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This week, one story has been prominent in our output: . It's a story which has involved our reporters in Mexico, the US, Europe, Scotland and the rest of the UK, plus our medical and science specialists. And it has challenged us to think hard about our public service role on this kind of news story.

Essentially, our task is to give you the facts; to tell you what we know, but also explore what isn't known; to give you the best scientific and medical information and to inform but not to alarm. There is a great deal of coverage in all the media which has led to a debate about whether the threat is being overplayed. With any public health story, there's a risk that raising awareness can raise concern. We have sought at every step to report the science soberly and responsibly, with due weight given to the uncertainty of what will happen.

We know that audiences have many questions. For the first couple of days, the comments and questions were coming in thick and fast, though they have now slowed. The majority has been from the UK, but there are considerable numbers from Europe and the US too.

Yesterday, ´óÏó´«Ã½ Radio 5 Live did a phone-in, taking listeners' questions about the outbreak's impact and attempting to answer them using medical and travel experts. Those contacting the network had a range of questions: "My son's an hour and a half from Mexico City - how exposed is he?" "Are anti-viral drugs safe for pregnant women?" "I'm booked to go to Mexico on 30 April; the airline won't let us cancel and get a refund, what are our options?"

To satisfy those members of our audience who've been contacting our programmes and website with questions, we put together . In our current on the subject, many contributors have now said they believe that the government and media are over-reacting. And World Have Your Say - the World Service global discussion programme - was presented from the rooftop of a hotel in Mexico City yesterday. It asked its audience if the world was over-reacting to swine flu. We heard from many, including Abdullah in Abuja who e-mailed to say that there really was no comparison between swine flu and the kind of diseases many African nations deal with on a daily basis.

There are voices raising important questions about media coverage of this virus. Ben Goldacre - a medical doctor who writes the - says that he's been struck by the number of people contacting him to say "Is swine flu just nonsense?" and that the media is on its reporting of health issues. Simon Jenkins, , has said the media has whipped up a panic in order to posture and spend.

So far, the balance we have been trying to achieve is to report what we know and, critically, what isn't known, using the science available - for instance from the Chief Medical Officer for England, Sir Liam Donaldson and the World Health Organization - as well as what respected scientists are telling us about the possible pattern of this illness. At our editorial meetings, we have been regularly discussing how to get the approach, tone and use of pictures right, and to make sure that we offer our expertise and subject depth via our website.

Interestingly, the signs so far suggest that the public is not panicking - listeners contacting ´óÏó´«Ã½ Radio 1's Newsbeat are showing a distinct shift in opinion. Two days ago, they were expressing serious concern, but now - for many - it's receding: "Swine Flu has changed what I'm doing. I yawned at the last radio update. I'd probably not have done that if Swine Flu wasn't mentioned."

This virus - and this story - may fade away, or it may grow. At this point, as our correspondents are saying, we simply don't know. I hope that our reporting in the past few days will help you make sense of what emerges in the next few days, whichever way it develops.

Mary Hockaday is head of the multimedia newsroom

With the temperature in the 90s (Fahrenheit) here in Washington this week, it seems much more than 100 days since that bone-chilling morning in January when Barack Obama set off for Capitol Hill to be sworn in as president.

Whatever we were anticipating back then, I am not sure any of us tasked with covering Washington could have imagined the sheer scope of the new president's agenda. As well as promoting his hugely expensive economic stimulus package to combat the recession, Mr Obama has announced significant policy changes on , on the and in relations with a range of countries including and . There have also been numerous other significant policy announcements which have received less coverage.

That's one of the reasons the ´óÏó´«Ã½ is providing such a wide range of coverage to mark the occasion. North America editor Justin Webb and our team of correspondents are examining all week .

There are often voices both inside and outside the ´óÏó´«Ã½ who wonder about the value of something as inherently artificial such as a 100 day deadline. But given the breathless pace of events since the Obama team took over, my sense is that this time it is as valid an exercise as it is ever likely to be. It's also worth pointing out, as Kevin Connolly does that the concept of the first 100 days was originally conceived by a president - Franklin D Roosevelt.

Our aim is that by the end of the week, ´óÏó´«Ã½ news audiences will have a better understanding of the Obama administration, of what it says it is trying to achieve and where the potential pitfalls may lie.

will be presenting a special programme from Chicago and there will be ´óÏó´«Ã½ News teams in Atlanta, Denver and St Louis in addition to our usual coverage from the east and west coasts.

We feel it is critically important to report America in its entirety at moments like this and not just from Washington, New York and Los Angeles.

One of the great things about ´óÏó´«Ã½ audiences is that they share our sense of ambition. They expect the ´óÏó´«Ã½ to be everywhere that matters and to be asking all the right questions. My favourite letter this week was from a Mr John Harvey, a reader who asked the following:

...I would like to ask why Justin Webb - or any of the other ´óÏó´«Ã½ correspondents in the United States - have failed to secure an interview with Mr Obama. His election is the single most important political event in my lifetime (I'm 53) and it is of the utmost public interest to have a substantial interview with Mr Obama on the ´óÏó´«Ã½...

Simon Wilson is the ´óÏó´«Ã½'s Washington bureau editor.

Readers of the will notice some changes from today. As well as a new look (ditching the bluey-green in favour of a vibrant shade of orange) and a wider page, bringing the Magazine into line with the rest of the site, there will be some new features, including a regular look at interesting things around the web. Regular readers will also be able to follow the Magazine on Facebook (more about that here).

Popular features such as the , the , , the caption competition and Paper Monitor will still appear, and for a limited time only there will be an innovative new quiz in which an answer is given and you are invited to suggest what the question might have been. We're calling it the Weekly Bonus Question, and it will appear at the end of this week's 7 days 7 questions quiz on Friday.

The brief of the Magazine is to give context and personality to our news coverage, and we hope the changes will enable us to continue doing that with even more impact. We know that some people often object to familiar parts of our output changing - some of the responses to a previous entry I wrote about our new blog templates demonstrate this - but we do think that once they are used to them they will approve. We hope so anyway. I'm sure you'll let me know.

Giles Wilson is the features editor of the .

We have had a variety of comments from ´óÏó´«Ã½ audiences around the world concerning the ´óÏó´«Ã½'s India Election Train. Some people are enthusiastic. Others have complained about the cost and appropriateness of the ´óÏó´«Ã½ hiring and painting a train. I will attempt to explain the thinking behind the project.

I hope that effective coverage by the ´óÏó´«Ã½ of would be a priority for all users of the ´óÏó´«Ã½ - whether in the UK, India or internationally. Covering an election is not just about reporting the political campaigns and the eventual results. It is also an opportunity to examine the country and its people in depth.

India is an increasingly important country and this is the world's biggest-ever election. Our reporting of it takes as its theme the question: "Will India's voters revive the world's fortunes?" We will be assessing whether the comparative strength of the Indian economy might assist the rest of the world that is in recession, and therefore have an impact on us all.

Using a train allows us to , reaching remote locations. The journey allows us to assess issues like the economy, regional differences, religion and caste identity etc. Our teams are not remote from the story. At each stop, they will be reporting from the location, mixing with people and reporting their views to the world. They won't just be doing this for English-speaking audiences. They will also be reporting in 13 languages, including Hindi, Somali, Urdu, Tamil, Burmese, Vietnamese and Arabic.

So why use a train and why paint it with the ´óÏó´«Ã½ logo? Trains are an iconic form of transport in India. This train will carry our broadcasting facilities and act as a mobile studio. It's a practical way to allow the ´óÏó´«Ã½ team to cover the vast distances and to get a little bit of sleep between their hard work in each location.

We have, at low cost, decorated the train so that our large Indian audience and our global TV/online audiences can see what we are doing. As well as reporting the news thoroughly, you need to get noticed in the world's very busy news market. Already over one hundred articles have been written in the Indian press about the train. Getting what we do noticed makes the project more cost-effective, not less.

Lastly, I should address the cost of the train. The UK licence fee is only making a minority contribution to the cost of the project. The overwhelming majority of the other funding comes from the ´óÏó´«Ã½'s commercial global news revenues and from the World Service. Bringing the various sources of ´óÏó´«Ã½ funding together like this gives great value for money.

I think few international news organisations would have the scope to attempt to bring this intriguing election to life in this way. Our audiences around the world should find something of fascination from this imaginative exercise.

PS I've recently taken over as director of ´óÏó´«Ã½ World Service. The new head of the multimedia newsroom is Mary Hockaday.

Peter Horrocks is the director of ´óÏó´«Ã½ World Service.

The Budget told us many things yesterday about the state of the British economy, politics, the future of some public services and so on. It also told us a bit about the changing face of news audiences in the UK which I thought was quite interesting.

The ´óÏó´«Ã½'s Budget programme was watched on ´óÏó´«Ã½2 by an audience that peaked at 1.3m and was also simulcast on the . What stood out to us, though, was that the programme was also watched 500,000 times .

And this isn't a first - it looks like a growing trend. The ´óÏó´«Ã½'s coverage of President Obama's inauguration was watched by a huge audience on ´óÏó´«Ã½ One, peaking at 6.9m. It was watched 700,000 times.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the online figures seem bigger when lots of people are in their offices and places of work and want to keep up with major events - but they are also growing strongly at weekends.

and now regularly receives around 350,000 visits a week online - with big news stories obviously driving the figures much higher. On the main day of the UK snowfall, the News Channel was watched across the day by 5.24m viewers (3 min reach) on TV - with an extra 200,000 online views. Figures for streamed coverage of the Madrid air crash reached around 400,000. And during the G20 summit and protests in London on April 1st, the ´óÏó´«Ã½ News Channel was used 364,000 times online.

Of course, the majority of the audience still watches live coverage conventionally on the TV, but a rapidly growing and significant part of our audience is now watching live ´óÏó´«Ã½ News coverage online.

Demi Moore loves her. She's the bookies' favourite to win ITV's Britain's Got Talent and she has hordes of fans.

It's from Blackburn, West Lothian, of course. She's 47 and, she says, never been kissed.

So why - a few people have asked me - do we refer to her as "a virgin" on Radio 1? Do we now insist on checking the chastity or otherwise of all those who we report on? No, let me assure you, we don't.

This is not some salacious reporting of sex lives or lack of them. It's a crucial part of her back story and one she herself has highlighted on many media interviews. She's never had a boyfriend and these details are unusual and interesting. Worth reporting, I would argue.

We wouldn't be mentioning this if she hadn't brought it up - but she did. She herself hasn't complained. I don't think there's an invasion of privacy issue here because she is the source, not the subject, of an allegation. Anyway, virginity's nothing to be ashamed of, is it?

Many of you will have read the coverage of by a court in Tehran. The ´óÏó´«Ã½ and the other international news organisations are extremely concerned at the severe sentence. The Iranian judiciary has now ordered what's been termed a "quick and fair" appeal.

Roxana was tried in secret and no evidence of espionage has been made public. President Ahmadinejad has urged the judiciary to ensure Roxana be allowed to offer a full defence during her appeal. We hope that appeal is successful.

has been - that's not something you often hear and to be frank it hasn't featured that widely with all the other things going on from the latest to to the ongoing .

But The World Tonight has covered events there where which were won by the governing Communist Party, but the opposition said were rigged, despite international election observers giving the vote a largely clean bill of health.

I am often asked why The World Tonight devotes considerable attention to events in the former Soviet Union and the Balkans - more often by colleagues than members of the audience.

My answer is that the area has several unresolved conflicts left over from history - disputed borders; minorities who claim the right of self determination from larger states; as well as an unsatisfied desire to catch up with the consumer societies of Western Europe - and these can erupt into violence as we saw and threaten to draw in other countries including the UK, so audiences need to know what is going on to make sense of events when they do become headline news.

In fact, on 20 April The World Tonight is co-hosting a , on the tension between territorial integrity and self determination, chaired by our presenter, Robin Lustig.

Moldova is one of the lesser known former Soviet republics that became independent when the USSR broke up in 1991. It was part of Romania before World War II, but with the border changes in Eastern and Central Europe that followed the war, it became part of the Soviet Union.

When it first became independent, we called it Moldavia for a while - making it sound more reminiscent of the of the Victorian novels of Anthony Hope - and it has attracted little mainstream interest since it achieved independence. Yet it has all the makings of being another flashpoint between the EU and Russia, along with Ukraine and Georgia.

The majority of Moldovans are Romanian speakers while in the east there is a Russian speaking breakaway region - called Transdnistria - where Russian peacekeepers have been stationed since a brief conflict between the Transdnistrians and the Moldovan authorities in 1992.

Following the protests after the election on 5 April, many demonstrators were arrested and allegedly mistreated by the security forces which led to protests from Romania which has called for the EU to launch an investigation into the conduct of the Moldovan government.

The EU is reluctant to get involved as it is keen to establish better relations with Moldova and not to give Moscow more grounds to suspect the EU is trying to encroach on what it sees as its sphere of influence.

But Romania has gone further. Earlier this week, its president promised to reform Romanian citizenship laws to allow greater numbers of Moldovans to get Romanian passports. If you remember, Western critics of Moscow have accused it of interfering in the internal affairs of its neighbours, Georgia and Ukraine, by granting Russian speakers in those countries Russian passports.

On Wednesday's programme (listen here), we interviewed the Romanian Foreign Minister and he denied Moldovan accusations that Romania had fomented the opposition protests, but accepted the international verdict of the conduct of the election itself.

But as our Europe correspondent, Oana Lungescu, made clear on the programme, there is no appetite in the EU for another confrontation with Moscow. And perhaps the complication of Romania as an EU member, with what it sees as a direct interest in the fate of fellow Romanians in Moldova, makes this potentially a serious problem for the EU and its attempt to project what it sees as the values of rule of law and democracy further east, while rebuilding a constructive relationship with its main energy supplier Moscow.

Alistair Burnett is the editor of The World Tonight.

A few weeks ago, I wrote about the situation of Roxana Saberi, a former colleague who had been arrested in Iran. Roxana, an American citizen whose father is Iranian, has reported from Tehran for the ´óÏó´«Ã½, as well as US broadcasters.

Last week we learned she had been charged with espionage. , accused of spying for the United States.

Roxana's situation is serious - last November Iran executed an Iranian businessman convicted of spying for Israel. Given the circumstances, it is not appropriate for us to comment further - however, Roxana's case is the source of much interest elsewhere, including a thoughtful and timely .

Jon Williams is the ´óÏó´«Ã½ World News Editor.

in which at least 207 people died was by any measure a tragedy, and one which demanded a response which was quick and fully conveyed the scale of the destruction.

Naturally when something like that happens all the traditional techniques of gathering the news swing into action, including - but not limited to - sending people to the affected area.

Our Rome correspondent Duncan Kennedy arrived on the scene early, and covered the big picture in L'Aquila - but we also wanted to ensure teams travelling from outside Italy could help give the full picture on such an important story.

The logistics of travel to Italy during Holy Week and the fact that many of the roads were closed meant that Europe correspondent Clive Myrie and his team were arriving in the late afternoon.

The Six and Ten O'Clock News production team wanted to ensure we could find key angles on the story as quickly as possible.

They chased leads in a variety of ways - perhaps the most interesting was the use of Twitter and Facebook to identify the worst-hit areas.

One woman on Twitter wrote that a village called Onna had been devastated, with many victims. We contacted people in the area using various social networking sites and more traditional techniques. They helped us confirm the story - and directed us to its centre.

Clive had a limited amount of time on the ground - but it is unlikely he would have been able to do the strong work he did across the ´óÏó´«Ã½ without us using every tool at our disposal to bring this story of human tragedy to the public.

Craig Oliver is editor of ´óÏó´«Ã½ News At Six and ´óÏó´«Ã½ News At Ten.