From Our Own Correspondent Folgen

In a week full of elections near and far, Mark Lowen says Sunday's vote in Greece could be the most critical of them all. Justin Rowlatt is in Kenya noting a huge turnaound in the global economy -- while Europe and the USA are feeling the pain, the rest of the world is steadily getting richer. Petroc Trelawney's been to find out why a new town in Ireland has houses and a new railway station, but very few people. Lucy Ash is camping out in the Russian Arctic and seeing how Vladimir Putin's push for further energy supplies is affecting reindeer and their herders And Alan Johnston, touring the celebrated sights of Rome, tells us there's one particular statue which casts a chill shadow -- even on the sunniest of Spring days.

The British soldiers in Afghanistan have lost faith in their mission, there are fields full of opium poppies and the Taliban are everywhere. Quentin Sommerville talks of the mood among the troops as they prepare at last to return home. After Charles Taylor, who'll next be taken to court to face charges relating to war crimes? Fiona Lloyd Davies has been in the Democratic Republic of Congo meeting one former rebel commander who is wanted for trial. Ian Pannell has been talking to an English scholar in Syria whose library was destroyed as the struggle continues between protestors and the security forces. What makes Kenyan athletes such fine distance runners? Claudia Hammond's been jogging through the Great Rift Valley learning some of the answers. and Stephen Sackur went to Cairo to report on how the people's uprising there was faring but instead found himself captivated by a revolutionary TV chef whose recipes are being lapped up throughout the Middle East!

Bahrain: Rupert Wingfield Hayes examines why all sides in the bitter conflict there feel the controversy surrounding this weekend's Grand Prix can work in their favour. France: It's an election which lacks a feel-good factor. Perhaps, Chris Morris feels, that's why all the campaigners are looking back, at a vision of a romantic, glorious French past. Kenya: Mary Harper's in a huge refugee camp, run on international money, and contrasts life there with that in an impoverished village not far away. India: His mother warned him against walking on ice, but Paul Howard finds it's the only way to visit a remote community high in the Himalayas. Germany: Great excitement at the start of the white asparagus season. Steve Evans finds the vegetable dominating menus and conversation. But surely it's not an aphrodisiac?