10/11/2012

Available for over a year

A fresh look at the week's global news from across the World Service's 27 language sections, with David Amanor. 24 HOUR PARTY (CONGRESS) PEOPLE China's Communist Party Congress is in full swing. The Great Hall of the People in Beijing is playing host to the biggest gathering of Chinese politicos for a decade, but what is remarkable about the event - which will culminate in a brand new leader for the country - is the extraordinary lack of information about what exactly goes on behind closed doors. The world's journalists have flocked to Beijing but sadly not the Chinese Service who've been denied visas. So, how do they cover their country's biggest political event when they're not even there? Yuwen Wu and Weilang Nei and explain the difficulties and why they're barred from Beijing. ONLINE GREATEST HITS BBC Brasil's Thomas Pappon gives the lowdown on the big-hitting stories across the World Service language sites this week - including chocolate bodices, butter statues and a Mexican organ grinder. AN ODE TO EGYPTIAN FOOTBALL Egypt has a love affair with football. They're the African record holders, seven times winners in the continent's cup. But at the moment, that's all they have - their domestic league has been postponed indefinitely following the stadium riots in Port Said which left 74 people dead. BBC Arabic's Akram Shaban, a lifelong fan of Cairo-based club Zamalek, and Marwa Nasser explain why football matters so much to Egyptians. WHEN BBC HINDI MET THE "KINKY COLLECTIVE" When Divya Arya from BBC Hindi went out to buy her own copy of the erotic novel Fifty Shades of Grey, she was amazed to find that none of her local shops had any left - the book was such a hit in India that the shelves were left empty. Shortly before that, Divya had been at a play which depicted some pretty eye-popping dominant sexual role-play - all of which got her thinking - is sex in India changing? She set off on a mission to understand why. (Image: Hostesses outside Beijing's Party Congress. Credit: AP)