We'll be looking at the release by WikiLeaks of over 75,000 secret US military reports covering the war in Afghanistan. They say it is the most significant archive about the reality of war ever to have been released during the course of a war.

And we'll be across Energy Secretary Chris Huhne's keynote Commons statement on renewables.

In a bid to avert a future power crisis, Mr Huhne is expected to say that while nuclear power will remain a part of the UK's energy portfolio there will be no government money to subsidise new plants. So how does he propose to plug this energy gap?

More details later.

Bosses of some of the UK's biggest firms have backed Conservative plans to axe part of Labour's planned National Insurance rise if they win power. The 23 businessmen include bosses from Marks and Spencer and Next.

David Cameron has called it a "significant" moment in the election campaign, but Labour has hit back calling the Conservative plans an "unfunded promise".

Justin Rowlatt investigates just how significant today's intervention is and asks whether letters like this from high profile businessmen give a party more credibility with the voters. We'll be joined live in the studio by prominent businesspeople.

The battle is on for the Labour selection in Stoke-on-Trent Central. Tonight the candidate will be chosen and our political editor Michael Crick will be reporting live from Stoke.

No women or local candidates have made the final shortlist. The historian, author and broadcaster Tristram Hunt is the favourite, but other prospective candidates are Oxford Councillor Sajjad-Hussain Malik and journalist Joe Ukemenam.

Also tonight - we'll have a report on how the families of some murder victims are upset that the BNP is using their cases as part of its campaign. We hope to be joined live by a representative of the BNP.

Plus we look at the growing drugs problem in Russia which now has around 2.5 million heroin addicts. Rupert Wingfield Hayes investigates what has been called the recent "tsunami" sweeping over the country in terms of the rise in heroin addiction.

Newsnight will be off air on Friday and Monday, but will return on Tuesday of next week.

ENTRY FROM 1128 BST

In a letter to the Telegraph, 23 business leaders have voiced support for Conservative plans to scrap part of a planned National Insurance rise if they win power. David Cameron has said that the businessmen's intervention was an important moment in the election campaign. But just how significant is today's intervention? Justin Rowlatt investigates.

The Labour Party in Stoke-on-Trent Central is meeting tonight to choose its candidate for the General Election. The author and broadcaster Tristram Hunt is the favourite. Other candidates include Oxford councillor Sajjad-Hussain Malik and journalist Joe Ukemenam. Michael Crick has the latest.

The BNP has upset the families of some murder victims by using their cases and photos as part of their campaign without consent. Journalist Michelle Gribbon will be bringing us more on that tonight.

Plus Rupert Wingfield Hayes discusses the stark increase in heroin addiction in Russia.

Revelations of paedophilia within the Irish Catholic Church have rocked the institution.

Pope Benedict has written a pastoral letter to the Catholics of Ireland with guidelines on preventing and punishing sexual abuse of children by priests. The letter will be published by the Vatican on Saturday and read at Sunday Mass.

However the allegations of child abuse are not confined to the Irish Catholic Church and more abuse claims have been emerging across Europe, turning this into a worldwide problem.

Some long-time observers of the Vatican say they've never seen a graver crisis affecting the Church.

Tonight our reporter Paraic O'Brien asks what the Catholic Church can do to recover its moral authority.

We'll have the latest on the BA strike due to start tomorrow.

Plus our science editor Susan Watts reports on the continuing fight for compensation from the government by British haemophiliacs who contracted HIV and Hepatitis C after being given contaminated blood.

Join Gavin at 10.30pm on BBC Two.

ENTRY FROM 1153 GMT

On tonight's programme, what next for the scandal-hit Catholic Church?

Pope Benedict has written a pastoral letter to the Catholics of Ireland with guidelines on preventing and punishing sexual abuse of children by priests. The letter will be read out at Sunday Mass.

But will it do enough to stop one of the worst crises in the Catholic Church of the last century? Paraic O'Brien has the latest.

And Susan Watts has a report on the British haemophiliacs and their families who are still waiting for compensation after they were infected with viruses such as HIV and Hepatitis C from NHS blood treatment.

Join us at 10.30pm.

Also tonight we have a moving film on the 2nd Battalion the Yorkshire Regiment, known as the Green Howards, as they get ready to return to Afghanistan after just 18 months at home. Over the past four months a Newsnight team, including producer Jonathan Bell who is an ex-Green Howard himself, has filmed the troops as they completed training exercises and said their goodbyes to friends and families. Tonight is our first film and we will be following the progress of both the soldiers and their families through a six month tour in Helmand. Read more on that story here.

And we'll be considering the fate of the attorney general who is being investigated by immigration officials after employing an illegal worker. Baroness Scotland says she took on Loloahi Tapui - who arrived in the UK from Tonga in 2003 - in good faith and thought she was working in the UK legally. Under laws passed when Baroness Scotland was a Home Office minister, even employers who unknowingly take on illegal workers face a £10,000 fine.

Do join Gavin at 10.30pm on BBC Two.

Tonight we're leading with a sensational development on a Newsnight investigation about a multi-national company and the dumping of hazardous waste in West Africa. Today we've had it confirmed that the largest class action ever brought before the British courts is about to be settled. The case follows the illegal dumping of toxic waste in the Ivory Coast three years ago, which has been the subject of two Newsnight films. More than thirty thousand people from the West African country who say that they were harmed by the waste were involved in the action against Trafigura, a multi-national mineral trading company with a base in London. Read more on that story here.

Then we'll be assessing what the latest unemployment figures tell us about the recession, especially the news that the public sector is creating jobs while private sector employment continues to shrink. Justin Rowlatt investigates the public/private divide from Yorkshire.

And we'll be hearing about the leaked Treasury spending figures, and trying to understand whether Barack Obama really is a President who transcends the race issue - or not - following former President Jimmy Carter's surprise intervention: "I think an overwhelming portion of the intensely demonstrated animosity toward President Barack Obama is based on the fact that he is a black man"

Do join me at 10.30pm on BBC Two.

Chancellor Alistair Darling has delivered a lecture on the future of public services in which he said the government will have to make "tough choices" to deal with the effects of the recession.

And Conservative leader David Cameron has made a speech promising to cut £120m from the cost of politics - slashing MPs' pay and allowances, quangos and the like.

But although Mr Darling used the word "cutting" 11 times, it was mainly in the context of "cutting costs" not services, and even Mr Cameron admitted his proposals were a pinprick in relation to the £175bn deficit we expect by the end of financial year 2009-10 and

Tonight, Paul will be taking a look at the fine print of both speeches and their likely effects on the economy and the electorate.

Also tonight, provisional results in Afghanistan show President Hamid Karzai has passed the 50% mark needed to avoid a presidential election run-off with rival Abdullah Abdullah, but fraud claims are casting doubt on the result.

Mark Urban will be assessing where the UN-backed election complaints commission's warning that it had found "clear and convincing evidence of fraud" leaves both Afghanistan and its international backers.

And we have a film from Nick Bryant in Australia on how the lucrative business of luring foreign students to Australia is being jeopardised by a series of racist attacks on Indian students and questions about the quality of the education on offer. Read more about that story here.

Do join Jeremy at 10.30pm on BBC Two for all that and more.

Why have the French and German economies come out of recession and the economy of the UK has not? Our Economics Editor Paul Mason is in Paris.

Lynddie England became the poster-girl for American abuse in Abu Ghraib jail. Now in her first UK TV interview since leaving prison the disgraced former US soldier talks about the death threats she's received, her agony over how to tell her five-year-old son about the photographs and her refusal to accept that she did anything wrong. Watch a sneak preview here.

Professor Stephen Hawking has defended the National Health Service from attacks by the American Right, claiming that he would not be alive without it. He was speaking after Republican politicians labelled the NHS as "evil" in their effort to stop President Obama's reforms of US health care which will widen the availability of treatment but at a cost to higher earners.

And we'll be looking at the extraordinary double life of Swallows and Amazons author Arthur Ransome. A new book about his life reveals that he was married to Trotsky's personal secretary; had close links with the Bolsheviks and at one stage was considered so dangerous that while on a visit to London he was arrested, with a view to prosecution for treason.

From the web team:

Julie Kirkbride and Margaret Moran have announced they will stand down as MPs at the next election.

Pressure had been mounting on both since details of their expenses claims were revealed in the Daily Telegraph.

In announcing her decision, Ms Kirkbride said she "must take into account the effects on my family" of the row.

Mrs Moran also said that the "understandable anger in the media and amongst the public... has had a bruising effect upon my friends, my family and my health".

So, were they hounded out by a media hungry for blood, or was the frenzy of press interest a justifiable response to public concern? Tonight we will be debating this with both politicians and journalists.

Also, BAE systems - Britain's global arms dealer - was still struggling at this month's annual meeting to rebrand itself as an "ethical" arms company.

Meanwhile, more than two years after the British government pulled the rug on its biggest fraud investigation, BAE may have returned the favour, helping to get the government off the hook with the international anti-corruption agency.

BAE has stopped a billion pounds insurance contract which tied the government to its alleged bribery and corruption in Saudi Arabia. The move, which Newsnight can reveal for the first time, has astonished BAE's critics, who smell a rat.

Plus, the cuckoo - known for its springtime song - has joined a "red list" of the UK's most threatened bird species. We will be asking why.

Join Jeremy Paxman at 10.30pm on BBC Two.

The Iranian indie rockers, who were once jailed for playing a gig in their native Tehran, were praised by the judges for their musicality and staunch commitment to their art.

Throughout the competition many of you took the time to send us your feedback on the bands - thanks for that.

Now enjoy Font performing their winning version of Cliff Richard's Congratulations:

They were friends of the 7/7 suicide bombers. They grew up with them, they went on trips across tourist London with them - including Tube stations - they supported jihad and the "defence of Muslim lands". But today, three British men from Leeds were cleared of playing any part in the London bombings. On hearing the verdict, one defendant, Sadeer Saleem, criticised the police for a prosecution based on "guilt by association" and a charge brought about on what he called the "flimsiest of evidence".

It is nearly four years since those bombs tore through London's transport system leaving 52 people dead and hundreds injured. Many remain convinced the planning and preparation involved many more than just the four suicide bombers themselves, yet no one has been brought to justice. Tonight we investigate why.

The UN has warned swine flu cannot be contained - and it's become clear that the virus has now spread to people who have not actually travelled to Mexico. The face masks are out in full force and travel warnings have been imposed, but there is still no clear indication of which precautionary measures actually work - or how close we really are to a pandemic. Susan Watts will speak to the man who's just come out of the COBRA emergency meeting about what happens next and computer modellers whose work will be used in the fight to stop it spreading.

Here's a word from Justin Rowlatt, who is in Washington DC:

We've got an American-themed feast for you tonight. I'll be reporting on the Obama Administration's attempt to kick start global climate negotiations. We'll get the inside track on the talks from climate change minister Ed Miliband. He's said we need a populist campaign to push for an international agreement on emissions reductions. I'll be asking why instead of wooing climate campaigners, Labour seems more interested in arresting them. Then there's the latest instalment of my American Ethical Man odyssey which reveals just how different the Obama Administration's approach is. Y'all enjoy!

The latest official figures suggest the recession is biting harder than anyone expected. The economy shrank by 1.9% in the first three months of this year - that's even worse than the previous quarter. This undermines Chancellor Alistair Darling's forecasts in the Budget that the economy would have declined by 3.5% by the end of the year.

Meanwhile, the government has been facing mounting criticism over the Budget with opposition parties accusing the chancellor of failing to spell out the true extent of cuts in public spending.

But what are the prime candidates for the chop? Sure Start? Aircraft carriers? The cap on university fees? Crossrail? The winter fuel allowance? Will Alistair Darling cut a swathe through projects or make a thousand tiny - or not so tiny - cuts?

Is this now officially the Age of Make Do and Mend? Or the Age of Austerity mark II? David Kynaston, the social historian, wrote The Age of Austerity, an analysis of post-war behaviour, how people made the most of very little.

Tonight he, along with Kirstie Allsopp, who has a new show about living on the cheap will be discussing with a leading psychologist how behaviour is changing in reaction to the harsh economic climate.

What chance of a truce in Sri Lanka? Indian envoys have today been attempting to persuade Sri Lanka's president, Mahinda Rajapaska. The UN Security Council, the US and others have been demanding that Sri Lanka stop the offensive against the Tamil Tiger rebels, as thousands of refugees still await transport away from the battlezone. According to a UN document seen by the Reuters agency nearly 6,500 civilians have been killed and 14,000 wounded in fighting since the end of January. Both sides accuse the other of firing on civilians. We'll be speaking to Catherine Bragg, Assistant Secretary-General at the UN.

And then on Review we concentrate for the most part on the rich variety of new film, TV, music, drama and literature about Afghanistan with my guests Michael Gove, Julie Myerson, Johann Hari and Saira Shah. The Great Game is the London Tricycle Theatre's Festival of drama, talks, music, and film about the country's turbulent cultural and political history, including 16 new plays by writers including Abi Morgan, David Greig and David Edgar. Director Nicholas Kent's aim is to spark a debate about the West's involvement in Afghanistan - we hope to have that debate tonight!

Afghan Star is an amazing documentary about a TV talent show of the same name, along the lines of Pop Idol, which has captivated Afghanis. Eleven million people voted in the final, and the contestants - particularly the women - risked their lives to take part in defiance of the Taleban, who issued death threats.

Books based in Afghanistan, such as The Kite Runner, and The Bookseller of Kabul, have proved remarkably popular. Perhaps that's why Born Under A Million Shadows attracted a whopping advance for first-time author Andrea Busfield, who fell in love with the country when based there as a reporter. Her semi-autobiographical story is about a young boy in Kabul who befriends an English woman and her Western colleagues.

And then we are back on home turf with a new low budget urban thriller Shifty about a crack cocaine dealer of the same name, and his friend who returns after an absence of four years and walks into drugs battle. It's the first feature from the writer/director Eran Creevy, and was made in just 18 days with a budget of £100,000 as part of the BBC's Microwave scheme. A film for the credit crunch!

I hope you'll be watching, Kirsty

Is that what Gordon Brown will achieve with his new 50% tax band for the relatively well off? Or - when those clever folk known as accountants start doing the sums and work out the total deductions are, in fact, more like 60% - will we really be seeing a brain drain from Britain?

We'll give you the Newsnight guide to tax avoidance. And we'll be number crunching the Institute of Fiscal Studies figures that show in real terms there will be a cut in total spending of 0.1% per year.

So how far is yesterday's budget a return not just to the higher taxes of the past but also to the hair-shirt economics of the 1960s and 1970s? We'll be speaking to some veterans from that era - and asking them what we should be cutting.

Michael Crick has a good story on MPs expenses which he'll reveal on the programme.

And Mihir Bose returns to the city of his childhood, Mumbai, where he meets -among many colourful characters - the actor who played the quiz-master in the Oscar-winning Slumdog Millionaire.

Join us at 10.30pm on BBC Two.

On Newsnight tonight, more problems for the Metropolitan Police after the G20 protests as a police officer is interviewed under caution for manslaughter. A second post-mortem on Ian Tomlinson has revealed he died from an abdominal haemorrhage. The first had said he died of heart attack. We'll assess the impact of all this.

And where does this leave the Home Secretary? After a week where her credibility has been questioned, Michael Crick has been to Jacqui Smith's marginal constituency to gather reaction - we'll debate her future in the studio, and you can read about Michael's afternoon in Redditch here.

And have you illegally downloaded music films or computer games? Do you have a rough cut of the new X Men film before it's even released? Beware! It could cost you your freedom and a lot of money. In a landmark case a Swedish court has convicted four men who founded the file-sharing website Pirate Bay of breaking copyright law. They were sentenced to a year in prison and ordered to pay more than $3.5m to entertainment companies. So is this an indication they CAN hold the torrent back?

On Newsnight Review Michael Portillo, Ian Hislop and Clemency Burton Hill will be discussing the relationship between politicians and their advisers, and politicians and the fourth estate in two very timely films.  Interestingly, both started life as TV dramas, and both transpose the action from Westminster... to Washington.

In The Loop is the movie of the cult political satire The Thick of It, in which the fabulous Peter Capaldi reprises his role as Malcolm Tucker, an aggressive, slightly out of control man who swears in every sentence.  The plot centres around the desire of the Prime Minister and the US President to embark on a war on the basis of a dodgy dossier. I spoke to writer Armando Iannucci who explained that he had, of course, planted Damian McBride in Downing Street as a sleeper primed to erupt this week and provide a blaze of free publicity for the film.  

Then we'll be talking about State of Play, a Hollywood version of Paul Abbott's brilliant six part BBC drama which makes the venality and corruption of In The Loop look like CBeebies.  The role of Cal McCaffrey, played by John Sim in the original TV series, was due to be played by Brad Pitt who pulled out at the last minute, leaving the way for director Kevin MacDonald to pull in Russell Crowe. These films follow the long tradition of British political satire - from Alan B'stard to House of Cards, and according to the Communities Secretary they fuel "an anti-politics culture". Hazel Blears asked why no one has made a British West Wing. Perhaps this week has given her the answer. We'll be talking about how to dish up politics.
 
And then we'll be discussing the international classical music phenomenon that is the Simon Bolivar Youth Orchestra in residence at London's Royal Festival Hall this week with a series of recitals, talks, open rehearsals and two blockbuster concerts. Cellist and composer Zoe Martlew will be joining us to talk about the Venezuelan orchestra born out of the unique  El Sistema programme. A quarter of a million mainly poor children are taught musical instruments and then they join one of hundreds of youth orchestras. Their composer, the 28-year-old Gustavo Dudamel is a product of El Sistema and is an international star in his own right.  What can Britain learn from Venezuela when it comes to music education?
 
So do join us tonight at 10.30pm, BBC Two. You know you want to.

Kirsty.

As we investigate the Damian McBride email scandal - David Grossman will be exploring the relationship between Gordon Brown and his former Special Adviser. Gavin will be asking the Cabinet Minister Ed Miliband just how damaging the emails will be to Labour's future, and whether these "smear" tactics fit in to a pattern of behaviour by Downing Street operatives.

After police bail all 114 people arrested at the weekend for planning a protest on a power station in Nottinghamshire, Tim Whewell reports on a new police tactic which could curb direct action style demonstrations in the UK. Is this a new assault on our civil liberties?

Plus, our Diplomatic Editor Mark Urban has a special report from Basra ahead of the British troop withdrawal from Iraq - just what have our troops achieved?

Join us at 10.30pm on BBC Two.

The first of our Ethical Man America films airs tonight. Normally when you finish a Newsnight film you sink back in exhaustion and reach for a comforting drink. I can't do that with this one because this is one of a series of seven films and we are already editing part two. It is a bit like a news version of a soap opera - News at Ten meets Eastenders perhaps.

It is an unusual way of telling a story but this is an unusual story. We embarked on a 35 day, 6,500 mile bus, train and road trip around America to look at what the world's second most polluting country (China has just over taken the US in terms of greenhouse gas emissions) is doing to try and move to a low-carbon economy.

We start in a small town in the rust belt looking at the unique challenges America faces - why the average American produces twice the greenhouse gas emissions of a European. You can see a (rather surreal) taster of tonight's show here

We'll also be asking - are we harbouring war criminals? In the week that Rwanda marked the 15th anniversary of the genocide that left 800,000 dead - here in Britain four men accused by Rwanda of being involved in the killings walked free from the High Court. Their extradition request failed with the judges saying, if they were sent to Rwanda, they would not receive a fair trial. These men were brought to the attention of authorities following a BBC investigation. We'll be asking - is it time British courts were able to prosecute crimes against humanity committed abroad?

Jeremy will also be speaking to Ken Livingstone - the man who worked with the police in 2001 in devising the tactic of kettling and Bruce Kent the veteran protester about whether protest is being criminalised, and is the right to protest under threat?

Do join Jeremy at 10:30pm on BBC Two.