Profile

John Brennan, President Obama's trusted counter terror advisor has been nominated to head the Central Intelligence Agency amidst a storm of controversy. Despite being a career CIA man for more than 25 years, he's now at the centre of American foreign policy dilemmas, including questions about the use of drones, waterboarding techniques and the future of the world's most powerful intelligence agency. A Catholic basketball player, turned academic and fluent Arabic speaker, Brennan has risen through the CIA ranks and has recently been involved in "virtually all major national security issues" alongside the President. As the Senate asks him to justify some of the agency's most controversial decisions, Jane Deith asks how he will lead the agency as it faces ever new security challenges.Reporter - Jane Deith Producer - Gail Champion.

Sir Philip Green is one of the UK's most successful, and colourful, businessmen; his stores are estimated to make up 10 per cent of the high street and his wealth runs into the billions. This week he sold a stake in his flagship fashion chains Topshop and Topman for a reported £500 million. Lesley Curwen profiles the man who is perhaps the most successful retailer of his generation, with contributions from Sir Stuart Rose, Bill Kenwright and Kate Phelan.Producers: Ben Crighton and Hannah Barnes.

The UK Independence Party has been in the news a lot lately: two of its supporters in Rotherham had their foster children taken away from them because of their UKIP affiliation; Conservative Party deputy chairman Michael Fabricant suggested the Tories might be wise to enter into a pact with UKIP at the 2015 general election; and rumours surfaced of a possible defection of several Conservative MPs to the anti-EU party. And then, of course, there were three Westminster by-elections in which UKIP rattled the main parties. This week, Rosie Goldsmith profiles UKIP's leader Nigel Farage.

Mary Ann Sieghart profiles the Australian political strategist Lynton Crosby.

Mark Coles profiles Abu Qatada, the radical Islamic cleric described by the Home Secretary as "a dangerous man, a suspected terrorist, who is accused of serious crimes in Jordan". Seen by some as Britain's most wanted man and Osama Bin Laden's right hand man in Europe , the Palestinian-Jordanian scholar arrived in the UK in 1993 seeking asylum and claiming he had been tortured in Jordan. This week, after serving seven years, without charge, in a British prison, a court ruled that he cannot be deported to Jordan where he's been convicted in his absence of involvement in terrorist activity. But who is Abu Qatada, a serious intellectual leader who believes in violent Jihad and accordingly to former Home Secretary David Blunkett, " a prime suspect" in the war on terror or as one friend tell us "a changed man"?

Mark Coles profiles the controversial Conservative MP Nadine Dorries, who has been suspended from her party for taking part in the reality TV show "I'm a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here".Dorries - a self-proclaimed council estate Scouser not afraid of speaking her mind - left school with few qualifications but went on to become a hospital nurse before setting up a successful company providing childcare services to working parents. Then she astonished her mother by entering politics.In the House of Commons Dorries has clashed with the Opposition and many within her own party over the issues of abortion and sex education. She has sparred with David Cameron, who she regards as a "posh boy", and been criticised - even by those who like her - of being too outspoken. According to Ian Birrell, a former Cameron speechwriter, the celebrity jungle will make or break Dorries. "She'll either do very very well at getting across the fact she is unusual for a politician," he says, "or she will rub everyone up the wrong way and be ejected within about 20 seconds. She will be a great success or a great failure - which I think is possibly the story of Nadine.".

In a few days a 59-year-old man will almost certainly ascend to one of the most powerful positions in the world. His name is Xi Jinping and the signs are he's about to become the President of China. There have been no debates, no campaign ads, and no forensic interviews. Getting a measure of the man is not easy. But in the course of this edition of Profile Tim Franks talk to some of those who have been closest to him.Producer: Kai Wang.

Lucy Ash profiles the Russian lawyer and anti-corruption campaigner Alexei Navalny, who this week topped a ballot to elect leaders of the opposition to President Putin. He came to prominence as a leader during the anti-Putin demonstrations in Moscow last December, the biggest such rallies since the end of the Soviet Union. He has also been fighting against corruption through a website that invites the public to report suspected cases to the police or prosecutors. One of his tactics, was to become a minority shareholder in major Russian oil companies, banks, and ministries to ask awkward questions about holes in state finances. Those holes are huge. Last year Dmitri Medvedev - then President now PM - said that a trillion roubles-thirty-three billion dollars- disappears annually on government contracts. Aleksey Navalny's anti graft campaign has won him popularity across a wide spectrum of Russian society, including nationalists with far right connections. This has unsettled many of more liberal supporters. And in a week when three other opposition activists have been charged with causing mass unrest, does he have what it takes to challenge the tough man in the Kremlin? Producer Arlene Gregorius.

As the new James Bond film "Skyfall" opens next week, Mary Ann Sieghart profiles its director Sam Mendes, a man who wanted to play cricket for England but went on to become a theatre supremo before winning critical acclaim in Hollywood.Born in Reading and brought up by a single mother, Sam Mendes was educated at Magdalen College School in Oxford, where he demonstrated a competitive streak as captain on the cricket pitch, and Cambridge University where he won critical acclaim for a production of "Cyrano de Bergerac". At just twenty four, he directed Judi Dench in Chekhov's "The Cherry Orchard" and as she tells Profile " one day when we were rehearsing, I said Sam, I would like to try this another way, can I show you? And he said to me, well you can but it won't work and so during the filming of Skyfall, he asked me to do something and so, I thought I'd complete the circle and I said, well I'll do it but it won't work and he roared with laughter. So we have closed the circle on it."Later he joined the Royal Shakespeare Company where he forged a life long collaboration with actor Simon Russell Beale. He remembers how Sam would bring humour into the rehearsal room. "We had a fart machine in Twelfth Night. I cannot tell you what pleasure it gave him. It was only used once in the play. Toby Belch and Andrew Aguecheek were sitting on the sofa having a talk after a night on the town and they had a sort of farting competition. I would be in the middle of some very complicated Malvolio bit, something emotionally precise and then this fart would go off. And he loved all that. That was absolutely Sam the schoolboy."But it was as artistic director to the Donmar Theatre in London that Mendes made his mark, winning five Olivier Awards. Moving into Hollywood, he sealed his success with five Oscars for his first film "American Beauty" starring Kevin Spacey. And now, Mendes has chosen to direct a British classic, a James Bond film "Skyfall".

Claire Bolderson profiles US Republican vice-presidential candidate Paul Ryan. Producers: Smita Patel and Chris Bowlby.