stephen Daldry responds to the charge that The Reader is "holocaust chic", why Gus Van Sant spent years trying to bring the story of Harvey Milk to the big screen, and how Ron Howard reacted to the real Frost/Nixon interviews when he was playing Richie Cunningham in Happy Days - you'd better watch!

I'll reveal which film I am rooting for on Sunday night. But in the meantime, we want to know which film you think should win the Oscar and why. And while you're at it, tell us who you think deserves to win best actor or actress, best soundtrack, best make-up, and of course which best foreign language film (we're reviewing on Newsnight Review tonight). If you think it's all over-hyped nonsense, I'm sure you'll tell us that too!

You can see a full list of the nominations .

And you can watch the verdicts of Newsnight Review panels past on all the five nominated movies by clicking on these links:

Do join the debate by leaving your comments below.

Kirsty

Here's a look ahead to this evening's programme:

We've been talking to Harriet Harman about women, the economy and the rumours that she's been preparing to step into Gordon Brown's shoes if he retires. Gavin Esler put it to the Deputy Leader of the Labour party: "One cabinet member was reported last weekend to accuse you of "knee jerk populist stuff" and the implication is that you are positioning yourself to remove the PM."

Watch her reply here:

Tune in tonight for more on that story.

We'll also be looking at the investigation into the fraud allegations against the billionaire, Sir Allen Stanford and asking what the future is for the world of offshore banking. We have an interview with Chinua Achebe who's seen as the father of African Literature. Read more about Achebe's return to Nigeria .

And here's Stephen Smith on a milestone in television:

It's 40 years since one of the great landmark series of British television, Kenneth Clark's Civilisation.Written and presented straight to camera by Baron Clark, in his invariable tweeds, its influence can be detected in the authored documentaries we've enjoyed since, from everyone from Alan Whicker to Michael Palin. We look back on this classic series with the former ´óÏó´«Ã½ manager who commissioned it, a certain Sir David Attenborough, no mean writer-presenter himself; and ask whether Civilisation would ever be made by producers today.

Join us at 10.30pm.

Kirsty presents tonight's programme. Here's her rundown on what's coming up - do wade in with your comments below...

"Hello viewers... home is where the heart is - but for the Home Secretary, it's her second home that's causing her heartache, and . Jacqui Smith has designated her sister's house in London - where she stays during the week - as her main home, rather than her constituency home in Worcestershire, but neighbours say the policemen are only outside her London residence two days a week. So what have we here? David Grossman turns detective.

This afternoon I interviewed the man with the money, the head of the IMF who was in London today for . He tells me the IMF warned of the impending crisis but no one paid attention - so doesn't that say more about the IMF? He talks about a second wave of crisis hit countries, including the new European democracies and how many of them are already knocking on his door for money. He also talks about the possibility of more social unrest, and he warns the G20 that they must come up with - and stick to - a plan for a beefed up IMF to act as a global financial institution.

Afghanistan is Barack Obama's first troop deployment - he's announced a under the command of . Petraeus was the architect of the US surge in Iraq, so what does that tell us about his mission in Afghanistan? Our Diplomatic editor Mark Urban maps out the challenge, and what he thinks Petraeus will do.

And then... our version of sending Daniel into the lion's den - Robert Peston goes to the home of Northern Rock to meet some very angry people who believe that one year ago he was responsible for its collapse - and watch from behind your hands tonight!"

UPDATE - Programme highlights are now available to .

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Kirsty is presenting tonight. Here's what's planned:

Don't panic and calm down. This appeared to be the message from the Business Secretary Peter Mandelson to his Cabinet colleagues today. In a speech in New York

As if on cue, the . RBS, in which the Treasury will soon have a 68% stake, said that no bonuses or pay rises would be made to staff associated with the major losses suffered by the bank in 2008. We'll be speaking to the Chancellor tonight about bankers' pay, whether the Government has a grip on the economic crisis and reports of splits in the Cabinet.

Also tonight, ?

And we are looking into this breaking news... , US financial regulators say.

Finally, a year on from the nationalisation of Northern Rock, ´óÏó´«Ã½ Business Editor Robert Peston travels to the north east to meet some vociferous critics who blame him for breaking the bank. Watch a clip of Robert confronting his critics and read a diary of that day's events .

So, don't shoot the messenger, tonight at 10.30pm on ´óÏó´«Ã½ 2.

On tonight's show we'll have a special report from our Science Editor Susan Watts:

"I'll be looking at whether the Government should be doing more to protect us all from the human form of "mad cow" disease, or vCJD. This time round, it's not infected beef that's worrying people, but blood products and transfusions that turn out to have come from donors who later develop vCJD. Tomorrow, the Government will announce that a haemophiliac who has died, contracted vCJD from the blood products used to treat him. Haemophiliacs have been here before, infected with HIV and Hepatitis viruses from infected blood... 4,000 have already been warned they are at risk of developing vCJD. We've been talking to a company that says it has a reliable test for vCJD and Marc Turner from Scotland's blood service, who thinks we should safeguard the blood supply for all of us by screening donated blood - perhaps as early as next year."

Also tonight, . Is that good for Latin American democracy?

We'll be hearing from our Ethical Man, reporter Justin Rowlatt, before he sets off for the USA to find out whether green consumerism is catching hold there.

And the ´óÏó´«Ã½'s World Affairs Editor John Simpson found himself in the right place at the right time in Tehran in 1979. We sent him back to see how things have changed. Watch an exclusive preview of his film .

Do join us at 10.30pm.

Here's Kirsty with news of what's happening in the programme tonight:

Hello viewers

Yet another economic thunderbolt crashed down today. The news that HBOS will post pre-tax losses of around £10 billion for 2008 and as a result . Where were the FSA who had twice raised concerns about the bank calling its performance "disturbing"? And when the government waived competition rules to allow the takeover of HBOS to go ahead, were the taxpapers being sold a pup? I'll be asking the Chancellor and then he'll be joined by France's Finance minister Christine Lagarde to talk about the priorities for the coming G20 summit on the global financial crisis, and her less than complimentary assessment of Alistair Darling's handling of Britain's bailout.

Then we'll be looking at the harsh realities of unemployment with our Economics Editor Paul Mason. Here's a word from him:

"When Newsnight asked me to take a look at the state of the labour market 6 months into the recession, I immediately thought of the journey made by George Orwell six years into the Depression of the 1930s. The Road To Wigan Pier is one of my favourite pieces of journalism, but I've always been puzzled as to why Orwell never actually wrote about the road he took. I consulted his diaries and retraced it over three days last week, from Coventry to Stoke to Manchester and then Wigan. What I've found is that today's situation is about more than just unemployment. It's a story about low pay and insecurity for many of those in work, a downward pressure on wages, and the distinct lack of any coherent story for providing the high-paid, high-skilled work that is gradually disappearing from Britain. Together with a tiny camera, plus ´óÏó´«Ã½ multimedia producer Mark Lobel, I travelled, shooting impromptu interviews with the people I met, giving press officers and security guards a wide berth. Tune in tonight to see how Britain looks from the bottom end of the jobs market. And you can read more about my Road to Wigan Pier ."

And we'll convene our own G3 of Irwin Steltzer, Gillian Tett, and Will Hutton to discuss HBOS, nationalisation, protectionism, bonuses, and this week's performances on both sides of the table at the Treasury Select Committee and what they say about high finance.

See you at 10.30pm.

Here's Martha Kearney with details of tonight's Newsnight Review:

A quick quiz question: which book did Barack Obama say that along with the Bible, was essential reading for his Oval Office? No, it's not by G.K.Galbraith or Alan Greenspan. It's by Doris Kearns Goodwin. Her biography of Abraham Lincoln, , is about how Lincoln outwitted establishment candidates to win the presidency and then invited them to form his government. Sound familiar? It's published in Britain for the first time this week in paperback. And we've spoken to Doris Kearns, who was with Obama only yesterday on the 200th Anniversary of Lincoln's birth. Our panel of , and are well placed to discuss the book's appeal to Obama.

And while we're at it, what does the new US administration mean for satire? American comedy programmes like The Daily Show loved to tear into George Bush, so does that mean they will go soft on Obama?

We'll also be discussing another politician who was the butt of many satirists, Margaret Thatcher. There seems to be a vogue for TV dramas about her life. We've just had the early years in The Long Walk to Finchley and now comes , a drama about her final days as PM, during which she was betrayed by her own party. This stars one of my very favourite actresses Lindsay Duncan.

And also in the programme, a new play at the National Theatre in London: . It has roused very strong feelings - it's either a hilarious comedy mocking prejudices about incomers or a highly unpleasant piece whose jokes have their basis in racism. Should make for a lively discussion!

Join us at 11pm.

Martha

Here's Kirsty Wark, with details of what's coming up this evening in Newsnight:

Hello to viewers near and far,

We are tracking the journey of , the leader of the Dutch Freedom Party, who was refused entry to Britain this afternoon after arriving from Holland at the invitation of Lord Pearson, of UKIP. He tried to make the journey despite being banned last night by Jacqui Smith, the Home Secretary. We will be debating whether free speech is paramount in a democracy, a democracy that allowed Ibrahim Mousawi, chief spokesman for Hezbollah to enter the UK last year.

Has Gordon Brown been too close to the country's leading bankers? Will he end up facing the same fate as Icarus? Was he enthralled and mesmerised by their activities and the chimera of the all powerful City? We'll discuss "Brown and his bankers" tonight as another leading banker looks set to leave the Government fold.

Is the Taliban gaining a foothold in Karachi, Pakistan's financial and commercial hub? Today for the first time the Pakistani Government said that last November's attack on Mumbai was launched and partly planned from Pakistan. The adviser to the Prime Minister detailed how the gunmen had sailed from Karachi to carry out the attack that killed 179 people. Last year Karachi erupted in riots that killed 50 people. The suspicion is that the Taliban were behind the violence, and raising fears that , something perhaps borne out by today's announcement. Barbara Plett has been in Karachi to assess the Taliban influence there.

Plus, , at the price of £7.5bn? Trade Unions and Labour backbenchers are in uproar. Couldn't it have gone to a British consortium, thus potentially safeguarding thousands more jobs?

Do join us at 10.30pm

Kirsty

Former HBOS Chief Executive as the deputy chairman of the Financial Services Authority. Yesterday our Economics Editor Paul Mason had - the former head of group regulatory risk at HBOS. He was a key whistleblower whose evidence before the Treasury Select Committee led to calls for Crosby's resignation. Moore said he was sacked by HBOS after he raised fears that the bank was growing too quickly and putting itself in danger - allegations Sir James denies. We'll be getting Paul Moore's reaction tonight.

Jeremy is at a car manufacturing plant in Birmingham, with an audience to discuss unemployment on the day that figures from October to December rose to .

Jon Sopel is presenting tonight. Here is what's coming up:

This is the sort of put your feet up day where the running order for the programme writes itself. I mean, how often is it that you have one time kings of the universe strapped into the 21st century's equivalent of the ducking stool and the stocks, and humiliated before delighted Westminster eyes?

Yes, we will be looking at what unfolded when the earlier today.

Our business editor, Paul Mason has been casting a critical eye over the proceedings. And we have an exclusive interview with Paul Moore, former head of group regulatory risk at HBOS, who raised fears that the bank was growing too quickly and putting itself in danger, and whose evidence caused heated exchanges in the Select Committee today.

We are also going to play Strictly Come Apologising. We will have a panel of judges to assess the artistic style and technical merits of their acts of contrition. Did 'the fallen ones' deport themselves with the poise and elegance of Fred Astaire with an ebony cane....or John Sergeant in Doc Martens?

As we are going on air Israel will have decided on their next government. Or rather, . How Israel votes and who forms the next administration are two different things. The system of proportional representation invariably ensures days of hard fought haggling, but at least we should be clear what direction the country is heading in. Mark Urban is in Jerusalem for us.

And Peter Marshall has more on the case of .

Join us this evening at 10.30pm on ´óÏó´«Ã½2.

Bankers In The Dock

Did they cause the crisis, are they making it worse and is their request for bonuses the final straw? Is it time the bankers were put in the dock?

Ahead of tomorrow's Commons grilling of four senior bankers, Newsnight will conduct its own inquiry. We'll look at the case for and against, with the former Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott; the founder of Cobra Beer, Lord Bilimoria; the former head of a high street bank; and a veteran city broker.

Our Diplomatic Editor, Mark Urban, will report from Israel on the right wing nationalists who threaten to outflank the mainstream parties in Tuesday's elections.

Also tonight, Alastair Campbell, the former Director of Communications at Number 10, will talk to us about dealing with mental health problems in the public eye. You can .

Tonight at 22.30

Kirsty is presenting tonight. Here is her look ahead:

Dear viewers

The protests that started the week are over. The Government stood firm and condemned the unofficial action, but at the Lincolnshire refinery Total promised 100 jobs for British workers. Was the Total protest simply the manifestation of deep-seated fears and tensions? Is there an increasing disconnect between the problems facing the working class and the policies being pursued by the government? We have spent the day talking to people near the construction sites for the London Olympics where hundreds (thousands) of workers from other European countries are employed. And we hope to discuss our film with the Communities Secretary Hazel Blears and Bob Crow, leader of the Rail Maritime and Transport Union.

At the moment we are trying to set up an interview with Rachel Reid, the researcher for Human Rights Watch in Afghanistan who . A senior British army officer, Colonel Owen McNally has been arrested under the Official Secrets Act, reports say for allegedly passing classified information to a human rights worker in Afghanistan. Rachel Reid denies receipt of any such information on civilian casualties and moreover is furious that her name has been connected with the story, and that there have been insinuations that she and the officer were "close". In fact, she says that they only met twice, both times at Nato military HQ in Kabul. Caroline Hawley will be attempting to unravel this fascinating and complex tale.

There's been saturation coverage of the this week, with extraordinary pictures of children sledging and tossing snowballs, to bleaker images of stranded motorists and abandoned cars. We've all, it seems, been glued to our screens. We've always been obsessive about the weather... but this? Steve Smith will be pondering the snow magic, mayhem, and gloom.

Do join us at 10.30pm.

Here's Kirsty with details of what will be happening tonight in Newsnight Review:

I'll be joined by my guests , and and we'll explore the curious life of Benjamin Button, as told in David Fincher's . Its technical wizardry (which defeated several other big name directors) puts Brad Pitt's head on various bodies so that we can see him live his life backwards in the company of Daisy (played by Cate Blanchett) who is living hers the right way round. The screenplay by Eric Roth (Forrest Gump) was embroidered from a slight fantasy tale by F. Scott Fitzgerald, and is a peculiar love-story-meets-Boys -Own-Adventure. And it's won 13 Oscar nominations.

If sounds like the title of a joyous frolick, it is anything but. It's a Tony Award winning Broadway musical based on a dark story of sexual repression, rape, abuse and suicide, and it started out as a play by the German playwright Frank Wedekind. Such was the explicit nature of the material and its portrayal of sexually ravenous teenagers it was banned instantly in Britain and Germany when it was published in 1891. Now an indie-rock musical, the director Michael Mayer has brought the US production to London, but has cast British actors.

Lily Allen's second album is full of pop songs about drugs, failed lovers, older men, and ... George Bush, in her trademark mockney, chatty voice. It sounds like the soundtrack to her life at the moment, or at least the life we know through her command of and her frequent appearances in the tabloids. It has some great tunes, and funny lyrics - she's a bit like a young (rich) Squeeze.

Meryl Streep is on a roll, with the frothy The Devil Wears Prada, the apparently irresistable Mamma Mia, and now an Oscar nomination for her part as Sister Aloysius in , directed by John Patrick Shanley from his screenplay of his 2004 Pulizter Prize winning stage play. Set in the 1960s in The Bronx, the formidable and forbidding nun is in charge of a church school, but is discomfitted when a charismatic priest arrives, played by Phillip Seymour Hoffman. She hears the suspicions of a young nun that the priest is engaged in an inappropriate relationship with a young boy and sets out to destroy him. Is she right, or wrong? I'll be talking to Meryl Streep () and we'll be talking about the question of Doubt...

Do join us at 11pm.

Kirsty Wark is presenting tonight. Here's what's in store...

"."

The Prime Minister stepped right into the row over bonuses at banks which have had to be bailed out by the taxpayer. He was speaking in the light of reports which suggest that thousands of city traders and senior bankers at RBS are in line for bonuses worth tens of millions of pounds. He said that he strongly agreed with the approach being taken to executive salaries by President Obama. The US President wants to stop banks "getting up to their old tricks" and is to impose a salary cap of $500,000 on executives from companies rescued by the American taxpayer. So, if Gordon Brown "strongly agrees", will he make a move, or in the long run will this be counter-productive? How do the banks attract the brightest and the best, at a time when they desperately need the brightest and the best, if they put a lid on their earning potential?

. This is good news for borrowers, but what if you are a saver? Are savers a whole casualty wing of their own in this economic crisis? And as we head to zero, what's the next move in the handbook?

And is journalism one of the most dangerous professions in Russia? This week Russians may have the verdict on the conspiracy of the murder of the journalist and writer . The ´óÏó´«Ã½'s Rupert Wingfield-Hayes talks to media mogul Alexander Lebedav who says his journalists are feeling increasingly threatened in their investigative work. He also meets a police investigator who says that law enforcers are being pressured not to investigate intimidation and attacks on journalists.

We'll also have an update on the .

Do join me at 10:30.

Jeremy Paxman presents this evening. Here's Peter Marshall with details of what is coming up in the programme:

Tonight we are looking at torture and the War on Terror. Jeremy will be interviewing Alberto Gonzales, who was President Bush's White House lawyer and who told the president that parts of the were quaint and obsolete. No doubt he'll be asked whether he accepts responsibility for water-boarding and detainees being paraded naked on dog leads etc, all the horrors of what were quaintly termed "enhanced interrogation techniques".

It is also four years since , the London student who was sent by the CIA from Pakistan to Morocco for eighteen months of "enhanced interrogation" (). Today of what the British Government knows about his apparent torture. We have reported several times the claim that MI5 supplied information used by Binyam's interrogators. Today High Court judges suggested America has warned the British government to keep shtum, or else they'd break intelligence links. It's a murky business.

Join us in the thick of it at 10.30pm.

Here's Mark Urban on what's planned for tonight's programme.

"Watching , we are watching for signs of how Britain will engage with the new administration, and how warm or otherwise the diplomatic relationship might be.

British politicians like to talk about the special relationship but in recent years, US officials, anxious not to offend all sorts of other allies have called it a special relationship.

That indeed is what Secretary Clinton Clinton did today - until she turned to leave, when with her final words of the short press conference she referred to, "the special relationship".

One could almost hear the champagne corks popping at the British embassy!

An issue of semantics? British diplomats insist not, and that the health of US/UK relations has always been judged by such fine grading of phraseology. What is clear though is that the US Secretary of State, who had extensive contacts with the great and good of Britain in her years as First Lady, is one of the most Anglophile members of the Obama Administration.

Others are not quite so friendly."

Also tonight - controversy over the clause that some European officials have criticised as the "worst possible signal the new US administration could send out." We hope to speak to John Bruton, the European Union's Ambassador to Washington. And we'll reporting on and the saga over .

Don't forget you can watch highlights from and comment on the programme here, and there's much more on the .

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Jeremy's presenting tonight. Here's Paul Mason with news of what's in store:

I'm trying to get to the bottom of the claim and counterclaim at the heart of the Lindsey Oil Refinery dispute. Total, the owner of the site, issued a statement saying there will be "no direct redundancies" as a result of the award of the contract to an Italian firm. The union says 350 people were issued with 90 day redundancies by a subcontractor working on the site. I phoned Total to ask if it was true. "We can't comment on another company," they said.

Meanwhile, following strong, capital-letters-style warnings against BNP involvement in the strike by union activists, a new website appears: . The first report on it is an account of a BNP leafleting session at the site. It's a reminder that, beneath the surface, the modern workplace can be a mess of contractual relationships, intensely political and, at times like this, a battlefield in an under-reported British culture war.

We've got one of the strike leaders live tonight, together with UKIP MEP Nigel Farage, whose party is one of the few to support the strikers. At the moment no one from the government feels able to brave the snow and come on the programme. We've got the snow ploughs out in case they change their minds.

Also tonight, we'll be talking , , and asking should Britain have a two child limit on families?