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It's a day of change here at . After months of preparation, our TV programmes have had a bit of a refresh. We've got a new studio look, new titles and a new theme tune.

Actually, the last bit is not strictly true. Those of you who grew up watching John Craven's Newsround may think it sounds a bit familiar...if you can cast your minds back far enough.

Our composer Chris Banks has rearranged and remixed it so that it doesn't sound too retro for our target audience of six- to 12-year-olds. So the bongos are out but I think we've managed to retain some of the same sense of urgency that managed to grab my attention when I was a child. That was one of our main aims when we decided to make changes.

Newsround is still the only daily news service for children in the UK but that doesn't mean we are guaranteed an audience. Children have so many more media sources to choose from these days that it's vital for us to move with the times.

It's clearly not just about new titles and music; we need to focus on finding stories that are relevant to children's lives and we need to cover them in an engaging way. We're going to ask our audience for feedback later this evening. I'll let you know how we get on...

UPDATE, 01 OCT 08, 05:00 PM: As promised - the verdict on our new look is in from our very discerning audience and it's about 80% positive.

Iona, 12 from Scotland says it's "awesome and amazing". Conrad from Buckinghamshire is 14 and describes it as "very futuristic". Eleven-year-old Eve from Stockport is less keen though. She's thinks our refresh is "mindless self-indulgence" - which is a bit harsh!

My favourite comment comes from 10-year-old Mohammed from Birmingham who says: "Well, it's obvious that it's not brilliant...I'm lying - it's brilliastic!" You can read more .

SportsBod - the new music is a remix of the Johnny One Note intro - the outro in Craven's days came from the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ's Radiophonic workshop and yes we've brought it back too. You'll have to watch one of our shows all the way through to hear it though!

If you're a regular visitor to the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ News website you might have noticed we've just changed a couple of the things in the subject headings on the left hand side of the pages.

The Science/Nature section has become . After some deliberation within our Science team, we've made the change because we think it better fits the nature of the coverage. It's increasingly difficult - and maybe even misleading - to separate reporting of the purely natural world from the political, human and economic issues that affect nature and are affected by it.

The Nature content will still be there, but the new name will be a better description of the broad range of issues and stories that the team reports on.

The other change we've made is to the , where we have added a link to a new .

One of the benefits of the merger of our online, TV and radio operations over the past year is that we have now got the ability to reflect the best of our journalism, wherever it originates, across more areas of output. So Razia Iqbal, already an established Arts correspondent in our TV and radio news operation, has just launched a new arts blog, and will be reporting regularly for the website as well as for broadcast outlets.

And one of our online producers on the Entertainment news desk, Caroline Briggs, has broadened her repertoire to include video journalism so she can work as a multimedia producer covering arts stories in text, stills, graphics, video or audio as the occasion demands. I hope you enjoy the new coverage - let us know what you think of it.

This week on The World Tonight we are looking in depth at Belarus - the country of 10 million people between Russia and Poland, that's been run by its authoritarian President, Alexander Lukashenko, for the past 14 years.

Gabriel Gatehouse has been on the quality of life; the first moves to privatisation; and assessing the prospects for liberalisation of the political scene.

In many ways Belarus has changed less since the collapse of the USSR than any of its neighbours, including Russia. The Belarus government has been heavily criticised by the West - both the European Union and the United States - who accuse Mr Lukashenko of repression of his political opponents and human rights abuses.

The US Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, has called Belarus "the last dictatorship in Europe" and an "outpost of tyranny" and both Washington and Brussels have imposed sanctions on the country.

This weekend, parliamentary elections will be held which are not expected to be free and fair and unlikely to bring much change to an assembly packed with supporters of the president. So are Western governments calling for free elections? Well, yes of course. Are they talking tough with Mr Lukashenko? Well, no.

We live in interesting times. The US recently sent a senior State Department official to Minsk for talks on improving relations and lifted some sanctions and the EU is now discussing relaxing sanctions on Minsk too.

So what has changed? The answer seems to lie in geopolitics, rather than any significant change inside Belarus.

Mr Lukashenko used to be a close ally of Moscow, until the Russians said they wanted Belarus to start paying market rates for its gas imports, this has led to some rethinking in Minsk. Then in August, the Georgia-Russia conflict flared and Western countries reacted with alarm at Moscow's new assertiveness.

Coincidentally or not, it's since that conflict that the West has been making its overtures to Belarus and Mr Lukashenko has responded by releasing some prominent political detainees, including the man who ran against him in the last presidential election.

Some observers say the EU and US are warming to Belarus because they see the chance to drive a wedge between Minsk and Moscow and weaken Russia's attempt to re-establish its traditional sphere of influence in Eastern Europe.

Interesting times.

You wouldn't know it from their lemon-sucking body language and name-calling, but John Prescott and Charles Clarke did actually agree on something on .

When the former deputy prime minister wasn't calling the former home secretary a "bitterite" who was "selling Labour short" - and in return being accused of, electorally, "walking into a wall" - they took time out from standing toe-to-toe to see eye-to-eye over tax.

Specifically, a hike for the rich and a break for the poor.

For John Prescott, this would "draw the line and show the difference between us and the Tories."

For Charles Clarke, it would "shift taxation to a fairness basis."

Or as one viewer in our audience put it more baldly: "income redistribution and doing something for the basic people who support the party."

All of which essentially meant the same thing - we help the poor, David Cameron helps himself and his rich friends.

And Gordon Brown was also happy this week to paint demon eyes on the Conservatives.

"Yes friends," he warned in a doom-laden Jaws theme tune kind of way, "they would even take away Sure Start from infants and their parents." - A rather less rhythmic echo of Thatcher Thatcher milk-snatcher.

For Labour activists, at least it's a core truth that if you're poor, you're better off with Labour.

But policy-wise is it actually true?

In his anxiety to be "on the side of people on middle and modest incomes", Gordon Brown is accused of neglecting the very poorest and leaving the door open for the Conservatives to nip in and steal New Labour's oldest clothes.

Minimum wage, Sure Start, New Deal - water under the bridge say the Tories.

We're the "party of the poor" now.

Not just in backbencher Iain Duncan Smith's trips to the streets of Easterhouse, nor in attacks on 10p tax plans and Vehicle Excise Duty but, they say, through hard policies: from prisoner rehabilitation and welfare reform to free schools and recognising the value of marriage in the tax system.

This weekend on The Politics Show, we'll test that claim with their former leadership contender David Davis and residents on one of England's poorest estates.

As the party prepares for its conference in Birmingham, could tackling poverty - and not cutting tax - prove its electoral trump card?

And, if it works, an enduring one too?

John Prescott would certainly have something to say about that.

The use of the YouTube footage of the caused much debate at ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ News and was handled differently by us and other UK broadcasters. Our competitors chose to run the full footage of Matti Juhnai Saari issuing his threat "You will die next", followed by him firing towards the camera and the explosion of pieces of fruit across the lens as his bullets found their target. The ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ chose only to run the verbal thereat, but not the firing or the splattered fruit.

In an age of widespread availability of such footage on the internet, why did the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ hold back some of this footage and were we right to do so?

Our thinking was that the editorially relevant part of the footage was the threat, which had apparently been seen by the Finnish police prior to the killings. However we decided the firing to camera and the explosion of fruit would be alarming to some audiences and might be considered gratuitous in the circumstances of the mass murder he had carried out.

ITV News in the UK also used a montage of footage of the threats made prior to mass murder by the killers at Columbine High and Virginia Tech. These pictures made the point that there appears to be a copycat pattern of video postings followed by killings. ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ News took the view that it was unnecessary to make that point by repeating those shocking images. Some viewers might feel that by over-using such images broadcasters are contributing to the notoriety that such killers appear to crave.

Of course many online video distributors and international broadcasters have decided to publish those videos and the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ's decision not to use all of the pictures does not significantly reduce their exposure around the world. Nevertheless we believe our audiences want us to set limits and only to use material where it is editorially relevant.

Whilst I cannot predict a change in the balance between the amounts of rain and sunshine we might get this Autumn I can tell you about a big change to the look of the .

We have been working on this new look for a few months, and what you can see from today is just the beginning. Further changes and developments will be rolled out across the site over the coming months.

The changes to the design of the site have been largely driven by your feedback, either through our regular site surveys or the feedback forms we have put up on the site over the past couple of years. From the research it was clear that despite the many different ways the weather affects your lives the main thing you want from our site is the forecast (surprised - I guess not!).

But it was also obvious that improving navigation around the site and an updated design would be key elements in any revamp.

³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ News and Sport underwent a similar process earlier in the year and we have incorporated the best of the changes they made into the Weather site. Some of the changes are part of a new visual style that will apply across all the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ's new and redesigned websites - the centering of the pages, the underlying layout grid, and the pan-³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ masthead.

So what are the main differences you'll see between the old and new sites?

The two biggest changes are the structure of the site and the visual design. All of our forecast information is now organised by location rather than by type of data. Once you have searched for your location you will find everything you need on one page. The visual design now follows the broadcast design, so the colour of the pages reflect the weather conditions for the location you are looking at.

Our forecast information is displayed in individual modules on a page and these can be expanded or collapsed depending on whether you are interested in the information or not.

Today's forecast for UK locations on the main Weather site are no longer depicted by one summary symbol. Today is covered by a three-hourly breakdown to show more clearly how the weather will change over the 24 hours to come.

Your feedback indicated that being able to personalise our site is important to you, so we have increased the number of locations you can save as favourites. The new site will also remember which modules you had open on your favourite locations last time you viewed them for the next time you visit.

Each location page displays the accompanying weather map, but you can also navigate to other map areas without leaving your page. This means you can choose a different or wider area map if you prefer.

Our website is now wider. The ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ has received feedback from you about making the best use of available screen space. We're confident that now is the right time to use the extra space to improve the site.

Remember this is work in progress so not all of the features we are developing will be there on day one - and I'll keep you posted on the upcoming changes over the next few months. A big improvement coming later this year will be embedded video forecasts. So whether you are looking at a UK forecast or for your holiday destination our familiar broadcast team will be there to talk you through the latest forecast.

So take a look around the new site, and let us know what you think.

Reporting a party conference is always something of a multi-layered affair. In fact, reporting politics is, full stop.

But at conference time everything is much more intense and mixed up, what with hundreds of politicians, party members and journalists all crushed together in a confined space. This week's Labour conference in Manchester has been no exception.

There have, of course, been the official speeches in the main conference hall: briefed and despatched in the full glare of the media. Not much controversial there.

Then we have had the myriad fringe meetings, where politicians can sometimes be tempted to reveal a little more, though usually again they are fully recorded and reported if the organisers can drum up sufficient interest.

Then there are the gazillions of private conversations in bars and dusty corners, where gossip is exchanged and information shared under the strict understanding that the source is not revealed. This is then reported in the annoying but seemingly unavoidable code that political journalists have invented. More on that, perhaps, another time.

What rarely happens is that a leading politician says something newsworthy that they don't want anyone to report but somehow it finds its way into the public domain. This is exactly what happened last night.

The Foreign Secretary, David Miliband, got into a lift with his aide and started a conversation about the speech he had delivered to the conference earlier in the day - a speech which strayed far from his foreign affairs brief and was seen by many here as an attempt to sell himself to the party as a potential future leader.

In an age of instant feedback, he was interested in how it had gone down. Reflecting on it, Mr Miliband, went on to say: "I couldn't have gone any further. It would have been a ." His aide agreed, saying he had gone as far as he could and it was what the party needed.

In the febrile atmosphere of a party conference, this was fascinating stuff. It is, of course, open to a number of interpretations but any reference to Michael Heseltine, the man who so openly challenged Margaret Thatcher when she was PM, is intriguing to say the least.

Of course, we would not have known any of this if it weren't for the fact that (a) there was another person in the lift where this conversation happened and (b) that person just happened to be a ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ journalist.

The question, of course, is, having heard this conversation, should we have reported it? Surely politicians are owed a right to privacy as much as anyone else? Should we be in the business of revealing details of an exchange that was meant to remain private?

On this occasion, the answer seemed to me to be yes, we should report. It would not have been yes in all circumstances. If the conversation had taken place somewhere where the participants could legitimately have expected it to be private, then that would have been different.

But this was a conversation in a lift used by hundreds of different people, at a conference teeming with journalists who had every right to be there. Unfortunately for Mr Miliband, the anonymous person with him in the lift happened to be one.

A commercial radio music producer once told me of a two record rule...that listeners won't put up with two songs in a row they don't like. If that happens they're likely to tune to another radio station that's playing a song they do like.

We had a "two stories" moment on 5live Breakfast this morning, when we followed an item about a call for legal recognition of the word kilt with an interview with an SNP politician who supports a Scottish takeover of HBOS.

The problem? They were both, in essence, Scottish stories.

Never mind our obligation to report the whole of the UK. Never mind that the B in ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ stands for British. For many of those listeners who text in to the programme, it was too much.

We were accused of being ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ Scotland...another texter wanted news for the 50 million English rather than five million in Scotland. They'd had enough of Scots "bleating".

This wasn't an isolated case. Anything with a hint of Scottishness tends to provoke a reaction - Scottish politicians (particularly those at Westminster), stories about funding of the Scottish government and Scottish football.

It's not just stories connected to Scotland of course. Audiences are no longer passive. We've invited them to interact and they do that in large numbers. They tell us what they think of issues we're covering, but also about our story selection, our presenters, our time-keeping - everything.

The digital world will increasingly give people much more ability to choose the news they want at the time and place of their choosing - and will increasingly allow them to select which sort of stories they want to hear. At least then, when there's a "two in a row" problem, they'll only have themselves to blame.

The ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ's reporting of financial turmoil has helped to move markets and excited much comment. Last year Robert Peston's report on the government's rescue of Northern Rock was followed by much discussion of whether the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ should have reported in advance of an official announcement. Last week's exclusive by Robert on the impending takeover of HBOS by Lloyds TSB had a major impact on the market and the that there will be an investigation into possible trading prior to Robert's story being broadcast.

The current financial turmoil and the high potential sensitivity of the stories we cover means we need to think carefully about what we broadcast and publish. Our first duty is to accuracy and our absolute presumption is in favour of publication. Of course ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ financial journalists operate under legal restrictions and the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ's own strict guidelines which prevent them from taking any personal advantage from any of the information they possess as a result of their professional activities. But we do sometimes hold things back. I thought it might be interesting to describe two instances of that.

Last Wednesday, after the announcement of the likely HBOS takeover, we received initial reports of queues forming outside HBOS branches in Middlesbrough and Glasgow. We were aware that there was a possibility of outflows of deposits from HBOS. However we decided that queues in two places were not conclusive evidence of a widespread financial phenomena. We decided to wait and watch. The queues later dissipated. I have no doubt that if we had gone ahead at once with broadcasting pictures of those queues that could have had an impact on HBOS.

It made me recall what had happened almost exactly a year earlier after Robert's initial report on Northern Rock. In that case we had information early the following morning that queues were forming in a number of places. However we held off running those pictures until we were absolutely sure of the scale of the queues. By definition they were happening spontaneously not caused by seeing pictures of queuing.

What is the right thing to do in these circumstances? Our normal presumption should be in favour of publication of information. Many in the audience would wish to know financially sensitive information as soon as possible. However in reporting volatile public sentiment we have taken the view that we need to wait until a phenomenon is clearly established before we broadcast.

As the editor of the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ's Economics and Business Unit, on a week like this I seem to keep being asked, or rather told, one thing: "You must be enjoying all this chaos".

At one editorial meeting a programme editor joked we in the business unit were like undertakers at a funeral.

The truth is that this has been a dramatic, historic week for the global economy and I'd be lying if I said I wasn't enjoying the challenge and the adrenalin rush of covering these fast moving events.

At 9am on Wednesday I got a call from our business editor Robert Peston. He told me that were in advanced merger talks and he was going to break the story on the news channel as soon as possible.

It was dynamite information and only known by a handful of people intimately involved in the talks.

I broke the news to a hushed morning editorial meeting attended each day by all the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ news editors at 9am.

Moments later Robert broke the news to the country and as he spoke live we could immediately see the markets move and HBOS shares start to climb.

It was an exhilarating feeling to be such a close bystander to such a unique and surprising event.

But whilst I will admit to enjoying the drama of rare moments like those, I'd like to think that none of us in the business unit ever lose sight of the real impact this economic story is having on people's lives.

That same day we covered widely the depressing news of in the UK.

The moment any of us stop doing that is the moment we're getting it wrong for our audiences.

Forget the cliche: a week must feel a terribly short time in politics for all those rebels racing for the exit in time to be today's shock resigner and tomorrow's news cover.

Such urgency and so many people queuing up to go.

Quibbles over "resigned vs fired" aside, it's an unhappy departure list for Brown backers.

And more in the wings waiting and wilting.

There's admittedly no shortage of weeks to choose from, but is this, in time-honoured journalistic fashion, Gordon Brown's "worst week since becoming prime minister"? Well possibly.

But as far as historic party resignations are concerned he's got some way to go yet (not that I imagine he's too keen to try).

Ten left government and called for Tony Blair to go just two years ago.

Eight Conservatives resigned over Suez in 1957.

Twenty four abandoned Labour altogether in 1968 over planned social services cuts.

Cast your own vote, but in terms of significance it's probably hard to beat the 1981 Limehouse Declaration when Labour - albeit in opposition - split altogether and the current Lib Dems (after a rename or five) were born.

But every cloud...

Because even before the swirl of latest resignations, The Politics Show had decided to bypass government spokesmen this weekend.

No chance therefore of being caught inviting a minister on for an interview only to find they're an ex-minister by the time you get to conduct it.

Instead, we'll be in Manchester for a live debate with a panel of already long confirmed "exs".

Ex-Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott, ex-³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ Secretary Charles Clarke and ex... well, ex-Gordon Brown-cheerleading-columnist, Polly Toynbee.

And ex men (and women) certainly do talk.

No kremlinology required over interpreting their words, as .

I wonder what they - and our invited audience of Politics Show viewers and conference delegates - will make of all these resignations.

I'm confident they'll all have a few words of advice for Mr Brown...

A quick update from me on the overwhelming response we've had to the project we launched last week.

For those who've missed it this is our year long project tracking a ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ branded shipping container around the world to see how international trade is shaping our global economy in these uncertain times.

We've had a lot of interest in the technical details of how we're tracking the container and doing the mapping. Hopefully most of those are answered on our .

There's also been a huge amount of interest from schools and teachers and we're now working with the to see what we can do there. And one Box fan, David Hathaway from Cambridge, has sent us a fantastic template so online readers can cut out and build their very own ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ container. You can download that from the site. Please keep your ideas and feedback coming.

"There's no mystery" about the collapse of a third huge skyscraper at the World Trade Center on 9/11, the lead investigator of the National Institute of Standards and Technology, told me last week.

Speaking at the headquarters just outside Washington DC, Dr Shyam Sunder said it was definitely not a controlled demolition, as many self-styled "9/11 Truthers" maintain.

After three years extensive and exhaustive investigation NIST has published their final report on the World Trade Center and concluded that fire caused Tower 7 to (pdf link). And they deduced from a series of highly complex computer models that the collapse started with the failure of just one column, column 79 on the 13th floor.

Dr Sunder added that the collapse of WTC7 represents the first known instance of the total collapse of a tall building primarily due to fires.

Why was it the first in the world? NIST scientists say it was because fires were allowed to burn in Tower 7 for nearly seven hours and the mains water had been severed by the collapse of WTC1, meaning that fire fighters were unable to fight the fires. The failure of the mains water supply also cut the sprinkler system to the lower half of the building, where the fires burnt for longer and more fiercely.

NIST specifically looked at whether controlled demolition using conventional explosives could have caused the collapse. But they found that the minimum charge necessary to destroy just one key column would have produced a huge amount of noise - between 130-140 Db even one kilometre away from WTC7 - the equivalent of standing next to a jet plane engine.

Yet NIST found no witnesses who had heard anything like that, nor any such noise on any of the videos of the collapse and none of the shattered windows that would have been expected on the backs of buildings.

Dr Sunder told me that they judged other possible hypotheses, such as the theory that there was a controlled demolition using an incendiary called thermite or thermate, were "not credible enough to justify investigation".

Yesterday was the closing day for comments on that final official report.

We have been filming a new set of interviews for an update of "The Conspiracy Files: 9/11 - The Third Tower" to be broadcast on ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ Two soon. With the publication of the final official report on 9/11, officials think the long process of investigation is at last nearly over.

On the anniversary of the September 11th attacks, The World Tonight, had a special edition from Pakistan. Owen Bennett Jones presented the programme from Islamabad while Lyce Doucet reported from Afghanistan.

Seven years on from the attacks in New York and Washington, the key stronghold of groups linked to the Taleban and al-Qaeda is now the wild and remote mountain region straddling the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan. Many call this the new frontline in the battle between western forces, their Afghan and Pakistani allies, and armed Islamic militants.

But there is another way of looking at this region - it is the heartland of the Pashtuns - the tribal people who make up a large element of the population of both Afghanistan and Pakistan, but are resistant to the central authority of both states. The majority of the Taleban are Pashtuns and they have allied themselves to al-Qaeda.

In Afghanistan, American and Nato forces - with Afghan government troops - are involved in an increasingly fierce battle with the Taleban, while in Pakistan 120,000 Pakistani troops are engaged in large scale operations against Taleban fighters and their al-Qaeda allies.

These are the questions we hoped to address in the programme and ones we put to Afghan president Hamid Karzai and Pakistani Foreign Minister, Shah Mahmood Qureshi as well as the British Foreign Secretary, David Miliband.

Do the Pashtuns have specific grievances with the governments in Kabul and Islamabad which have led to their involvement in the violence? In other words is there a nationalist or tribal element to this conflict as well as a religious one and what does that mean for hopes to end the fighting.

We are not the only ones asking this question - Frederic Grare for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace back in 2006 and Mr Miliband himself has been

I hope the programme contributed to understanding this complex conflict.

This must be the week for the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ to paint its logo on very large objects and send them off on ambitious journeys. You've already heard from Jeremy Hillman about ,' a shipping container that will be used as a very creative way of illustrating global commerce over the next twelve months. The box was onto a container ship in Southampton on Monday. It has now left the port of Greenock near Glasgow and is heading for China with Scotch whisky as its first payload.

The '³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ Elections Bus' has also been sent on a 38 day journey across America, beginning in Los Angeles and ending in New York's Times Square. The bus is a project spearheaded by the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ World Service, and includes journalists from every corner of the organisation: radio, language service, TV, and online.

I'm personally most looking forward to following what happens on the bus on the website. Two online journalists will be full-time bus riders; Jon Kelly will be blogging continuously throughout the journey, while Jennifer Copestake, a member of my World News America team, will be keeping a of the trip.

What's the point of the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ Bus? It is NOT to follow the presidential candidates or chronicle the 'who's up, who's down" horserace aspects of the contest for the White House. It IS to find out what's on the minds of Americans in all parts of this huge country during a historic election season; to see what issues matter most to citizens of Truth or Consequences, New Mexico...to gauge the real impact of the economic slump and housing crisis on families in Oxford, Mississippi...to find out how people in the 'oil patch' of Texas are coping with - or profiting from - higher oil prices.

It's going to be a fascinating trip, so jump aboard.

NB. Thanks to those sharp eyes that noticed I spelt whisky the American way - 'whiskey' - mistake now corrected.

The is having a relaunch this Sunday. What could possibly go wrong?

Ok, so , but the prime minister's experiences offer us a few timely tips.

First, the perils of over-selling and under-delivering. So this weekend will see a few changes to the programme titles and set backdrop, but no big deal. Just a gentle reminder - in the form of photos of viewers' homes sent in by our audience and a new logo - that we're about politics from Downing Street to your street. But really, calm down. Nothing to get excited about.

Secondly, the dangers of giving out mixed messages. To be clear, whatever my deputy may say over tea from home, this relaunch is not prompted by the programme being in its worst state for 60 years. More than 1.1m viewers every week can't be wrong.

Third, don't be swayed by radical demands to change course, to appeal directly to the so-called "core vote". The presenter Jon Sopel will not suddenly be lurching into policy wonkery and Westminster-speak - we remain a politics show for the many not the few.

And finally, no-one's fooled by headline-grabbing short-term gimmicks. So no new series giveaways: instead our reporter Max Cotton will continue to tackle viewers' real grass-roots political concerns - whether a pensioner with her family's citizenship or, as in this week, a Brixton youth worker at loggerheads with his local council.

So a new Politics Show. Bolder. Brighter. Still no verbs. Still no tie.

I wonder what one of our guests, the Foreign Secretary David Miliband, will make of the relaunch...

Americans have a long-standing reputation for being relatively disengaged from politics compared to citizens of other democracies. Just over half of voting-age Americans have cast ballots in recent presidential elections; that turnout rate is dramatically lower than many other nations.

Is there a chance that US citizens will buck that trend in two months' time, when they'll have the opportunity to choose between John McCain and Barack Obama? If the television viewing figures for the Democratic and Republican conventions are any indication, the answer is yes.

A record number of Americans watched the key moments of both conventions... the prime-time speeches of , , and were each watched by about 38 million people in the US, across all networks. Our programme, ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ World News America, had a larger audience in America on the night that Sarah Palin addressed the Republican convention in St Paul than for any of our other programmes since we launched last October.

There was also a curious partisan or ideological twist to the audience figures. The Fox News cable network, which is widely - and correctly - perceived as the most 'Republican-friendly' of all the American television news networks, was the big TV ratings winner during last week's GOP convention in Minnesota. During the Democratic convention, on the other hand, Fox lagged well behind its competitors.

Whether these large convention audiences will translate into higher turnout come November remains to be seen; after all, 38 million people watching means that something like three-quarters of voting-age Americans still WEREN'T watching. But it has to be a good thing that America is more 'tuned in' to this campaign than past ones. And we'll do our best to make our coverage over the next eight weeks lively and smart enough to help keep it that way.

Today we're starting a major editorial project which I am very excited about, and I hope many of you will be too. A few months ago, we in the Business and Economics Unit were set the challenge to come up with a way of telling the real story of what's happening in the global economy in a tangible, challenging and ambitious way that worked for television, online and radio.

What we came up with was the idea of following a shipping container around the world for a year, as it criss-crosses the globe with its various cargoes and telling the stories behind those goods, those who make them and those who consume them. So, we've painted and branded a ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ container and bolted on a GPS transmitter so its progress can be followed all year round.

We're calling the project The Box from a fantastic book of the same name by Marc Levinson which tells the story of how the humble shipping container changed the face of world trade. Lots of people have worked hard to make this idea happen and I'm very grateful to the who represent the container shipping industry and have helped hugely with the logistics and planning along with shipping company .

The container starts its journey in Southampton today and you'll be able to see it on Breakfast and the News Channel with Declan Curry. The journey this container follows over the next few months will be a real one, and whilst we will control some aspects of the process for logistical reasons, the story it tells will be a truly representative one, painting a picture of what globalisation really means.

And, if anyone is wondering, that means it won't be costing the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ much over and above the coverage costs for the editorial content. Whilst we have paid a little for the branding of the box and some technical costs, the fact this is a working container means it will be earning its own keep! I am keeping my fingers crossed the Box doesn't fall overboard (it happens!) and would love to hear your thoughts as it progresses on its journey around the globe.

Since my last blog, I've been busy putting together a highly skilled multiplatform team in place with a diverse range of skills for the new look website, from news and feature writing, editing and shooting video, encoding content for the web, to research and film archive.

The site hasn't re-launched yet, but we're already trying different things on the and on where Panorama's Primark: On The Rack special had a strong presence. This week's programme used information from an online "Feeling the Pinch" questionnaire which was suggested by Sandy Smith who edits Panorama. We promoted it on different platforms; our website, via the Panorama and other parts of ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ News online, local radio and Jeremy Vine's show on Radio 2. More than 8,000 of you thought it was a good idea. A big thank you to all of you who took part.

The are up on the website. Although it's not scientific as the figures were taken from a self-selecting sample rather than an official poll which has a representative sample, it did provide us with an interesting snapshot of what 8,770 people in the UK are concerned about.

So, in that sense it was invaluable to get such a big response to a story that has been dominating the headlines all year. That's why we're keeping the questionnaire online for a bit longer so if you haven't had a chance to to fill it in, .

And judging by the e-mails we've already received it's a story that will continue to develop as people struggle to cope with increasing fuel, energy and food bills as well as a fragile property market. We're always interested in how the big stories are affecting you, so if you've got a story you think we should investigate or know about please e-mail panorama@bbc.co.uk.

There's been some reaction to about changes to the , a long established and very effective part of the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ's business offering.

Whilst I am not responsible for that particular programme, or the changes being made by ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ Current Affairs, I understand there's no intention to reduce the impact or volume of the Money Programme despite some of the reporting.

What is also true is that there has never been a higher level of commitment or dedication to business and economics coverage on . My department produces 11 hours of broadcast business output every single weekday across various ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ outlets and channels, as well as a constantly updated website for UK and global business news.

We have teams of business journalists based in the US, Asia, India and the Middle East who contribute to our domestic and international coverage. In October we are re-launching , our daily business and finance programme on ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ2, with a new format and extra audience interactivity. It's a project which we are incredibly excited about and which we know will meet a real desire from the audience to know more about the economy and what affects the pound in our pockets.

In addition, our team of specialists including Business Editor Robert Peston and Economics Editor Hugh Pym continue to provide exclusive stories and strong analysis. Robert's current series of 30 minute interviews with top CEO's called has been a real investment in serious business news for ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ News.

Next week we have a fantastic and ambitious project launching which I'll be blogging about on Monday. There's never been a more importan time to tell the economic story and it's something we are very focused on.

I kicked in the window, or tried to, 'cos he wouldn't give me a pizza". One drunk man's view of why he came to be in Casualty after a night on the lash which ended in violence and a head injury for him.

Newsbeat's health reporter Tulip Mazumdar has been investigating the scale of a problem that's been a headache for A&E departments: the link between drinking and Casualty. You can watch the video at the Revealed website at ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ Switch.

New figures compiled by the for the show more than 53,000 under 25s were admitted to hospital in England for problems or injuries triggered by drink in 2006-07. That's well above the 32,000 alcohol related admissions reported for the same year under the old method - which didn't include injuries for drink fuelled accidents and violence.The cost is a staggering £2.7 billion in England alone each year.

One hospital doctor in Leeds told Tulip the effect on a busy night can be "carnage" - drunken fights, falls down stairs or from nightclub balconies - violence and swearing directed at the staff. Tulip was joined by Radio 1 DJ Scott Mills who again found it an eye opener. One teenage girl was there who'd drunk a bottle of wine before she went out, topped up by more wine and vodka shots. Another teenager passed out in a corridor, others with tubes down their throats or vomiting into buckets. Frustratingly for the staff - all self-inflicted.

Newsbeat worked closely with Radio 1's DJs and programme teams as part of the station's Alcohol Experiment.

So what's the solution? For some of our listeners it highlights a mismatch between the way society and the law views drugs and drink. Many argue the drugs are less harmful thank drink - perhaps we shouldn't ban one without the other, they suggest. Supermarkets' booze promotions caught some of the blame. Others argue that drunken revellers should be made to pay for their own hospital treatment.

One cannabis supporters added "you want people to stop drinking so much, then legalise cannabis...how many people a year go to hospital with cannabis related accidents"? Sherms from Bristol claimed people "don't binge smoke...or get into fights not to mention the tax they could put on it!" It would be good to hear your views, too on this perhaps uniquely "young" issue.

Hurricane Gustav, , has cast a thousand-mile shadow all the way to St Paul, Minnesota, where the Republican convention opens/opened in curtailed and subdued session. Organisers are anxious not to be seen having a party while fellow Americans are losing their homes in a deluge. Convention proceedings are being kept to a constitutional minimum until the full extent of Gustav's wrath is known.

The US news networks, which provided round-the-clock coverage of last week's Democratic Party events, have a headache. To ensure a measure of balance they want to give similar prominence to the Republican event, but key correspondents and senior anchors have been redeployed south. Vast swathes of air time are going to catalogue Gustav's progress in minute, and sometimes morbid, detail, squeezing the time available for the events in St Paul. Politicians vie with meteorologists for the best slots.

US news shows adore weather stories - gung-ho reporters, excited, soaking wet and almost impossible to hear in the storm's fury, push themselves to the very edge of what safety and common sense would dictate, to show how bad things are. For some, it's news coverage at its sexiest, it's certainly difficult for a politician making a stump speech to compete.

The initial Republican response to the challenge has been sober and practical, reflecting the mood in the South. Convention organisers have made Gustav part of the narrative in the Twin Cities - the hurricane is setting the tone for the week. John McCain must be all too aware of Katrina's effect on the Bush presidency - he will not want Gustav to taint his campaign for the White House.

So prepare for a subdued and purposeful week for the Republicans. It's likely the streamers and the balloons suspended in their thousands from the ceiling of the convention venue, designed to add a festive tone to McCain's anointment as presidential nominee, will stay firmly in their nets until the gavel in St Paul comes down for the last time and the delegates have headed home.