The Report

Medical emergency 999 calls are at an all-time high, with around 9 million calls a year, creating an unprecedented workload for ambulance paramedics around the UK. As a result, many are quitting their job in increasing numbers, burnt out and unable to keep up with the pace of work now demanded of them.

Adrian Goldberg investigates what's behind this growing demand for emergency medical assistance, and asks why the recruitment of emergency paramedics has not kept pace with pressure on the service. Serving staff as well as those who have quit their job reveal a target-driven culture which sees them sent from job to job to job, where a lunch break is seen as a luxury. The finger is also pointed at some members of the public, who dial 999 to demand an ambulance for trivial injuries and illnesses.

Senior managers working for ambulance service trusts around the country say there is no quick fix for this rising exodus of staff - especially now paramedic training requires a university degree course. This has led some trusts to look as far afield as Australia and New Zealand for new recruits to plug the gap.

The NHS is planning an enhanced role for paramedics where they will be required to treat more patients in the field, to ease the pressure on over-stretched A&E departments. But with staff retention and recruitment an on-going issue for several ambulance services around the country, will they be able to meet these new expectations and will new recruits burn out too?

Researcher: James Melley

Just over a year ago, the phone rang at the office of the Italian newspaper La Repubblica. A man asked to speak to Eugenio Scalfari, the paper's 90 year old founder and a prominent atheist. The caller was Pope Francis. And so began an unusual friendship, an unconventional piece of journalism and an unexpected glimpse into the character of a man who has taken the world stage by storm. Scalfari drew a picture of a "revolutionary" Pope, set on reforming Church bureaucracy, punishing paedophilia and re-examining priestly celibacy.

It's just one example of the style that has seen Pope Francis labelled the "cold-call Pope" - someone who has swapped the traditional, measured means of Papal communication for off the cuff statements and direct outreach to Catholics and non-Catholics alike. His informal approach has added to his mega-star popularity and fuelled hopes, and fears, about change in the Catholic Church.

For The Report, the BBC's Director of News and Current Affairs James Harding sets out to understand one of the world's most fascinating and charismatic leaders. How does Pope Francis really operate, does he herald a revolution in style or substance, and can his popularity survive in the face of such high expectations? As Church leaders gather in the Vatican for a Synod looking at how Church teaching concerning the family relates to the reality of modern life, The Report asks whether a "revolutionary" really has taken over at the Vatican.

The city of Stirling is situated in the heart of Scotland and has been described as the brooch the clasps together the Highlands and the Lowlands. It lies in Scotland's central belt, seen by many as the region that could decide the outcome of the referendum on independence. Sharmini Selvarajah spends the final days of the campaign in the city following local people as they make up their minds which way to cast their ballots. How did Stirling, in the centre of a country split down the middle on its future, decide whether to remain part of the UK or whether to leave the union?

Simon Cox asks why people want to have some results wiped from Google searches and investigates the effect of the recent 'right to be forgotten' ruling at the European Court of Justice. He speaks to those who have tried to have links removed and those who think this is just a charter for criminals to hide their pasts. He travels to Madrid to see Google's first Advisory Panel meeting as they try to gain clarity on the ruling and what it means for Google now and in the future.

Since April, police have recorded 218 racially motivated crimes in Belfast - at least one a day. Family homes have been attacked, a Ku Klux Klan flag has flown and apparently xenophobic slogans were seen on bonfires during the Eleventh Night celebrations in July. The Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) has even launched a special operation to tackle the problem.

But who is behind the apparent rise in racist incidents? Helen Grady heads to Belfast to investigate.

Why are racist incidents becoming more frequent? And why are they recorded more often in loyalist neighbourhoods?

In August, a man died after 35 Afghan Sikhs were found in a container at Tilbury docks, trying to enter the UK. The case shone a light on the lengths some Afghan Sikhs will go to as they seek to escape persecution in their homeland.

Melanie Abbott asks why they were so desperate to get to the UK and gets to know the community of which they were to become a part. In Southall, she finds a thriving community of Afghan Sikhs and learns about how it absorbs new arrivals. She also hears from lawyers and academics about the plight of Sikhs in Afghanistan and the challenges in claiming asylum in Britain. And she meets a lorry driver in Dover to hear how and his colleagues are facing an ever harder task to prevent immigrants from entering the UK as stowaways on their vehicles.

Who will win the book wars between the world's largest publishers and Amazon, the comprehensive online retailer? Adam Fleming reports on the latest - and potentially epoch-making - chapter in the book wars.

The big French publishing house Hachette is locked in a battle with Amazon in the US over the price of Ebooks. Amazon alleges the prices which publishers, including Hachette, charge for these titles are too high. In support of its campaign to lower them, Amazon has made purchases on its website of books by authors who are published by Hachette - including such well-known writers as Ian Rankin - slower and more expensive. In return, publishers are threatening to withhold books by popular authors from the online retailer. This endangers Amazon's claim always to stock the book readers want.

Adam Fleming asks why this row has flared up now and who will win it. Where do authors and readers stand in this battle between corporate giants and what do they stand to win and lose? He also explores the radical changes that are taking place elsewhere in the publishing industry - such as self-publishing - in which Amazon is itself involved - and independent funding of books. How will these changes affect all those who write, publish, buy and read books.

Among those contributing to the programme are the writers Germaine Greer and Alexander McCall Smith, the children's author Linda Strachan and award-winning self-published writer Al Brookes. We also hear from Ben Edelman, an expert on what Amazon has to lose, and Brad Stone on what it - and its publishing counterparts - stand to gain.

Surrogacy in the UK is based on trust rather than a legally enforceable contract between surrogate and intended parents. Catrin Nye asks if the system is sustainable.

Children's fitness classes, a website to encourage volunteers and an Olympics legacy programme are three projects given millions of pounds of public money - yet failed to deliver. And they were projects chosen by an organisation set up specifically to lead David Cameron's Big Society initiative. Reporter Simon Cox looks at what went wrong and asks whether the Big Society is still going strong, in spite of, not because of the government's involvement.

It was a death in Britain like no other seen in living memory.

The gaunt and agonised face of the former Russian security service officer, Alexander Litvinenko, stared out of television screens and newspaper front pages in November 2006 as his painful end approached in London's University College Hospital. His poisoning by a radioactive isotope was a bizarre death. It baffled the experts and transfixed a horrified nation.

Nearly eight years on from his death, Litvinenko's relatives - as well as lawyers, scientists, diplomats, politicians and the public at large - are still waiting to find out how this British citizen met his end in such an alarming and public way. After patient but unyielding pressure from his widow, Marina, and a High Court ruling earlier this year, the Home Secretary finally accepted in July that the inquest into the death needed to be replaced with a public inquiry. Under the senior judge, Sir Robert Owen, it will probe aspects of the case which the inquest was unable to scrutinise.

Peter Marshall reported on the Litvinenko story as it first unfolded. Now, he speaks to Marina Litvinenko about the questions she thinks should lie at the centre of Sir Robert's inquiry and what she wants it to achieve. He also speaks to lawyers, scientific and security experts about the unusual life and death of the former security officer in Russia's FSB - the successor body to the Soviet-era KGB.

Marshall discovers how far Alexander Litvinenko's decision to flee to Britain, the special work he undertook and the enemies he had all affected how he died. And he questions how far the Russian state and its president, Vladimir Putin - already under pressure over Ukraine and the downing of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 - should be under examination too.