Here is Gavin Esler with details of Friday's Newsnight and Newsnight Review

Quote for the Day

"What we seem to be witnessing in Iran is the first spasm of the death agony of the Islamic Republic" - Writer Martin Amis.

In tonight's programme - we will be trying to figure out if Martin Amis is right - especially in the light of comments by the former President Rafsanjani today which may well stir the Persian political pot.

But we'll be leading on the fight against swine flu. How well are we doing? How much can really be done? Why do we have so many cases in Britain - is it because we are simply better at reporting it than other countries? Our Science Editor Susan Watts reports from one of the hot spots, Birmingham which has important lessons for the rest of the country.

And in Newsnight Review - we'll be examining the flipside of the American Dream. The latest Thomas Pynchon novel - Inherent Vice - has at its heart a spaced out private eye, Doc Sportello, who smokes so much weed it is not entirely clear what he's investigating. Plus we'll have the Oscar contender Frozen River, about the smuggling of illegal immigrants over the Canadian border; the latest Adam Curtis documentary It Felt Like a Kiss which explores in typical Curtis style part of our love-hate relationship with the United States; and the great American novel, John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath - but how well does it adapt to the stage?

The academic and critic Sarah Churchwell, historian Dominic Sandbrook, and the writer and London Correspondent for The Nation DD Guttenplan are with me. Plus Martha will be at a rather rainy Latitude festival in Suffolk with some guests of her own to assess the state of the British festival scene. With three cabinet ministers due to turn up there this weekend, has it all got a bit tame?

Gavin

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Tonight we'll have the latest on the news that 12 people have died from swine flu since Monday.

Our Economics Editor Paul Mason will be looking at the big problem that nobody knows the answer to: the double dip recession. Are we going to see it happen, and if not what will stop it? And, live from Tokyo, we hope to be speaking to economist-of-the-moment, Richard Koo, of the global finance house, Nomura.

"We must work globally both to establish the security conditions that will enable a world free from nuclear weapons," Gordon Brown said today in a statement on nuclear proliferation. However, it has also emerged that the government will delay a key spending decision on the replacement of the Trident missile system until after May 2010, in the hope of smoothing the way for the conference reviewing the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) scheduled for spring next.

Meanwhile, the influential Commons Defence committee has warned that a shortage of helicopters is harming military operations in Afghanistan. There are clearly tough choices ahead on defence spending... but how should those choices be made, and what impact will they have on our national identity?

Plus, as the trial of pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi continues in Burma, we have film showing a rare glimpse of life in the military dictatorship and assessing the mood of the country's opposition movement. Read more about tonight's film and watch some preview clips by clicking here.

We'll also be speaking to the best-selling children's novelist Antony Horowitz about a new law requiring anyone who has "regular" or "intense" contact with children or vulnerable adults to sign up to the Vetting and Barring Scheme at a cost of £64. Several other high-profile authors, including Philip Pullman have already announced that they will stop visiting schools in protest. We'll debate.

And, of course, forty years ago today, a little after half past nine in the morning, Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins blasted off from Cape Canaveral on board Apollo 11 on their mission to the moon. It was a historic moment that grabbed the attention of the United States and the world. When they safely arrived a few days later they had fulfilled President John F Kennedy's aim of reaching the moon by the end of the 1960s. In his famous speech given before a joint session of Congress on May 25th 1961, JFK had said:

"I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the earth."

So what kind of challenge should we set for our generation? What similarly ambitious goal should we commit ourselves to achieving before a decade is out?

We'd like to hear your suggestions - leave your comments by clicking here.

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

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Forty years ago today, a little after half past nine in the morning, Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins blasted off from Cape Canaveral on board Apollo 11 on their mission to the moon.

It was a historic moment that grabbed the attention of the United States and the world.

When they safely arrived a few days later they had fulfilled President John F Kennedy's aim of reaching the moon by the end of the 1960s.

In his famous speech given before a joint session of Congress on May 25th 1961, JFK had said:

"I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the earth."

So what kind of challenge should we set for our generation?

What similarly ambitious goal should we commit ourselves to achieving before a decade is out?

We'd like to hear your suggestions. You can leave your comments below.

• Bookmark with:
• del.icio.us |
• Digg |
• Newsvine |
• NowPublic |
• Reddit
• - What's this?