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Yesterday we started our coverage exploring disability issues and the lives of people with disabilities in the UK and around the world, anticipating Friday's United Nations .

Disability affairs specialist Peter White

Access All Areas week includes themed coverage on TV, online and radio and our colleagues at 5 live will also be discussing the issues.

We hope the week will challenge assumptions, air the views and concerns of people with disabilities, tell some extraordinary stories, look at some of the changing attitudes towards people with disability and reveal some areas where it is argued that attitudes need to be changed. We also look at the financial costs of living with disability - for disabled people themselves and for businesses and government.

It's important for the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ to reflect all aspects of life in the UK and this week gives us a chance to highlight and explore a range of topics related to disability issues. Although we've been making progress in many areas reflecting the lives, the abilities and the challenges of people with disabilities, this is still something we hope to build on.

The guidance of some members of our teams who have disabilities and have experience in this area has been crucial. We have arranged the content around five themes:

Changing attitudes: Forty years since the first disability act, disability affairs specialist Peter White looks through the archives to see how language and attitudes towards disabilities have changed and interviews the man who designed the first legislation, . A survey examines the shift in attitudes and we explore what life is like for people living with disabilities around the world.

Employment: Political correspondent Gary O'Donoghue explores issues around employment and age and disability correspondent Geoff Adams-Spink looks at how many people with disabilities fall through the net on education and provision of benefits and services.

Sport: We look at sports funding and ways to make sport accessible for children with disabilities. Newsnight's Jonathan Bell describes how sport helped him when returning from his army service and how it is used to support those coming back from Afghanistan with life-changing injuries.

Technology: Technology correspondent Rory Cellan-Jones looks at how technology can transform the lives of people with disabilities and Gary O'Donoghue talks about the big and small changes in technology which have developed in his lifetime and transformed how he lives.

Invisible disability: We explore less visible disabilities and the arts and culture surrounding disabled people, as well as their portrayal in the media. Scotland correspondent James Cook finds out how a company in Scotland was created specifically to open up employment opportunities for people with autism.

I hope you'll find our coverage engaging and thought-provoking; personally, I hope it'll play a role in putting some of the issues at the heart of discussion, debate and daily coverage. Yesterday Peter White explored what has been done to end disability discrimination during the past 40 years and today Gary O'Donoghue looks at the challenges faced by disabled job-seekers. If you miss some of the coverage, you can find the key online features by .

Kevin Bakhurst is the controller of the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ News Channel and the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ News at One and the deputy head of the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ Newsroom.

There's been a lot of noisy speculation over the last few weeks - none of it generated by the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ and much of it uninformed - about tonight's Panorama investigation into Fifa.

All I would urge is that people watch the programme and make up their own minds.

I am confident that once they see the evidence unearthed by our reporter, Andrew Jennings, most fair-minded viewers will agree that we are raising issues which are highly pertinent to this week's bidding process and important in revealing the way Fifa conducts itself.

Panorama is not in the habit of raking over old coals for the sake of it; nor are we intent on undermining England's bid for the 2018 World Cup.

I am a football fan - and have been a club season-ticket holder and member for a long time. One of my sons played at junior level for a Championship club. So I'm well aware of how much winning the right to hold the World Cup means to people. I share everyone's passion for seeing the tournament played here.

But if some of the people who are making the final decision are corrupt - if there is a suggestion that they can be bought - how fair can the process be? Given the long period over which this corruption took place and given that the men involved are all still in place, isn't it time that Fifa is properly held to account and its processes made transparent?

Our investigation identifies three Fifa executives who took bribes as part of a wider corruption scandal involving around $100 million of secret payments. We accuse a fourth Fifa boss of continued involvement in the corrupt sale of World Cup tickets.

All four are members of Fifa's executive committee and will be voting on England's 2018 World Cup bid this Thursday.

None of the men has responded to letters from Panorama setting out our allegations.

The three who took bribes received the secret payments from a now defunct sports marketing company called International Sports and Leisure (ISL). For many years it held exclusive World Cup marketing rights - secured in part by bribing sports officials around the world.

Panorama has obtained a confidential internal ISL document listing 175 secret payments made between 1989 and 1999. We understand that most were bribes paid to a handful of senior Fifa officials.

Together, the $100 million of secret payments amount to one of the biggest recorded bungs in the history of world sport.

None of the bribes relevant to Fifa has ever been formally investigated by the Federation - nor by the Swiss courts.

For these reasons, I have never doubted that it would be in the public interest to broadcast this story.

In terms of its timing, we only obtained the list of these payments last month after a secret out-of-court settlement was reached in June 2010 year. That followed an investigation into the ISL bribes by a Swiss magistrate and concluded with unnamed Fifa officials paying back £3.5 million.

It has taken many weeks to ensure that the allegations we are making were properly tested and that all those named were given a fair opportunity to respond.

There have also been calls for us to put the programme out after the vote on the bid. I understand why people feel strongly about us not tipping the chances against England's 2018 bid.

But surely it's right for the British public to be informed about the nature of Fifa and its demands before we win - if we do?

As for the corruption itself, it's difficult to imagine any editor of a news organisation ignoring evidence which points to the man who will host the next World Cup - one of the most powerful men in world football - taking bribes.

There are many payments on our list that cannot be traced because they were made to front companies in Liechtenstein. But in the case of one such company, Sanud, there's a clear lead to Ricard Teixera, the head of Brzailian football.

Our list shows Sanud received 21 payments from ISL totaling $9.5 million (£6.1m). We asked Mr Teixeira whether the bribes had also ended up in his pocket, but he didn't respond.

The second Fifa executive committee member identified by the list of secret payments is Issa Hayatou, the head of African football. His name appears next to a cash payment of 100,000 French francs in 1995.

The third Fifa executive on the ISL list is the head of South American football, Nicolas Leoz.
He was named in connection with two ISL payments totalling $130,000 during court proceedings in 2008 - but the list shows three further payments of $200,000 each. So Mr Leoz was paid $730,000 by ISL.

We also accuse a fourth member of Fifa's executive committee, vice-president Jack Warner, of attempting to tout World Cup tickets.

He was previously exposed by Panorama for selling 2006 World Cup tickets on the black market. Fifa subsequently ordered Mr Warner's family business, Simpaul Travel, to make a $1 million donation to charity "to compensate for the profits it had made through the resale of 2006 Fifa World Cup tickets".

Now Panorama has evidence that Mr Warner used his position to try to help touts obtain tickets for the 2010 World Cup. He ordered tickets costing $84,240 from the Fifa ticket office but the deal subsequently fell through.

This is money that was effectively stolen from football, as it could have been used to fund Fifa's development projects around the world.

This time it could be different though, as Swiss politicians are threatening to take action if Fifa kicks these allegations into the long grass.

The key question now is what, if anything, Fifa will do with Panorama's evidence. Sadly, Fifa's track record suggests this is unlikely to be the case.

Fifa president Sepp Blatter declined to comment when we asked him about the three Fifa executives who had taken bribes.

But he said that a Swiss court case had largely exonerated the managers of ISL: "It is important to stress that no Fifa officials were accused of any criminal offence in these proceedings."

The court case followed an investigation by the Swiss authorities into the collapse of ISL in 2001. Six ISL managers were tried in 2008 for misusing company money. But they were not tried for commercial bribery because that was not an offence in Switzerland at the time.

What Mr Blatter failed to mention, however, is that Fifa officials were the subject of a second criminal investigation by a Swiss magistrate.

He completed his investigation into the ISL affair this June and concluded that Fifa executives had taken kickbacks on marketing contracts. But their names were kept secret as part of an out-of-court settlement which saw them pay back £3.5 million.

David Cameron is joining Prince William and David Beckham in Zurich as the bid process reaches its conclusion this week.

I wish them the very best of luck and if England are successful I hope we will lay on a World Cup tournament that will make us the envy of the world.

And whatever the outcome on Thursday, I firmly believe that we were right to shine a spotlight into the murky corners of Fifa's multi-billion dollar empire.

Tom Giles is the editor of Panorama. Due to legal sensitivities, comments are closed on this post.

As with many other recently-invented ancient traditions - like Father's Day, camel racing, and chocolate-filled advent calendars - that of the Today's guest editors began as a sort of comforting diversion to the nation. This week, it became clear that, in only its eighth year, it's become much more than that.

This week, we learned from newspaper columns, from e-mails and from social media that thousands of years of Western culture and civilisation would come to an end before nine o'clock in the morning (and a festive morning, for heaven's sake!) if we invited the wrong person to guest-edit Today. So, naturally, we're careful.

This year's wonderful, varied parade of visiting luminaries - including Colin Firth, Diana Athill, Sam Taylor-Wood, Clara Furse and Richard Ingrams - will light up our programmes between Christmas and New Year with their bright ideas, and we hope to pull off our usual, improbable trick of being Today-but-not-quite-Today for a few mornings.

The regular rules will apply. The guest editors will have an enormous say in what we do on their mornings in charge - there'd be no point in having them if they didn't - but news is news, and if something demands to be covered, we'll cover it. We'll keep our fingers crossed for golden moments of the kind that PD James, Jarvis Cocker, Zadie Smith and Tony Adams have served up in recent years.

For anyone - nearly everyone, I assume - who's been skim-reading up to this point searching for the words "Katie" and "Price" (if you've been under a rock this week, you may not have seen newspaper reports that she was to be one of the guest editors), here's the news. We've been talking to Katie about doing something with Today, and we're still talking. Katie Price inhabits a world a million miles from the one that Today usually occupies, but that's not a reason for us to ignore it. Maybe she could tell us something interesting about the way a part of this country works? That's what we ask from anyone who comes on the programme.

And what are we going to ask of this year's guest editors when they start work on 27 December? We're going to help one to explain the virtues of infidelity (if you'd desperately like to hear Colin Firth make that argument, you may be disappointed) and another to make the case for single-sex schools. We'll investigate whether the brains of left-wing and right-wing people are physically different, and we'll re-open a 50-year-old murder case. Probably, Western civilisation will survive the experience.

Ceri Thomas is the editor of . The at the Today website.

Following Jana Bennett's announcement of ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ TV viewing figures, I'd like to give a few more details about a record performance for the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ News Channel.

This year has seen many major news stories, including , , the Pakistan floods, the shootings in Cumbria and the Chilean miners. During events like these, some traumatic and some complex, many people turn to the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳. In the year so far, 9.6 million people have watched the channel each week: a 24% increase on 2009, when the average was 7.7 million.

The highest reach recorded for a UK news channel and for the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ News Channel (7.4m) was on 11 May, the day that Gordon Brown resigned and David Cameron became prime minister. This was closely followed by 7 May, the day after the general election, when 7m watched and 13 October when 6.9m watched the rescue of the Chilean miners.

The channel is also watched live on the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ News website by a large and growing number, often as part of the site's live pages on major stories.

The day after the election, there were more than 5.5m requests for and there were around 3m requests for the live page on the day the Chilean miners were rescued.

Kevin Bakhurst is the controller of the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ News Channel and the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ News at One and the deputy head of the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ Newsroom.

China is more than the talk of the town these days - it's the talk of the world.

Wherever you go, newspapers, TV, radio and the web are abuzz with discussion about the rise of China and what that means for, well, wherever you happen to be.

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In the past few years, China has overtaken Italy, Britain, France and Germany and this year it overtook Japan to become the world's second largest economy after the USA.

With its growing economic heft has come further integration into the global economy. This in turn means China is playing a greater and greater role in global affairs. It also means the rest of the world is looking to China to play a bigger part in sorting out the world's problems, as we have seen this week with the US and other countries looking to China to restrain North Korea in the latest flare-up in its conflict with South Korea.

Western governments and commentators are not short of advice for the Chinese leadership on the kind of role it should play.

The US is calling on China to let its currency rise against the dollar so that Chinese exports will become more expensive and imports to China cheaper. Europe - along with the US - want China to help put pressure on Iran over its nuclear programme. Western campaigners call on China to put pressure on the Burmese military government to end its repression of its opponents; these are just a few examples.

To Chinese ears sometimes this commentary has taken on a patronising tone. The current President of the World Bank, Robert Zoellick, when he was in the US State Department under George W Bush, famously [144KB PDF]; the underlying assumption seemed to be that being responsible meant China would let the US teach it to play by the rules set by the Western powers at the end of World War II.

But how does the world look from Beijing? How do the Chinese want to exercise their growing power and influence?

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To try to answer these questions, The World Tonight has come to Beijing for a special edition of the programme.

In conjunction with the leading American think tank, and the influential , we have brought together a panel of Chinese and Western experts at the to discuss these questions.

Joining World Tonight presenter Robin Lustig are two leading Chinese international relations experts, of Tsinghua University and Professor Xie Tao of , as well as , a veteran of Chinese-American relations, now with the PR firm Hill & Knowlton, and , bureau chief for the Financial Times here in Beijing.

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What comes through in the discussion is that China has become more self-confident in recent years as its economy continues to grow and it has started modernising its military, but that there's a mismatch between how the world sees China and how China sees itself.

In Beijing they don't see themselves as a superpower - they think that is a few decades away yet. They see a country that still has huge challenges to overcome in terms of uneven development, huge numbers of poor people, and creating a more democratic political system - though by that they don't mean Western-style democracy.

We also discussed whether recent frictions between China and the US over currency and trade, and disputes between China and its neighbours over maritime borders, have revealed a leadership in Beijing that doesn't appreciate enough the negative effect of its actions and statements on perceptions abroad of its long-term intentions.

I think you'll find it a fascinating and at times surprising discussion. Let me know what you think.

"These proposals offer a thriving future for universities... they ensure value for money and real choice for learners."

That was how Universities Minister David Willetts announced coalition plans to increase tuition fees in England to up to £9,000 a year. National Union of Students President Aaron Porter responded:

"This is utterly unacceptable and an outrage which could decimate access into our university system."

Increasing the cap on tuition fees has become one of the government's most controversial plans and the backlash from student unions is set to continue today with more protests across the country.

We'll be discussing the issue on ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ Three tonight in a special Young Voters' Question Time, so I think it's a good time for us to take a closer look at the plans and why they've divided opinion so much.

Read on and comment at the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ Three blog.

Sam Naz presents the 60seconds news bulletins on ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ Three.

A couple of years ago, I wrote about the dilemmas we sometimes face when we know things we can't tell you.

Then it was about Prince Harry being in Afghanistan. Today - on the day his brother, Prince William, went to Afghanistan - it concerns Paul and Rachel Chandler, the British couple who spent more than a year kidnapped in Somalia.

In the early hours of this morning they were finally freed by their captors and were taken to Adado and then Mogadishu, before flying on to Nairobi to be handed over to UK diplomats. Over the past 12 months, there have been a number of stories about their health and the demands by their kidnappers for a ransom.

As I write, the details of the negotiations that led to their release are unclear.

But some months ago, the family of Paul and Rachel Chandler sought what is known as a "super-injunction", prohibiting the media from reporting any developments in their case.

Lawyers for the family argued that speculation about their health, about any possible ransom and on the negotiations about their release might prolong their captivity. The injunction was designed to protect the safety of the Chandlers - and prevented us from referring even to its existence.

Such were the fears for their safety - and so dangerous is Somalia - that the injunction set out two criteria that needed to be met before we could report the couple's release; first Paul and Rachel Chandler must have left Somalia, and second, they must be in the custody of Foreign Office officials.

The family, their lawyers, and observers in Somalia feared that the couple might be freed by their original captors, and then seized by others seeking further ransom for the Chandlers' release.

The ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ and other news organisations observed the injunction issued by the High Court.

While we're not in the business of censoring the news, no story is worth a life - we accepted the argument of the family, their lawyers and the judge that to do otherwise would jeopardise the safety of Paul and Rachel Chandler.

Some other news organisations did not - which is why, for some hours, during the Chandlers' dangerous journey through Somalia to the safety of Kenya, the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ stayed silent while pictures of the couple could be seen elsewhere.

While it wasn't a comfortable position for us, or our audience, to be in, it was the law and a restriction put in place to try to ensure the safety of the Chandlers. Had we done otherwise, we would have been in contempt of court.

At its simplest, journalism is about telling people things they don't know - so it's always difficult for us not to report a story. But sometimes there are good reasons. There is no public interest in breaking the law, simply to claim a scoop.

Jon Williams is the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ World News editor.

Immigration is one of the most sensitive issues in British politics. Polls indicate that it's a major concern to many people, but it's an issue which politicians in the three main parties - and indeed many of us in the media - have been reluctant to discuss much until quite recently.

Because of the economic crisis from which the UK and the rest of the EU is only slowly emerging and the prospect of unemployment remaining quite high for some time, concern about immigration seems likely to remain a hot topic.

So The World Tonight has got together with the leading think tank to host a special debate on the economic, social and cultural costs and benefits of immigration to the UK.

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In a programme to be broadcast on Friday, presenter Robin Lustig will chair the debate between , head of the Equality and Human Rights Commission; , the director-general of the British Chambers of Commerce; , Baroness Flather, who was the first Asian woman to receive a peerage; and , director of the think tank the Centre for Social Cohesion.

Any discussion of immigration is fraught with difficulties around definitions.

The exact number of people coming in and out of the UK and how many stay for any length of time is often disputed, because it is difficult to count the exact number of people entering and leaving the country and for how long they stay in or out. This means the interpretation of official statistics is argued over - for instance, by .

Who exactly constitutes an immigrant? The UN defines it as someone who moves to another country and stays more than a year, but how many of these people stay for more than a few years before going home or moving on to another country, and how many settle in the UK permanently?

There is often confusion between migrants and refugees. The latter are people who literally seek refuge from persecution in their own countries and which the UK is bound by to host if they can prove they have "a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion".

What powers does the government have to control immigration? About a quarter of immigrants come from other EU countries; because of the freedom of movement within the European Union, short of leaving the EU, this cannot be stopped - although their right to work can be restricted for a transitional period for new members, something the UK chose not to do in the case of Poland but did in the case of Romania and Bulgaria. It also has to be remembered of course that many British citizens exercise this right to live in France or Spain, for instance.

So when we talk about controlling immigration, we are talking about migrants coming from countries outside the EU, which last year was just over half the total of immigrants, and it is those numbers the .

Then there is the whole question of illegal immigration; by its nature, this is not counted and is more difficult to assess the level of and to control.

As the world becomes more interconnected and globalised, both economically and culturally, it is difficult to imagine that immigration can be reduced dramatically. But it is also important to note that the absolute numbers of people moving in and out of most countries is relatively small, if you exclude major refugee movements because of war or natural disaster.

So in our debate we hope to establish clear parameters for our discussion and go on to have a debate on the concerns people have and what the best approach to immigration should be - take a listen and let us know what you think.

Alistair Burnett is the editor of The World Tonight.

How many of us really know what Halloween is about and why we're celebrating it? Yesterday on the News Channel and this website we covered a pagan festival and explained what paganism is, prompting some newspapers to accuse of us down-playing Christianity. A Telegraph blog post describes our religious affairs correspondent as and a Daily Mail headline reads .

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It was Halloween. A good chance, we thought, to explore the background to paganism. I would simply suggest that the decision to cover some aspects of paganism on one day indicates an interest in the fact there is in the UK a range of faiths - and among some a lack of faith. Our reporting should be seen in the context of ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ News's wider coverage of religion and religious events where stories, as ever, are based on topicality and editorial merit. And Christianity - being the country's main religion - still remains the faith with the most coverage.

The idea yesterday was to look at a range of beliefs - outside the majority faiths - which have been on the increase around the UK. Interestingly, as Robert Pigott reported, druidry has just been recognized by the Charities Commission.

Only a few weeks ago, there was debate about the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳'s coverage of the Pope's visit to Britain, with some arguing that we reported too much on the visit. This included much discussion on the role of the Catholic Church, Christianity and the values of modern Britain.

We will continue to explore and explain the background to the events that our audiences celebrate - no matter what their religion might be - and will do so without downplaying anyone's personal beliefs.

Kevin Bakhurst is the controller of the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ News Channel and the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ News at One and the deputy head of the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ Newsroom.