News in Picture

The BBC has just launched (yet another) online course. This one is about fraud.

We are meant to do it to help us overcome those situations where people are engaging in 'behaviour resulting in personal enrichment through deception' or the deliberate misuse or misappropriation of BBC resources or assets.

Cue hoots of sardonic laughter from colleagues gazing soulfully into their empty pension pots...

Anyway, talking about things being taken away, we begin tonight with a look at the debate over Trident and who should pay for its renewal.

Liam Fox is widely seen as getting his knuckles rapped by Chancellor Osborne for suggesting that the Treasury - not the MoD - should foot the bill. But you don't tend to find £20bn in the petty cash drawer.

So what kind of cuts would the defence budget have to make if this comes to pass?

After rushing through a piece of legislation as if it were urgent anti-terror measures, the Education Secretary Michael Gove has had to acknowledge that initial take-up of his academies programme by schools has been way lower than anticipated.

Good, say many Lib Dems, under their breath.

Newsnight has learnt that at their conference in September party activists will put forward a motion voicing strong concerns over academies and free schools and warning against the changes.

How will this play for coalition politics? Michael Crick is on the case.

And with accusations from the top US military official that the Wikileaks founder has blood on his hands after revelations of the state of the Afghan conflict earlier this week, we debate the merits of free speech.

We'll hear from Heather Brooke, who fought the parliamentary system to expose the MPs expenses scandal, and from the former hacker who took his fears over Wikileaks straight to US authorities.

Jonathan Ross is gone so you have no excuse not to join us 10.30pm on BBC Two.

Emily

After record losses announced today and a change of CEO, BP might be hoping to move on after their problems in the Gulf of Mexico.

But a special Newsnight report from Louisiana suggests the oil giant could be about to face an even bigger reckoning - billions in compensation payouts and a criminal investigation.

Peter Marshall is in Louisiana where he's been meeting people affected by the devastating oil spill and the sky-diving lawyer trying to help them get decent payouts from BP.

Justin Rowlatt will be explaining the argument that is raging around the rights and wrongs of the WikiLeaks release of over 75,000 secret US military reports covering the war in Afghanistan.

He'll be profiling the whistle blowing website and the man behind it.

Our Science editor Susan Watts will be watching Energy Secretary Chris Huhne's keynote Commons statement on Britain's energy shortfall in which he'll announce help for renewables but no public subsidy for new nuclear plants. So how are we going to plug the energy gap?

And we'll be joined by poet and modern day troubadour, Simon Armitage, who yesterday completed a 264-mile walk along the Pennine Way funded entirely by donations, food and accommodation given in return for nightly poetry readings in the village halls, homes and pubs he passed along the way.

We'll be asking him if poetry really does pay.

It's an Olympics free zone tonight - join Kirsty at 10.30pm on BBC Two.

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