Wednesday, 15 March, 2006

By Simon Enright
Programme Producer, BBC Newsnight

Tony Blair in Downing Street today

Presented by Jeremy Paxman

IDES OF MARCH

Like Caesar, Tony Blair will spend this Ides of March nervously clenching his shoulder blades.

David Cameron spent Prime Minister's Questions taunting the PM about his reliance on Tory votes tonight if his Education Bill is to survive. Labour rebels grumbled behind him.

If he wins the vote tonight - on the eve of the anniversary of Harold Wilson's sudden resignation 30 years ago - will he lose his party? As Churchill had it, "the opposition occupies the benches in front of you, but the enemy sits behind you".

Rebels and loyalists line up on Newsnight after the vote tonight.

DRUG TRIAL DISASTER

Six young volunteers are still seriously ill tonight after a drug trial went wrong. Their families tell of their fears and Becky Milligan investigates how it could have happened.

Were they given too high a dose? Was the drug safe in animals but dangerous in humans? Was the drug contaminated? Or were warning signs in earlier trials ignored?

THE 50 BILLION DOLLAR ROBBERY

Three years after the start of the Iraq war, where has the 50 billion dollars of reconstruction money gone? Billions are unaccounted for and there have been scams and frauds which make the Securitas robbery look like a hold up in a newsagent's.

Peter Marshall has been investigating startling allegations of cronyism, contracts and post war profiteers.

WHERE NEXT FOR HAMAS?

Our Newsnight team, John Leyne and Rachel Thomson, have been into Ramallah in the wake of yesterday's battle of Jericho.

Hamas tells them that they WOULD have released Ahmed Saadat if the Israelis had not launched their attack on the prison - but they blame Britain for causing the crisis.

AND

Newsnight celebrates British Rail's finest hour as the HS 125 steams off into the sunset.