From Our Own Correspondent Folgen

Pauline Davies in the desert where nothing lives: the Atacama in Chile. But once thousands of miners lived here. Today ghost towns are all that remain. Andrew Harding on how the fears of those living in the Malian city of Timbuktu came to be realised when Islamist militants came to town and started to destroy their historic monuments. Could France be about to issue an apology to Algeria for the brutal events which led up to Algerian independence fifty years ago? Philip Sweeney wonders who exactly owes whom the apology? Of all the postings a correspondent might expect, one in the capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo Kinshasa was never going to be dull! Thomas Hubert looks back on his three and a half years there. And the dangers from Chernobyl have not come to an end yet. Patrick Evans says there's a real fear the summer heat could trigger radioactive wildfires with consequences which could be felt all over Europe.

Churches and mosques are being targetted by the Boko Haram militant group in Nigeria. Will Ross has been to the northern city of Jos, a city he says feels like it's under seige. The Europe-wide debt crisis is increasingly being felt in Italy, where both prices and unemployment are soaring. Alan Johnston's in a suburb of Rome, hearing that people have begun to feel the pinch. It's fifty years now since Algerians won their battle for independence from France. Chloe Arnold in Algiers has been meeting a woman who feels she did her bit to liberate the country. Jim Carey's in Jordan, a kingdom which prefers hospitality to headlines and has a policy of being nice to everybody. And is conformism really a feature of the French psyche? It's a question which has been troubling Hugh Schofield on his morning runs around the Luxembourg Gardens in Paris.

Ian Pannell tells us how the story of Robin Hood is proving popular with one of the Syrian rebel groups fighting to overthrow President Bashar al-Assad. Will Grant, on the campaign trail ahead of Sunday's election in Mexico, finds himself in what he describes as 'the most dangerous place I've ever been.' Hampi in India may once have been the heart of one of the biggest empires in Asia, but Anthony Denselow says it's increasingly drained of daily life. Damien McGuinness has been learning that pagan traditions emerge from the past - and the forest - when Latvians go out to celebrate midsummer. And Dany Mitzman reveals that at an Italian wedding food is more important than speeches - and confetti isn't something you throw, it's something you eat!