THE WATCH LIST / INTERVIEW: Christopher Boucek / PREVIEW OF NATURE'S "BRAVING IRAQ" / THE EMPTY CHAMBER / IN PERSPECTIVE- A JON MEACHAM ESSAY / "OPPOSITE DAY"- A PIECE BY STEVE BRODNER

NEED TO KNOW for Friday, November 5th on PBS at 8:30 p.m. (check local listings). Episode #127. To find out about developing stories, visit www.pbs.org/needtoknow.  Need to Know is a production of Creative News Group for WNET.ORG. Viewers can visit www.pbs.org/needtoknow for updates on these stories and more. Note: Stories are subject to change due to breaking news.

THE WATCH LIST- "Terrorism" was virtually ignored as a policy discussion during the entire campaign season, but the Yemeni explosives found on two airliners bound for the U.S. remind us that we ignore the subject at our peril. With rare footage shot in Yemen with that troubled country's counter-terrorism forces, and a report from Afghanistan with American troops, Need to Know conducts an in-depth update.

INTERVIEW: Christopher Boucek- Christopher Boucek, an associate from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and co-editor of Yemen on the Brink talks with Alison Stewart about the plot to send bombs concealed in cargo packages from Yemen to the U.S., and why he believes that al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula is now the greatest single terrorist threat to the security of the United States. 

PREVIEW OF NATURE'S "BRAVING IRAQ"- We preview an excerpt of "Braving Iraq", a documentary produced by our colleagues at NATURE about efforts to recover the marshes of southern Iraq. The full documentary will air on Sunday, November 7th on PBS stations.

THE EMPTY CHAMBER- Once thought to be the greatest deliberative legislative body in the world, the United States Senate is now ensnared by obstructionism and partisanship. New Yorker reporter George Packer went to Washington to find out why. This is followed by Jon Meacham's interview with New Mexico Senator Tom Udall, a Democrat who intends to initiate an effort to get the rules changed, to clear the gridlock.

IN PERSPECTIVE- A JON MEACHAM ESSAY- In the wake of the midterm elections, Jon Meacham looks at the letters of the late New York Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, and compares the relatively interactive political environment he lived in to the collision of political extremities we find ourselves in today.

"OPPOSITE DAY"- A PIECE BY STEVE BRODNER