Update, 11:07: I'm pleased to say the problems should now be fixed - we're not aware of any remaining issues.

Steve Herrmann is editor of the BBC News website.

If you're a user of Twitter, you may have spotted the quiet arrival of the BBC's new website called Democracy Live at the end of last week.

The site is officially launched today but for technical reasons, we lifted the barriers to the outside world on Thursday evening. Although we didn't announce its availability, such is the power of social media that people were quick to find us and start tweeting about the site.

Total Politics even reviewed Democracy Live on Friday and concluded by saying: "It brings a decidedly 21st century edge to watching parliamentary discussion."

"DL", as it's become known in the BBC, is the result of about 18 months of development work.

It brings together for the first time in the BBC, live and on demand video coverage of proceedings in our national political institutions and the European Parliament. Democracy Live builds on previously available content in the form of video streams, guides and biographies.

But the real magic lies in the site's search function, which is unlike anything the BBC has done before.

Read the rest of this post and leave your comments on the About the BBC blog.

Earlier this month, David Rohde of the New York Times wrote about his experiences during the seven months and 10 days he was kidnapped by the Taliban before he escaped earlier this year.

His colleague, Sultan Munadi was not so fortunate: he was killed during a mission to free the British reporter Stephen Farrell last month.

This morning's attacks give people like me pause for thought. The BBC is the only British broadcaster to have a permanent bureau in Kabul.

We were there during the Taliban's rule in Afghanistan, and remained throughout the US led assault on the country in 2001.

It would be so much easier to simply report that troubled country from behind the wire of the British base at Camp Bastion or position ourselves alongside the Canadian media pool at the ISAF base in Kandahar.

But we have a responsibility to tell all sides of the story - not simply report Afghanistan as it looks from inside the perimeter of an army base.

That we're able to do so is a tribute to the bravery of my colleagues in Kabul - not just those you read online or see and hear on air such as Ian Pannell and Martin Patience, but those behind the scenes who help them tell the story. The risks as we have seen this morning are all too real.

Jon Williams is the BBC World News Editor.

So much for the charges. The reality is a bit more straightforward.

It was Question Time. With a lot more people watching than normal. And a lot more column inches written in advance about it than normal. And significantly more demonstrators outside the venue than normal. But otherwise, in all the core elements, it was Question Time as normal.

As in any Question Time week, members of the public guide producers on what's to be debated. The programme is driven by the questions submitted by the audience itself. And unsurprisingly, they chose to focus on topics that were in the news this week - immigration, Jan Moir's article on the death of Stephen Gately, the BNP's co-option of historical figures and, yes, Question Time itself.

What, no post strike? No Afghanistan? They were on the list of issues to be debated. But, from the weight of questions, other topics galvanised our audience more, and there simply wasn't time to get to them. This isn't a stopwatch tick-box format. A question might take ten minutes to debate. Or twenty. It is the audience and its members' engagement in an issue which leads the content of the debate. They demand their say and ensure that answers are properly scrutinised.

That means editorial fluidity and flexibility. As in Grimsby and Salisbury earlier this year, occasionally one topic dominates, because the public just doesn't want to move away from it. Back then - as you may have spotted - it was MPs' expenses. This week, it was the BNP and its beliefs and policies, albeit encompassing questions on race, Islam, homophobia, immigration and Churchill. So we didn't change the format. Questions, and debate, just are the format. And again it's the audience which guides it.

And so to the "rigged audience". The audience, as always, was made up of a broad cross-section of views and backgrounds reflective of the location. That would be the same whether we were in Liverpool, Llandudno or - as in this case - London. Every week, they're encouraged to participate and to ask probing questions to provoke debate. So: were BNP supporters invited and allowed in? Yes. In fact, they made more than one contribution to the discussion. Was that enough? Did they applaud sufficiently or counter the boos directed at their party leader? Hard to judge. But who needs to? That's the thing about people who come to see Question Time - they have minds of their own.

As does David Dimbleby. His job was not to "get" Nick Griffin, or to "expose" him as a racist and crush him in public. It was to chair a debate. Which he did, brilliantly. That meant giving not just the audience members their say, but panellists too. All of them. And probing panellists - all of them - on past policy, utterances and beliefs. So David did indeed forensically grill Mr Griffin on everything from the Ku Klux Klan to the Holocaust. And likewise Jack Straw was questioned over government immigration policy. Sayeeda Warsi on civil partnerships. Not ganging up against one member of the panel. Just robust questioning to achieve clarity. It's what the audience expects - every week.

Chasing ratings? Question Time has been going for 30 years and has very healthy viewing figures, rising to a recent record peak throughout the past series. The decision to invite Nick Griffin onto the programme had nothing to do with ratings. It had to do with our obligation to show due impartiality and the fact that only now has the BNP crossed a particular electoral threshold in securing European parliamentary seats. (See a previous post by my colleague Ric Bailey.)

But the key manner in which this was Question Time as normal is that it was unpredictable. Week in, week out, none of us involved in the programme has any idea how the audience will react, what will anger or amuse them, whether this or that panellist will shine or sink or even whether a cat called Tango will wander behind the set while we're on air (Google it. You'll get the drift).

But amid all the normal unpredictability, one question remains the same every week. Did it work? And, as is the answer to everything with Question Time, you decide.

Update 1515, 24 October: The document that appeared in both the Daily Mail and on its website today is not, contrary to the claim by the Daily Mail, the same document issued to members of the Question Time audience.

The version of the instructions printed in the Daily Mail has Nick Griffin's profile first - the version issued to the audience had Jack Straw's profile first.

There was only one instruction guide given to members of the audience and it is the same format as issued every week. The BBC instructions always begin with the panel member from the government - in this week's case Jack Straw.

On the version printed in the Mail, the Nick Griffin entry has been placed over that of Mr Straw.

As a result, Mr Griffin's entry appears twice in the version on the Mail's website and Mr Straw not at all.

Gavin Allen is executive editor, Question Time.

Nothing comes for free though, and inevitably, this means that the BBC's existing Freeview service has had to change to help accommodate HD.

It's been a busy time for Freeview users, with them recently being asked to re-tune their TVs or set-top boxes as part of a country-wide rearrangement of broadcast transmissions. Now at the end of October, the BBC will have less room to broadcast interactive TV on Freeview. More details on this are provided here.

For BBC News, this means that we're no longer going to be able to provide one of our services.

The News Multiscreen, which we've been broadcasting on Freeview for a number of years now, will close on Tuesday 27 October 2009.

Obviously News content will still be available for viewers of Freeview.

The BBC News channel continues to broadcast on channel 80, and a comprehensive News, Sport and Weather text service will continue to be offered via the Red Button.

As well as that, the bulletins that we provided via the News Multiscreen can still be found on BBC Online via the following links - News, Sport and Weather.

Our Entertainment bulletin, which was not available on Freeview, is also online.

This change does not affect those of you with Sky or Virgin Media - if you currently watch the News Multiscreen on one of those services, you'll still able to do so.

Removing a service is always a hard decision, but as television broadcast develops, with the arrival of HD transmissions and also with broadband-to-TV technology beginning to take a foothold in the UK, the BBC is exploring how it takes advantage of these changes to ensure that it continues to offer viewers innovative News services.

TVs and set-top boxes are emerging in the market that are connected to the internet and we are looking at what exciting video services we could offer in the future.

Pete Clifton is head of editorial development, multimedia at BBC News.

Steve Herrmann is editor of the BBC News website.

For the first time, the public is being asked to comment on them in draft form before they are finalised. BBC staff will also be consulted, by our Editorial Policy department, on their attitudes to the new draft.

One of the issues they cover, picked up by the Guardian's James Robinson, is writing for the web.

The new draft, also for the first time, fully integrates the original editorial guidelines and the (formerly separate) ones for Online.

The new guidelines state that nothing should be written online that would not be said on air:

It's perhaps worth explaining that it is already the case that all output, whether in text, audio or video, must comply with the BBC's existing editorial guidelines.

The first page of the existing guidelines says:

So the new guidelines are really spelling out, in the impartiality section, a principle which has long been enshrined in the BBC's editorial code.

As far as blogging goes, as we've launched each new reporter's blog on the BBC News site over the past few years, we've positively encouraged new recruits to the blogs to write informally, to respond to comments and just generally be themselves.

But we've also stressed that there's still a framework of editorial standards they must work within.

Sometimes we point out it's not much different from a "two-way", a broadcast interview with the reporter, where they answer a few questions from the studio to convey the latest on a story, and their analysis. Think Radio 5 Live, or John Simpson being quizzed by Huw Edwards on the Ten O' Clock news.

This informality translates well to blogs - and indeed to Twitter (as Laura Kuenssberg has been proving in the past few weeks of reporting from the party conferences).

Our news blogs, like our online news stories, are checked by a second journalist before publication.

For Laura's Twitter reports, we've applied "live broadcast" principles - for live news broadcasting, the rule is that it is monitored by an editorial figure as it goes out, normal editorial rules apply, and any mistakes should be swiftly and openly corrected.

Going back to the new draft guidelines, it's also worth pointing out that the "not saying online what you wouldn't say on air" principle works equally the other way round.

When Nick Robinson in an inadvertent slip on air this week referred to David Cameron as the prime minister, he was able to flag the mistake and set things straight in his blog.

If you want to read through the guidelines yourself rather than relying on media reports, and if you want to say what you think about any aspect of them - they are here in full, with feedback form. And of course, you can comment below too.

Steve Herrmann is editor of the BBC News website.

Why did we judge that to be the most important story of the day on the The World Tonight? A question I've been asked.

Well the official in question is the American Deputy Head of the UN mission in Afghanistan, Peter Galbraith.

He was considered a close ally of the powerful US envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan, Richard Holbrooke, so the sacking is surprising.

But more important is the reason he fell out with his boss, the head of the UN in Afghanistan, Kai Eide.

They didn't agree on how to handle the widespread allegations of fraud in August's Afghan presidential election, where the Electoral Complaints Commission is investigating thousands of suspect ballots which has held up the official announcement of the result.

Just after Mr Galbraith was informed of his dismissal, he gave The World Tonight an interview (you can listen here) and alleged that he had seen evidence of widespread fraud in the voting, especially in the south of the country, and that he had also raised concerns that the elections commission was trying to manipulate the vote in favour of the the incumbent President Karzai, who has received the largest number of votes as things stand.

He alleges that Mr Eide told him not to share these concerns with international diplomats in Kabul and that was why he had been told to leave the country and had now lost his job.

In the interview he was also strongly critical of the UN Secretary General, Ban Ki Moon for removing him. He said: "I think it sends a terrible signal when the UN removes an official because he was concerned about fraud in a UN-sponsored and funded election."

We also spoke to Mr Ban's spokesman, Farhan Huq, who denied the UN had sided with President Karzai or had minimised the fraud in the election. He said Mr Galbraith had been dismissed for the good of the mission, because it was necessary to have unity at the top in Kabul.

The elections in Afghanistan have been presented as a centrepiece in the Nato and UN strategy to demonstrate that Afghanistan can be turned into a viable, democratic state and that the military intervention in which thousands of civilians, more than 200 British troops, and more than 800 American troops have been killed since 2001 is worth it.

This is why we judged the resignation a very important story. I hope you agree.

Alistair Burnett is the editor of The World Tonight.

"Nick Griffin says what most of us are thinking - he stands up for Britain."

Just two of the contrasting texts among thousands we received after Newsbeat's interview with the leader of the BNP - and two young activists from the party. I'm happy to respond to those who argued, or complained, that we shouldn't have conducted the interview.

You can hear the interview here - and also read some of the background editorial thinking on all this in my colleague Ric Bailey's recent post and I'll try not to repeat his arguments.

So first, why was the BNP given airtime?
Well, we're impartial - that means we should examine all political parties and put their representatives on the spot with fair and firm questioning. Impartial journalism and censorship do not sit happily together. We believe in getting the facts and the arguments out there for people to decide - not in judging what is "right" or "wrong" in a political context - that's for you to do.

The BNP are not an illegal party. They enjoy electoral support and have elected representatives. It is the BBC's job to properly examine all legitimate political parties that operate within the law and for which people clearly vote.

Why are you forcing this stuff down your unwilling listeners' throats?
We're not. People have a choice whether to listen or not.

This may surprise you, but a great many texts we received yesterday were broadly supportive of the BNP. Over time, it's evident from following our listeners that the party touches a nerve of support or interest. The large pile of texts on my desk raise issues around immigration, political correctness and an apparent frustration with mainstream politics that means the BNP, or at least some of their policies, appeals to some people.

It's also clear that not much is known about the party's policies beyond immigration and race which is something we were keen to explore - and did. By the way, we also received messages of support from those who believed we had exposed the weakness of the BNP on a range of issues.

Why is the listener's view not heard?
It was. We put to Nick Griffin some of the texts we received including sentiments as tough as "you're a disgrace" and "how do you sleep at night?".

Debbie Randle's handling of the interview was extremely rigorous and the bulk of the tough questions she asked were inspired by, or directly quoted, listeners themselves.

But it's offensive to many others and ethnic minorities?
I accept for many others this is true. But others will understand that one of purposes of journalism in a democratic society is to explore and question - raising at times subjects some may find distasteful or shocking.

Rod McKenzie is editor of Newsbeat and 1Xtra News.

"My dad's stories were excellent bed-time fodder for a five-year-old with an over-active imagination. Growing up, my favourites were his entertaining stories about his time in Kenya, which always had a comic flair and hint of the absurd.

I remember one account that never failed to send me into gales of laughter - the story of the farting elephant. Dad would recount his interview with a famous Italian sculptor, who was making a plaster-cast of an anesthetised elephant. Miming the action with exaggerated gestures, dad demonstrated how the sculptor had lifted the elephant's tail to pat the plaster down over its rear, when it emitted a loud raspberry that propelled the unfortunate man several meters through the air. For me, the best parts of the story were always dad's raucous sound effects and giant leap backwards at the climax.

As I got older, I continued to live vicariously through my dad's accounts of his adventures and exploits on the job - I often asked if I could accompany him, offering my services (free of charge, naturally) as the boom-holder for the mic. Occasionally, if the assignment wasn't too dangerous and my mum was able to accompany us, I was invited to come along. Once it was to North Korea as he investigated reports of famine in a totalitarian state closed to the outside world.

Watching him in action, I think I always saw him as a modern 007 - he had the cool, the composure, the authority, and the taste for dapper suits. Armani, of course. But beyond this, I was also struck by his gritty determination and professionalism - he never reneged on a commitment, and he was incredibly resourceful in finding a way to make his angle work, no matter what.

In high school and university, when I had my own research assignments on some of the grislier events and topics he had covered in his career, like the Vietnam War or the genocide in Rwanda, I used to push him to reveal details of what he had seen and experienced in these places. He rarely indulged me, saying he didn't want to discuss things he had so effectively compartmentalised years ago. For a while, I never understood why he chose to continuously put himself in situations that would strain the emotional and mental limits of most people. But gradually, I realised that his passion for this kind of work lay in his gift of clarity and awareness in crisis situations, and above all, his desire to discover and reveal the underlying truth of a matter to a mass audience.

At the end of the day, what I admire most about my dad was his essential optimism and joie de vivre. People who knew him well would be surprised if a long day's work was finished without a vintage wine and a good meal. At home in New York, there was nothing better he liked to do than to stroll through Central Park - en famille - to the local movie theatre or take a brisk walk down Broadway to catch the latest opera instalment at the Met. Dad certainly knew what it meant to enjoy life and although his own has been cut short, he has lived more fully and wholeheartedly than anyone I know."

Heads of government from around the globe are gathering at their annual UN General Assembly meeting in New York to discuss climate change and efforts to stop the spread of nuclear weapons.

Then the leaders of the G20 nations go on to Pittsburgh for another summit on how to restore the global economy to health and prevent a repetition of last year's financial crisis.

The rapid emergence of the G20 - the world's 19 biggest economies plus the European Union - as the organisation making the key decisions on the global economy is really an acceleration of a shift in the global balance of power that has been taking place over the past decade.

The rapid economic growth of China - which is set to overtake Japan as the world's second largest economy - as well as India and Brazil, and the stabilisation of the Russian economy on the back of higher energy prices, means the relative power of these countries has increased at the expense of the established economic power houses of the United States and the European Union.

This shift was highlighted by an apparently amused Brazilian President, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who was quoted following the last G20 summit in London in April, saying "Don't you find it very chic that Brazil is lending to the IMF? I spent part of my youth carrying banners against the IMF in downtown Sao Paulo".

President Lula, a former trade union leader, was referring to the period a few decades ago when Brazil faced a debt crisis and was dependent on IMF loans. Now Brazil is contributing to the IMF to help stabilise the world economy.

In addition to the new central role of the G20, over the past few months we have also seen the US and Russia making up after their serious falling out over missile defence in Europe, the expansion of NATO and Russia's brief war with Georgia just over a year ago. What the Americans have called 'pressing the reset button'.

The question we're considering on the World Tonight this week is to what extent these dramatic changes are a direct result of the financial crisis and the deep recession that has struck the developed world and spread around the globe?

In a special edition of the programme on Wednesday broadcast from the prestigious American think-tank, the Council on Foreign Relations, Ritula Shah will be asking a panel of experts from the council to what extent the convulsions in the world economy have caused the shift in the balance of power and whether the change is permanent.

Alistair Burnett is the editor of The World Tonight.

Ever since 2005, when Richard Sambrook coined the phrase "we don't own the news any more", the democratisation of news has been unstoppable, with people claiming their right to tell their story the way they want to.

From bloggers or eyewitnesses to social networkers or community website hosts, the range and the experience of citizen journalists are both vast.

Many have picked up the principles of good conventional journalism and applied them to their work. Others have not had that opportunity.

The principles of "good journalism" are well established - they affect both how a journalist gathers his story as well how he reports it.

Journalists and editors working for mainstream media across the globe understand them - even if they don't always live up to them.

But what about the principles of good citizen journalism? What would a good citizen journalist do if she came across someone receiving medical treatment in the middle of Trafalgar Square? Would she start filming them? What would she do if she were asked to stop?

Should a community website publish images of 10-year-old children - who could clearly be identified - causing criminal damage on a local housing estate?

Is it okay for a blogger to reveal that his local MP is having an affair because it's "common knowledge", or claim that a local car firm is shifting stolen cars because he's got a friend in the police, who's involved in the investigation?

All BBC journalists should know the answers to these questions - or at least the issues involved in reaching the answers. Can the same be said for citizen journalists? The answers may not be the same for both, but are they equally aware of the issues involved?

And with the right to tell their own stories come responsibilities and accountability. If a conventional journalist gets it wrong, they are accountable to both their editor and their audience. Is the citizen journalist accountable to anyone other than himself?

The BBC has been working with citizen journalists for some time - there has been a team of journalists based in the heart of the newsroom working with user-generated content since 2005. So we are well aware of the power and importance of citizen journalism.

But there's precious little authoritative advice around on good practice for citizen journalists, so to try to help find the appropriate answers to these and many other questions, we're developing a publicly available resource.

Our intention isn't to tell people what to do or what not to do. Nor will it be an attempt to tell potential contributors what we want them to send us.

But we will be setting out how we - the BBC - see some of these issues and what we think is good practice, even if others disagree.

Most importantly, though, we want to hear what you - the citizen journalist - think are the key questions and issues and what your answers are to the key questions, because that will form an important part of the resource.

Update 28 September: I talked about this issue on the World Service's Over to You programme on 26 September. (Apologies - this paragraph originally read "October" where it should have been "September".)

Matthew Eltringham is the assistant editor of Interactivity

Long before satellite technology made it routine, he took BBC audiences to far away places, and explained the biggest stories of our times - first on radio, then television.

He was comfortable and composed in the most dangerous places - covering wars across five decades, from Aden in 1967 to Iraq in 2003.

Brian joined the BBC External Service - the World Service - as a producer in 1965. He had made his name in newspapers in the West of England.

Two years later, he became the BBC's Aden correspondent, reporting the end of over 130 years of imperial control.

Of the half-dozen or so end-of-empire sagas that he witnessed, he later described it as the saddest, and most abject.

After Aden came Cairo, and then his appointment as South East Asia correspondent, where he would make his name, reporting nightly on the twists and turns of the Vietnam War.

In 1975, he watched with his friend and long-time cameraman, Eric Thirer as the last helicopter left the roof of the US Embassy in Saigon and was there as the North Vietnamese claimed victory - ignoring the BBC's order to leave.

Brian delighted in telling the story of how he'd known the end was near when plaster began falling off the ceiling of the broadcasting studio at Saigon Radio.

Brian had gone there to talk to London because there were no reliable phone lines. As the building shook, the microphone suspended from the ceiling swung above his head - a renegade squadron of strike planes, which had defected to the communist North, was bombing the presidential palace just up the road.

It was at that moment that the BBC Governors in London decided he should evacuate - the order to board the nearest helicopter crackled through the earphones in the dust-filled studio. He ignored the instruction - as Brian put it "what foreign correspondent would walk away from his biggest story yet?"

Other big stories were to follow. In the seventies, he reported from Africa on the fall of Idi Amin in Uganda - later scooping the world, by tracking down the former dictator to a secret hideout in Saudi Arabia.

He saw the overthrow of Emperor Bokassa in the Central African Republic and covered the end of the war in Rhodesia. For a brief time, he returned to the UK and worked in Belfast as Ireland correspondent at the height of the Troubles. But he was soon back where he felt most at home - on the road, as a foreign correspondent. In the eighties, he covered the Falklands War from Chile, and then helped lead the BBC's coverage of the first Gulf War in 1991.

More than a decade later - even after his official retirement from the BBC - he went back for the Iraq War of 2003, based in the Gulf. It was Brian, who, on the opening night of the war, reported from the deck of the USS Mobile on the first missile fired by US Forces against Saddam Hussein.

Brian Barron served as the BBC's man in some of the world's greatest cities - Cairo, Hong Kong, Washington, New York, and Rome. Along the way, he was the RTS Reporter of the Year and won the International Reporting Prize for his coverage of Latin America.

In 2000, Brian retired to New York, the place that had become his home but he remained as hungry for the story as ever. Two years ago, in what would be his final report for the BBC, Brian returned to Aden, 40 years after Britain's ignominious retreat.

He told the story of how he had watched as the Union Flag was lowered, as a British Military Band played "Things Ain't What They Used to Be". It was vintage Brian - funny, poignant, but with a message.

Brian was part of the greatest generation of BBC reporters and cameramen - a brave bunch who roamed the world and covered the most important stories of the time. Not for them the ease of satellite or digital technology - instead, they'd wait hours, sometimes days, to even place a phone call. But the story still got through.

Brian Barron was among the greatest of that great generation. He died this morning aged 69 - his wife and daughter were at his bedside.

Jon Williams is the BBC World News Editor.

It's true there is something different. For a start, panellists, whether they are party politicians or not, are being given a platform to share their views with the audience on a broad range of subjects. That's not quite the same as, say, an interview on Today or Newsnight, where an interviewer pursues a particular line of questioning, usually on a specific issue.

But that is not to say that politicians, when they appear on Question Time, or other debating programmes such as Any Questions on Radio 4, are not being subjected to the tough level of scrutiny which is central to BBC journalism. Ask any cabinet minister - a Conservative in the mid-90s, one from Labour more recently - and they'll tell you that it's often there, with an engaged and passionate audience, where you find out just how well thought through are your policies and views.

Sitting on a panel is also different because it usually involves more interaction with other politicians - and this is where the newspaper stories are particularly interesting. It's said that Labour is reviewing its stance of not sharing a platform with the BNP. All the other parties are having to come to terms with the fact that the BNP won two seats in the recent European election, giving them representation at a national level for the first time.

For the BBC, it's quite straightforward. "Due impartiality" means we have to take account of the political context when we're making editorial judgements, day in day out. There isn't one single formula which applies in all circumstances. So how do we decide what are appropriate levels of airtime for the different political parties? Our starting point for that judgement - though not the only factor - is how real people vote in real elections.

Measuring impartiality is less about mathematics and more about good judgement - but let's just look at the maths for a moment. In the recent European election, the BNP won more than 6% of the vote across Britain - approaching a million people. In some regions it was close to 10%. Like the Greens, they now have two MEPs - far fewer than UKIP - but they also have over 50 local councillors - fewer than the Greens, many more than UKIP.

Ever since UKIP and the Greens won representation at a national level, they have appeared from time to time on Question Time. Inviting the BNP onto the panel would be a continuation of the approach which recognises that the level of electoral support is a relevant factor in making these judgements.

The BBC could not apply different standards to different parties because of their particular policies. That would be a breach of our charter, challengeable in the courts.

But it's not fear of the lawyers or lobbying from the BNP themselves which would prompt an invitation to Nick Griffin. Impartiality is at the core of the BBC's journalism and this is a normal part of the process of constantly asking ourselves how we should be defining that impartiality in a changing political environment.

Ric Bailey is the BBC's chief political adviser and was executive editor of Question Time from 2000 to 2006.

The sudden and shocking collapse of one of the most well-known financial institutions in the world marked a seminal moment and triggered a dramatic meltdown in global finance which has left the world a different place from the one it was 12 months ago. Its aftershocks have had implications for all of us.

After Lehman's, the global economy ceased to expand for the first time in 60 years with poor countries severely hit by the fall in commodity prices and remittances. The crisis is estimated to have thrown an additional 100 million people into absolute poverty (earning less than a dollar a day).

In the UK household, wealth has fallen by around £1.1 trillion - or around £40,000 per household. Government debt is expected to reach £1 trillion in a few years, an increase of £600 billion, and unemployment is expected to top three million, or 10% of the workforce. The crisis has also led to unprecedented international co-operation at the G20 summit in London and later this month in Pittsburgh, which could lead to stronger regulation of the world's financial markets, including bankers' bonuses.

So what are we hoping to achieve in our coverage over the next few days and weeks? Firstly, with the perspective of a little time, we will ask what caused the crash and whether it's possible to design a system to prevent a future repeat. We will look at the current state of the global economy, at whether the crisis has fundamentally altered the power balance within that economy away from the US. And we'll also ask whether we are now in a recovery and what that recovery will look like.

A specially created area on our site will aggregate all the best of the journalism we are creating. There will be opportunities for you to participate in the discussion and debates, and you'll hear from our most authoritative voices including business editor Robert Peston and economics editor Stephanie Flanders, who will be speaking to all the main players from the world of business and finance. There may be no easy answers but we will do our best to ask the difficult questions.