From Our Own Correspondent (R4 Edition) (Investigative)

A train journey through the new Europe, plus four more dispatches. Presented by Kate Adie.

In this programme, we ask what it means to be French. Plus the story of an ordinary Afghan murdered by the Taliban; suicide bombers choking the cultural life of Pakistan; swimming in the contradictions of Indian society; and why the power is out in oil-rich Chad.

Kate Adie presents global dispatches including one on what it means to be French.

Trick or treat? Gary Younge on what Halloween reveals about modern America; Lyse Doucet has a tale of two gardens as Dr Abdullah is reported on the verge of pulling out of the Afghan election; there's an account of fear and anti-aircraft guns in Guinea from Mark Doyle; William Horsley on the east Germans who think some aspects of life were better before the Wall came down and, in a Moscow skyscraper, tales of wartime courage from one of the Soviet Union's woman fighter pilots.

This week: Jim Muir in Baghdad explains why hundreds of thousands of Iraqi Christians have fled the country since the coalition invaded in 2003; in Washington DC Rajini Vaidyanathan considers the state of the US economy over a bowl of french fries in an historic diner; while much of the rest of the world faces recession Humphrey Hawksley discovers that there are jobs aplenty in Romania; Nick Nugent reveals why the people of the mountainous republic of Dagestan are missing out on the boom...

BBC foreign correspondents with the stories behind the world's headlines. Introduced by Kate Adie.