Paul Williams attends an inter-generational conversation on ethics for the next century.

Ridha Driss, Chief Editor of the magazine al-Insan (Man), looks at Islam as a European phenomenon. He lives in France.

It was billed as a conference. It was more an experience.

Thousands of years ago, some of the earth's peoples developed societies which poured forth, displacing other peoples. Bryan Hamlin discovers that their success had more to do with beans than with brains.

The Right Revd Richard Chartres is the Bishop of London

'The Politics of Hope' by Jonathan Sacks: Jonathan Cape, 1997, £15.99

An international media forum in Sydney discusses the media's freedom of press versus responsibility to society.

Greater personal liberty does require greater individual responsibility, obeying one's conscience may help towards that.

Richard Ruffin is a former Rhodes Scholar. Since serving in the US Navy, including two years on the staff of the Secretary of Defense, he has been one of those responsible full-time for the programmes of Moral Re-Armament in the United States.

Commuters in Western cities are becoming inured to the sight of the young person huddled under a blanket in the railway station. He holds a cardboard notice: `Hungry, broke and homeless'. What can be done? Mike Lowe takes London as a case-study.