From Our Own Correspondent

Will economics force the French to rethink their lifestyles? It's a question Christian Fraser in Paris answers in the week a million French people took to the streets to protest at the government's plans to raise the retirement age. On the anniversary of 9/11 Laura Trevelyan in New York's been talking to the Manhattan Muslims about the furore surrounding plans to build an Islamic cultural centre and mosque close to Ground Zero. Mark Tully visits a hill station -- it's the sort of place the British, back in colonial days, would go to escape the heat of summer. Today, it seems, they have a rather different character. Jane Beresford's in the fields of Sierra Leone finding out why women there welcome the sight of new tractors at their farms and Ella Fitzgerald sang of eating baloney at Coney. Today, as Antonia Quirke has discovered, the city has plans for the amusement district of Coney Island ... and not everyone's happy.

There's a dilemma for Jill McGivering, covering the floods in Pakistan; Gabriel Gatehouse in Baghdad on the changing lexicon as America redefines its mission in Iraq; Wyre Davies is in Jerusalem and detects little optimism for the Middle East peace talks which have restarted in Washington; James Reynolds is at the mine in the Atacama Desert where 33 miners are trapped far undergound and Andy Kershaw visits the arena in Kinshasa which was the site of the world's greatest boxing encounter.