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From Our Own Correspondent: Guns, boats and gold

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Getty_AK47.jpg

25/05/2019 GMT

Guns, boats and gold

BBC World Service - From Our Own Correspondent, Guns, boats and gold

How a Bulgarian factory made an icon of Soviet power a NATO export - and a global tool

Guns and roses in Kazanlak, a Bulgarian town which makes AK47 rifles. Plus stories from Iraq's marshes, the US courts' battles over abortion and a royal Asante festival in Ghana

Pascale Harter introduces stories of life and death from around the world. In this edition:

It's guns and roses for Colin Freeman as he visits Kazanlak, a Bulgarian town known for its petals and its weapons - most notably the AK47 rifles churned out by a local arms factory, whatever Russia may feel about its former ally now producing and exporting guns for foreign powers.

Laura Trevelyan explores why abortion politics are so high-stakes in the US - but also why they're so divisive. Even as five states, including Missouri, Alabama and Georgia, introduce laws which severely limit access to legal abortions, there's still a limit to how far the Trump administration will push a pro-life, anti-abortion agenda.

The southeastern marshes of Iraq, where the Tigris and Euphrates rivers converge, are one of the longest-settled places in the world, with layer upon layer of history. During the Saddam dictatorship, this fragile ecosystem, and its people, the Marsh Arabs, were bombarded, starved and deprived of water to root out rebels - but since 2003, some of its former life has trickled back in. Leon McCarron hears that all is not yet well in the place which some believe to have been the original Garden of Eden.

And Emma Thomson takes in a right royal spectacle in Kumasi, Ghana - as she witnesses all the pageantry of a festival celebrating the 20-year reign of the current King of the Asante people. 

Photo: AK47 rifle, bullet and magazine on display in Cedar City, Utah, on October 25, 2018. (George Frey/Getty Images)

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