From Our Own Correspondent - 23/10/2010

France is enduring an autumn of discontent. The country's powerful unions are at war with the government. It's determined to postpone the age of retirement from sixty, to sixty two. And in the finest French tradition, protesting workers have been taking to the streets all across the country. Even the Eiffel Tower was closed by a strike. Matthew Price reflects now on a dispute that raises big questions about the future of French society. It's hard to think of any state more secretive and isolated than North Korea. It's very difficult to get permission to visit and even harder for its citizens to leave. We always have a sense this being a nation shut away, closed to the wider world. But surprisingly, it does maintain a foothold in neighbouring Japan. As Roland Buerk explains, there are corners of the education system there that have a distinctly North Korean feel. Just lately there's been some better news from the front lines in the battle against AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa. The UN says that in recent years the number of new HIV infections fell by more than a quarter in many countries. And nowhere's shown more determination to fight the disease than Uganda. There's been a huge, sustained effort to make people there aware of the danger. And as Anna Cavell has been finding out, Ugandans have got used to confronting even the most sensitive issues with extraordinary frankness. Right now the Arctic winter is closing in on northern Canada. Soon the sea will freeze and polar bears will go loping out across the ice. Ships won't be able to get through to the ports scattered along the shores of the Hudson Bay until the middle of next year. But at the moment the sea lanes are still open, and Rajesh Mirchandani boarded a vessel on a supply run bound for the north. The Catholic Church in Ireland is passing through one of the worst times it's ever known. It's been rocked by clerical child abuse scandals. Attendance at Mass has been falling for years. And Ireland's seminaries are training fewer and fewer priests. But at least one area of religious life seems to be prospering. Out in the countryside, following in the footsteps of St Patrick. Christine Finn found a growing market in what's been called "spiritual tourism".