Has Ghana's ‘Year of Return’ been a success?

As in many countries, obesity in Brazil is a major issue with one in four Brazilians now classified as obese and more than half the population overweight. But rather than focusing just on trying to lower this rate by promoting exercise and healthier ways of eating, campaigners and some city councils are successfully implementing changes, which accept that high rates of obesity are probably here to stay and society should adapt to this. These changes include schools buying bigger chairs and desks, hospitals buying bigger beds and MRI machines and theatres offering wider seats. Brazilian lawyers are starting to make legal challenges, particularly against discrimination in the workplace. Women are holding plus sized beauty contests to celebrate their larger bodies. Schools are hosting discussion clubs where they talk about how body shapes are perceived by their peers and wider society. Even so, campaigners say there is a long way to go for bigger bodies to be culturally accepted in Brazil and overcoming what is known as “gordofobia” – belittling or discriminating against people who are larger than average. Camilla Mota travels to the south-eastern coastal city of Vitoria to meet a plus size influencer and a lawyer campaigning to stop discrimination and trying to make the city more tolerant. She then flies 1500km north to another port city, Recife, where some changes have now taken place. Is this transformation away from the stereo-typical “body beautiful” only skin deep or the shape of things to come across the western world? Presenter: Camilla Mota Producer: Bob Howard

29 Dec 202226min

Ukrainians at home and abroad reflect on the turmoil of the past year as they prepare to mark Christmas.

24 Dec 202224min

To many, the passionate music and dance known as flamenco is an important marker of Spanish identity, and perhaps even synonymous with it. So much so, that Unesco has recognised the art form as part of the world’s Intangible Cultural Heritage. Yet its place within the country of its birth is both more complicated – and more precarious - than this might suggest.During the Covid lockdowns, a third of all flamenco venues closed down, and with many yet to reopen, training opportunities for new artists remain in short supply. The pandemic has also exacerbated the struggle of many singers and dancers to make ends meet. Meanwhile, to the outrage of purists, other practitioners see a future in fusing traditional flamenco with new, more commercially viable genres, such as pop and hip-hop. Still others see flamenco as a stereotype, and unhelpful to their country’s modern image.The BBC’s Madrid correspondent Guy Hedgecoe takes us on a colourful journey, reflecting on flamenco’s intriguing origins among the downtrodden folk culture of southern Spain, its difficult present, and its possibly uncertain future.Presenter: Guy Hedgecoe Producer: Mike Gallagher

22 Dec 202226min

In Sweden’s far north, indigenous Sami people say their traditional culture and way of life is being threatened by the country’s drive to develop carbon-cutting industries. In the Arctic town of Jokkmokk, a controversial new iron-ore mine has been given conditional approval in a reindeer herding area. Supporters of the project argue it is needed to extract materials to build a new green infrastructure in Sweden, and to create new jobs. But the mine is opposed by many Sami, including artist and music producer Maxida Märak. The BBC's Maddy Savage hears both sides of the debate.

20 Dec 202229min

For 90 years the BBC World Service has been broadcasting in dozens of languages to audiences so huge they are counted in the tens of millions all over the globe. World Service began transmitting on 19 December 1932. It was called the BBC Empire Service, speaking in slow English via crackly short-wave radio to a now-vanished Empire which then ruled a fifth of the globe. The Second World War saw radio services expand massively, broadcasting in more than 40 languages to listeners hungry for truth and facts they could trust. In every crisis and conflict since, individual voices out of the air have offered news, but also drama, music, education and sometimes hope to their audiences.In a special 90th anniversary programme, the broadcaster Nick Rankin, who worked for more than 20 years at the BBC, digs into a treasure trove of sound archive and talks to journalists who made and still make the BBC World Service such a remarkable network.

19 Dec 202249min

For thousands of years we have gazed up at the stars and wondered: is anybody out there? The idea of meeting aliens has been the inspiration for countless books and films; for art and music. But today, thinking about meeting life on, or from, other planets is no longer dismissed as pure make-believe - it is the focus of political consideration and cutting-edge space science. Farrah Jarral presents the story of the fantasy and the reality of preparing for first contact with extra-terrestrials.

17 Dec 202251min

The global economy is shrinking but our costs are rising, and as people around the world find things harder, many are deciding to go on strike for better pay and conditions. Around the world, we are seeing the likes of teachers, nurses, postal and transport workers taking industrial action. We bring together some of those workers to hear about their jobs and why they are taking to the picket lines.

17 Dec 202224min

Paks, a small Hungarian town on the bank of the River Danube has prospered from its nuclear power station, built by the Soviet Union in the mid-1980s. Hungary has prospered too. Paks provides some 40 per cent of the country’s power requirements. But the four reactors are now approaching the end of their lives and are slated for retirement in 2032; so, in 2014 agreement was reached with Russia to build two more, with the help of a Russian loan worth several billion Euros, Russian engineers, and a small army of Ukrainian welders. But the invasion of Ukraine by the Russian army in February 2022 has thrown these plans into disarray. Construction has begun, in the sense that bulldozers have been clearing the ground. But the project is already delayed, and there are those who believe that the new reactors will never be built. As Nick Thorpe discovers, people who thought they had a job for life in Paks are worried about their future and the future of a town whose lively shops and restaurants owe everything to the nuclear industry. Now the centre-piece of prime minister Viktor Orban’s energy empire, Paks may soon become the country’s rustbelt.

15 Dec 202226min