BBC World has commenced the New Year with a weekly series Profiles. This looks at the lives of some key international players from the worlds of politics, arts, business and science.

The series started on 4 January with a profile of US President George Bush by well-known observer of American politics for the past 20 years, Christopher Hitchens. The show will air every Saturday at 1:15 pm, 10:15 pm with a repeat on Sunday's at 9:15sam, 6:15 pm. 11 January will see Bush's current adversary, Saddam Hussein take centrestage. The Iraqi leader is put under the microscope by BBC World Affairs Editor John Simpson as he follows Hussein's bloody trail from London to the Middle East and America. He also talks to Hussein's former intelligence service chief who tells Simpson: "No-one would dare to raise his voice in the presence of Saddam Hussein. And if one banged their fist on the table, they would certainly be executed."

Later in the series women in positions of international power are profiled. Condoleeza Rice, the first woman to occupy the key post of US national security adviser says that despite growing up with racial segregation, personal expectations were high. "My parents had me absolutely convinced that, well, you may not be able to have a hamburger at Woolworth's but you can be president of the United States." Swiss lawyer, Carla Del Ponte, now Chief Prosecutor for the International Criminal Tribunal in The Hague, is known for a catalogue of international convictions which have secured her reputation as a relentless pursuer of justice and the person who has given women a voice in the international courts.

On the global political stage, Kofi Annan, Secretary General of the United Nations, is presented to viewers as a man whose job it is to juggle the concerns of the developing world with the demands of the most powerful nations. French businessman Jean-Marie Messier is examined in episode five of Profiles. The former chairman of the French media giant Vivendi Universal - who in July 2002 resigned from the troubled company as executives began attempts to salvage the giant - Messier was reported to have walked away with a $20 million compensation package as well as use of a New York apartment, worth an estimated $17.5 million.

Nobel Prize-winning scientist Sir Paul Nurse is the focus of another programme in the series. Talking about his scientific career he admits, "I could have gone into industry and been a multi-millionaire by now but I wanted to be at the cutting edge of research, helping to save lives without the constraint of the market."

The series concludes on 29 March.