Snowmail: China quake

A massive earthquake in Sichuan area of China. What we know so far is that in one school 1,000 pupils were buried alive, and five other schools are said to have collapsed.

The tragedy with these sorts of massive natural disasters is that you tend to know more about how many children died in schools than anywhere else, because the authorities usually know when school is in or out and it's much harder to tell who else was inside collapsed buildings.

Interestingly, although this is hundreds of kilometres from the Three Gorges dam, it's along the same faultline, and scientists have warned before of the danger of earthquakes and, indeed, of the danger that the dam itself could be affected.

These are early hours. It's still difficult to be specific. But thousands of people appear to have died. The Chinese prime minister is on his way to the scene.

Burma crisis deepens

And as if that weren't enough, the Burma crisis deepens, with dead bodies contaminating drinking water and relief planes still experiencing the most enormous difficulties in getting in. The first American plane got in this morning from Thailand.

Our man "Hugh" is still on the ground in the Irrawaddy delta area, and Jonathan Miller is in Thailand pulling together an overview. I'm about to do an interview with the secretary general of ASEAN - a grouping of countries usually supportive of Burma but which has castigated the junta for its failings thus far.

UK energy crisis looms

At home, gas prices are about to rocket by a factor some estimate of up to 18 per cent. Faisal Islam will report why, and we will be casting ahead to look at an energy crisis which is not of Britain's making and in which our own economy could well be held hostage.

Political biography - a simple guide

Given all the difficulties that have been thrown into the path of Gordon Brown's premiership, the art of the political biography and its timing seems only to be the latest.

Levy, Cherie and Prezza have all had unpleasant things to say about the prime minister, ranging between "mad" and "bad-tempered".

So we are investigating who makes money out of these biographies, given that hardly anyone ever buys them. Witness David Blunkett's great tome, for which hundreds of thousands were paid by the publisher and which 4,000 people bothered to buy.

Clones and the city

Finally, Sex And The City - they're back, but in filmic form. Stephanie West has been out to meet them. She examines how programmes like this don't get made any more. Instead the Americans seem to be cloning British imports like Pop Idol.

Got to run. Loads moving. See you at seven, on four. Jon

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