On a poor estate near Paris, a dedicated woman is not just a guide through the bureaucracy, but also a friend to those in need. Le Monde journalist Ariane Chemin reports

Serbia's post-war children are getting ready to cast their vote in the national elections this Sunday. Vanessa Able in Belgrade asks them which way the new generation is swinging

Behind the green-tinged rhetoric of George Bush, a survey of hundreds of scientists accuses the White House of bending scientific fact to suit itself, writes Dan Glaister

The calculations may add up between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, but reckless politics can still ruin the Democratic outcome, says New York Diarist Gary Younge

Feminist writer Julia Kristeva talks to Jean Birnbaum about why she is indebted to the 'founder of modern democracy', Jean Jacques Rousseau

Unemployment and growing inequality have fed the nation’s long-term pessimism, report Le Monde's Jean-Louis Andreani and Paul Benkimoun

There is a sense that the war in Iraq could be about to come to a close, says Washington Diarist Suzanne Goldenberg. Now it's just a question of waiting

Olivier Truc of Le Monde visits Södertälje, a town in Sweden that has become home to Middle Eastern Christians – and more recently Iraqi refugees

Now comes the real test for America as Barack Obama turns the nation's attention to the ethnicity question. Better to have it out in the open, says Ewen MacAskill

Ed Pilkington reflects on the current state of the US presidential race, and the impact that the bitter fight for the Democratic nomination might have on the final contest