Cat Wiener
BBC World Service Newsroom

Image source, Vatican News

A Roman Catholic priest has been killed by armed gunmen at his parish in northern Nigeria, who then burned his rectory, in the village of Kafin Koro, Niger state, to the ground.

The body of Father Isaac Achi was found in the charred ruins of the building.

Another priest, Father Collins Omeh, was shot as he tried to escape the blaze and was later taken to hospital.

He told local reporters that Father Achi was shot dead by the gunmen, who he said were shouting jihadi slogans.

In a separate incident, a gang in the north-western state of Katsina kidnapped at least five people as they prepared for a church service.

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Learn about the journey of a river, the River Nile, hydropower and dams.

Why can't multinationals like KFC source their ingredients locally? A shortage of fries at KFC restaurants in Kenya has led many to call for a boycott of the chain after it transpired that the company imported all of its potatoes, despite them being abundantly grown in the country. Potatoes are Kenya's second-most consumed crop after maize, and are cultivated mostly by small-scale farmers. As Covid hits global supply chains and words like sustainability and climate gain greater importance, is it time for multinationals to start looking closer to home for their goods? Kathambi Kaaria is a climate change and sustainability advisor in Nairobi and comes from Meru, a potato growing region of Kenya. She told Tamasin Ford that when KFC arrived in the country eleven years ago she tried to supply them potatoes. Leonard Mudachi, the CEO of a Kenyan restaurant management company Branded Restaurants Africa Ltd, said he wasn’t surprised to learn that KFC imports its chips but does think that multinational companies should start scrutinizing how and where they get their produce from. John Quelch is the Dean of the Miami University Herbert Business School in the United States. He told Tamasin that the issue for a major international brand is the quality and consistency of locally sourced produce and that one mistake by one supplier can lead to a massive fallout for the companies.

(A boy looks at potatoes for sale in a market in the Kibera slum in Nairobi, Kenya; Credit: Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

Anglo American is testing a hydrogen-powered giant truck in a bid to make its business greener.

The Prime Minister's trip to Africa has spurred much debate on EU tariffs to the country and how this could change after Brexit. Twitter was set alight by an interview on the Today programme in which the presenter quoted some pretty high tariffs on African countries. The critics claimed that these tariffs were largely non-existent. So what's the truth? Tim Harford speaks to Soumaya Keynes, a trade specialist at The Economist.

It was also claimed that six fast-growing African countries could provide significant trade openings for the UK as it seeks to expand its trade relationships outside the EU. But how big are these African economies?

"No alcohol safe to drink, global study confirms" ran a recent BBC headline about a paper published in the Lancet journal. Professor Sir David Spiegelhalter tells Tim Harford why moderate drinkers should not be alarmed.

President Trump tweeted this eye-catching claim recently: "Over 90% approval rating for your all-time favorite (I hope) President within the Republican Party and 52% overall." That does sound impressively high. Tim Harford asks the BBC's senior North America reporter, Anthony Zurcher whether the figures are true.

What proportion of the UK's population are immigrants? What proportion of teenage girls give birth each year? Research suggests most people get the answer to these questions, and many others about everyday facts, very wrong. Tim Harford interviews Bobby Duffy, Global Director of Ipsos Social Research Institute and author of the book, "Perils of Perception: Why We're Wong About Nearly Everything", about our most common mistakenly-held beliefs and what they reveal about us.

Producer: Ruth Alexander.

When Mr Hammond's precious photo of a catfish is destroyed, Andy heads to Dragon's Breath Cave in Africa to track down a catfish and take a new picture. He meets a cheetah family and a leopard before taking the safari-mobile underwater to continue his quest. Will Andy succeed? And will he get back to Safari World before Mr Hammond notices?

When Andy leaves his sandwich in the lion enclosure, it attracts an infestation of flies, just as Mr Hammond is hoping to take pictures of the lions for the park's website. Andy jets off to Africa in his safari-mobile to see how lions in the wild deal with flies. Along the way, he meets an agama lizard who just might have the solution to Andy's predicament.

In recent years, our knowledge of life beneath the waves has been transformed. Using cutting-edge technology in this extended special we celebrate the highlights from the series. From the intense heat of the tropics to our planet's frozen poles, through to its unexplored depths, we reveal new worlds and extraordinary never-seen-before animal behaviours.

Starting in the tropical coral reefs - the most diverse ocean habitat - a tusk fish demonstrates a surprising level of ingenuity - tool use - as it uses corals as an anvil to break open clams. In the Seychelles, half a million terns nest on an island. Fledglings must eventually take to the wing, but danger lurks beneath the waves: metre-long giant trevally fish leap clear out of the water to snatch birds on the wing.

In the tropics sun heats the sea, creating rain, winds and huge storms that drive up towards higher latitudes. Here the seas change with the seasons. In spring thousands of mobula rays gather in Mexico's Sea of Cortez. At night, in a previously unseen event, tiny organisms that light up when disturbed react to their wingbeats, creating an enchanting bioluminescent firework display.

The seasonal seas are home to bountiful kelp forests. In the undersea forests of southern Africa, one resident - the common octopus- has become the ultimate escape artist. To outwit her nemesis, the pyjama shark, she uses ingenious tactics, never filmed before.

On the coast, two worlds collide. Where sea meets land, coasts are the most dynamic and challenging habitats in the ocean. The ever-changing tides create rock pools. But these temporary worlds are a battleground. Predatory starfish turn a magical garden into the stuff of nightmares.

The big blue is the world's greatest wilderness - it's a vast marine desert where there is little to eat and nowhere to hide. Sometimes there is a brief explosion of food in this marine desert, but ocean hunters must be fast to make the best of this bonanza. We witness super-pods of up to five thousand spinner dolphins racing to herd vast shoals of lanternfish, briefly caught at the surface where it is thought they spawn. New aerial footage reveals, for the first time, the spectacular feeding frenzy of 90kg tuna and dolphins smashing through the lantern fish shoals turning the sea white with foam.

The deep is perhaps the most hostile environment on Earth, at least to us - a world of crushing pressure, brutal cold and utter darkness. We have barely begun to explore it and yet it is the largest living space on our blue planet, home to strange worlds like methane volcanoes and undersea lakes of salty brine. But life adapts in ingenious ways, like the sea toad - a fish that walks instead of swims. And barrel-eye - a deep sea fish with a translucent skull so that it can see through the top of its head to make the most of any glimmer of light.

The deep is more closely connected to our own world than we ever thought possible due to giant ocean currents. We join these ocean currents as they begin their lives in Antarctica and flow from the poles to the tropics and back again, linking every ocean. Ocean currents move heat around our planet and maintain a climate favourable for life. But our ocean system, in relative equilibrium for millennia, is changing at a worrying rate.

Deep in the polar north, we meet walrus mothers and their newborn calves, searching for an ice floe to rest on; but with rising temperatures, summer sea ice is retreating- their battles to survive are becoming ever harder. As we begin to understand the true complexity of the lives of our ocean creatures so do we recognise the fragility of their home.

Over the last year tens of thousands of people have been arrested in Egypt – many of them for belonging to the now outlawed Muslim Brotherhood - but some for simply protesting in the streets. The courts are now bursting at the seams. Human rights activists have accused the judicial system itself of breaking the law.

Claire Read has spent the last six months following the case of Yara, a young woman who works for a respected human rights organization. Yara was arrested by plain clothed policemen who accused her of taking part in an illegal protest. She denied this, saying she just happened to be in the vicinity, buying water from a kiosk.

As Claire follows Yara’s sometimes chaotic and confusing case, she tries to get to grips with how Egypt’s justice system operates under the new government of President Sisi.

Producer: John Murphy

Hamza Namira – Tesmahy Youssra El Hawary – Fil Sharea

(Photo: Egyptians protest on anniversary of 2011 uprising. Credit: European Photopress Agency)

Tim Whewell is one of the few foreign reporters who have made it to Tobruk, the last toehold of Libya’s elected authorities. Now Islamist-led militias have taken over much of the country. He reports for Assignment on why Libya’s on the verge of becoming a failed state, three years after an international campaign of airstrikes helped rebels overthrow Col Gaddafi.

Now, the conflict in Libya is becoming in part a proxy war between competing powers in the Middle East – and militant jihadis are taking advantage of the chaos to spread their influence. In Benghazi, there are daily assassinations of officials, journalists and activists – and in Derna, an hour’s drive from Tobruk, one jihadi group says the town has become part of the 'caliphate' declared by Islamic State militants in Syria and Iraq. Peace talks between the elected parliament in Tobruk and the Islamist-dominated rival authorities in the capital Tripoli, have so far made little progress – and there are now fears that in the long run extremists in Libya could pose an even greater threat to the rest of the world than those in Syria and Iraq.

Produced by Phil Kemp

(Photo: The Libyan Navy controls one section of the coast, but other parts are in the hands of Jihadis. BBC copyright)

In one remote district in Ivory Coast, men are going back to school. Their studies are part of a UN-backed project dubbed 'the school for husbands' and designed to save the lives of women and children.

The idea is to teach decision makers – the men – about the importance of family planning, check-ups, and pre-natal care for their wives. The aim is to help women and also improve general welfare in farming villages where food is scarce and incomes are dependent on the weather and good fortune.

Lucy Ash hears stories from the schools for husbands and finds out why Ivory Coast's health system is struggling to recover from the post-election crisis three years ago, even as the country's economy roars ahead.

Producer: Mike Wendling

(Image: Pupils from the School for Husbands in Sakassou – a village in the Savannah region of the Ivory Coast. They have just voted to clean their houses and to create a fund to send pregnant wives to hospital to give birth. BBC Copyright)

It is nearly three months since more than 200 schoolgirls were taken from their school in Chibok in northern Nigeria by the Islamist militant group Boko Haram. Since then, further abductions have been reported. So what is it like to live with the insurgency? Yalda Hakim reports using material gathered undercover from the city of Maiduguri, where residents feel caught between the unpredictable Islamist militant group and the Nigerian military, which is also accused of abuses.

Produced by Linda Pressly

Picture: A Nigerian teacher holds a sign reading 'Our girls must go to school' in a protest rally against the killing of 173 of their colleagues by the Islamist Boko Haram, Credit: AFP/Getty Images

Andy takes Kip on a wild adventure to see flamingos in Kenya. He dances with a million pink flamingos and then uses Kip's invention to surf across the mud so he can visit the tiny chicks in their nest.

Monty Don visits the world's 80 most inspiring gardens. At Cape Town's famous Kirstenbosch Botanic Gardens he sees the king protea, South Africa's national plant. In the Drakensberg Mountains he sees some native flora in its natural environment. His favourite garden is a school vegetable patch in Thembisa, one of Johannesburg's townships. Monty is intrigued by how gardening styles have changed here since the Dutch first settled in the 19th century.

Monty Don continues his extraordinary journey in the Mediterranean - the cradle of European civilization.

In Italy, Monty visits some of the elaborate high Renaissance gardens of stone and water which have hugely influenced western garden design. He also visits the remains of Emperor Hadrian's palatial retreat.

Monty then looks at the artistic achievements of the Moorish culture. He travels to Marrakesh, where he visits The Aguedal - one of the oldest continuously maintained gardens in the world; and in Spain he visits The Alhambra, thought by many to be the most perfect garden in the world.