News in Picture

Hello from Gavin Esler:

Today's Quote for the Day: "Chocolate is as good as sex. To me it's like an orgasm" - Britney Spears looks forward to St Valentine's Day.

Unfortunately our attempts to devote all of Newsnight tonight to this hitherto unknown benefit of chocolate have been derailed by the goings on in the EU.

We'll be forgetting Britney and switching to Brussels for the great Greek takeaway as the European summit discussed (in the words of President Herman van Rompuy) "Greece. That's the only topic we mentioned. This concerns Greece and only Greece".

Actually, from Ireland to Spain and Italy there are some broader concerns that we hope to get into as the Greek government appears to secure euro-wide support for preventing them defaulting on their debts.

Most of us don't think twice about paying for something in a high street shop by keying in our pin.

It's easy, fast and in most cases it works. But scratch a little under the surface and there are persistent reports of people who say they've been the subject of fraud of one kind or another on their credit or debit card.

Now a team of computer scientists at Cambridge University has found a flaw in chip and pin so serious they think it shows that the whole system needs a re-write.

Our science editor, Susan Watts, has the story.

Plus we'll have the latest from Iran on the protests on the anniversary of the Iranian revolution of 1979, more on the strange case of those e-mails about Climate Change research from the University of East Anglia, and we'll be paying tribute to the British fashion designer Alexander McQueen who has committed suicide.

Since the Newsnight Joke for the Day cupboard is completely bare - no doubt as a result of the credit crunch - I am reduced to concluding this e-mail with another daft luvvie droning on about chocolate.

This one is Sandra Bullock: "Chocolate's the greatest gift to women ever created, next to men. Chocolate chip ice cream is like cocaine."

Perhaps that explains where Cadbury's went wrong.

Gavin