FOOC: BBC Radio 4, 11 September 2010




From Our Own Correspondent show

Summary: 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.