From Our Own Correspondent Folgen

Anonymous contacts. Secret meetings. Men in raincoats. Gabriel Gatehouse reveals what it can take to bring a story on collusion to light. In Bulgaria, Colin Freeman assesses the economic importance of the Kalashnikov AK47 assault rifle. More than 150 years after slavery officially ended in the US, Juliet Rix has a chance encounter in South Carolina that suggests the past is remarkably present. In the wetlands of southern Iraq Leon McCarron meets some of the people known as the Marsh Arabs. In the 1980s their homeland was a frontline in the Iran-Iraq war; in the 1990s Saddam Hussein unleashed fighter jets to destroy their settlements. Now they face another threat - there's still not enough clean water. And in Italy, Dany Mitzman tries to make the best of a dreaded family day out...at a football match.

As states restrict abortion rights and hundreds of pro-choice protests take place across the US, Laura Trevelyan assesses the country's widening cultural divisions and asks what might happen next. In the Lebanese city of Tripoli, where there have been community divisions for a generation, Bob Howard visits a neighbourhood café with reconciliation on the menu. In Peru illegal gold mining has become big business. Laurence Blair reports on the lawless camps that have emerged and asks what can be done to stop the environmental damage being done to the Amazonian jungle. Amelia Martyn-Hemphill meets Mechai Viravaidya also known as "the Condom King" in Bangkok's red light district. He's using coloured balloons and jokey humour to limit the spread of sexually transmitted diseases in Thailand. And in Ghana Emma Thomson enjoys a royal spectacle as the King and the history of Asante people are celebrated.

In the latest programme of the monthly series, Mishal Husain introduces dispatches from journalists and writers around the United Kingdom that reflect the range of contemporary life in the country. Martin Vennard in Saltburn reveals how surfing has improbably helped revive the fortunes of the once-proud Victorian resort on Tees-side; while Travis Elborough taps a surf music beat in Worthing where a 50 year-old musical phenomenon is garnering new fans. Baby boomer Martin Gurdon, recently bereaved in late middle-age, explains how saying his final goodbye to an elderly parent was both something greater longevity had prepared him for and yet - at least initially - still left him disoriented. Emma Levine in Barnsley reports on how a strange football match saw differing contemporary Yorkshire identities on display off the pitch. And Athar Ahmad prepares to go on a solitary spiritual quest in the final days of the Islamic holy month of Ramadan. Producer: Simon Coates