FROM GAVIN ESLER
Hello and welcome to the first Newsnight of 2005.
Today's Quote for the Day comes from the veteran journalist Lord Deedes:
"As I've noticed in lesser disasters, human beings have a way of doing best when the scene is darkest".
We will devote tonight's entire programme to human beings - we hope - doing their best when faced with a scene which is extremely dark.
Andrew Harding will be reporting from Aceh tracing the awful impact of the Tsunami as seen by the local people who felt its force and saw the horrors it left in its wake.
We'll be asking how the world could and should change after the disaster which has one way or another touched us all.
Could the goodwill of most people around the world lead to a new era of mutual assistance between governments and nations? Or will the spirit of 2005 - like that which followed the Ethiopian famine and Live Aid in 1984 - fade in the coming months, allowing governments to slip back into business as usual - mutual suspicion, aid budgets used as a tool of foreign policy rather than of humanitarian assistance?
Does America have an opportunity to rebuild its global reputation through aid? Can the generosity of most Americans change the way their country is seen around the world?
Where does all this leave Tony Blair's ambitions to tackle global warming and poverty in Africa as he assumes the presidency of the G8?
Will he be encouraged to push ahead more boldly? Or is our sympathy for others in limited supply? If we start digging deep for southern Asia, does that mean Africa could lose out again? And again? And again?
And how could God allow any of this to happen and for that matter how could science?
We have the technology to give advanced warning, yet there was no system in place to pass that information on and save the lives of thousands.
Susan Watts will be reporting on the sophisticated monitors that operate in the Comprehensive Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty Organization in Vienna which could have given advanced warning of the Tsunami, had its staff not been on holiday and had governments agreed to share the information.
And Greg Neale, Editor-in-Chief, BBC History magazine, will be looking back at the psychological impact of natural disasters in history. Does any of this shake faith in the existence of God? In the age old theodicy problem, if God exists and is Good and is All Powerful, how can HE possibly allow such a thing to happen?
We'll be talking to distinguished guests from the US State Department, the United Nations, the Aid agencies, the British Government, and leading church representatives.
Do join us tonight for a specially extended edition of Newsnight at 10.30 on BBC2.
Gavin
If you have a story for Newsnight, please send us an email via our website:
bbc.co.uk/newsnight 
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