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Faranak Amidi presents global stories from the Fifth Floor, home to the BBC’s 40 Language Services

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The Fifth Floor: Carnival: A history of Brazil in samba

A Mangueira performer dances at the Rio de Janeiro Carnival (credit: Raphael Dias/Getty Images)

08/03/2019 GMT

Carnival: A history of Brazil in samba

BBC World Service - The Fifth Floor, Carnival: A history of Brazil in samba

Samba and Brazil’s forgotten heroes celebrated in the Rio Carnival

Brazil’s untold history in samba; Equatorial Guinean Korean; 'Yugoslav' basketball in the UAE; my martyred ancestor; unusual candidates in Thai election.  With David Amanor.

It's been carnival time in Brazil.  Julia Carneiro joined the festivities and profiled the Mangueira samba school as they told the unofficial history of Brazil in samba.  

Monica Marcias
Monica Marcias is the daughter of Equatorial Guinea's first president; she has African and Spanish roots but spent most of her childhood in North Korea.  She spoke to Myungjin Seo of BBC Korean about her memories, all in perfect Korean.

'Yugoslav' Basketball in the UAE 
There's an unlikely basketball team in Dubai.  Serbs, Bosnians and Croats from the former Yugoslavia, which fractured during a bloody war in the 1990s, today play together under the name 'Yugoslavia'.  BBC Serbian's Slobodan Maričić explains basketball and the Balkans. 

Killed for his faith: searching for a martyred ancestor
Not everyone has a saint in the family, but BBC Arabic’s Eli Melki soon might.  His ancestor Leonard Melki was a Capuchin monk in Turkey, and among the hundreds of thousands killed as the onset of the First World War fanned the flames of religious persecution in what was then the Ottoman Empire.  Eli retraced his journey.   

Thailand’s unconventional election candidates 
Elections in the Kingdom of Thailand are coming up, and although it seems likely the current military leader, and Prime Minister, Prayuth Chan-ocha, will return to power that doesn’t mean it’s been a boring campaign for BBC Thai, as Issariya Praithongyaem explains.  

Image: A Mangueira performer 
Credit: Raphael Dias/Getty Images

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