You're listening to a download from the BBC, this is from our own correspondent.

You can hear the version of the program we make for the BBC World Service by visiting our

site at BBC online.

But here's the latest edition broadcast on BBC Radio 4 and introduced by Kate Adi.

Today in Afghanistan the threat of violence is an everyday risk,

especially if you don't follow the social norms. But we hear of a visionary

headmaster who's daring to do just that. A spaceship of sorts has landed in the desert of

Niger with promises of black gold, but the locals need to read the small print.

We visit a graveyard in Jerusalem which provides its own insight into the momentous changes in the Middle East.

And it may have taken a year to arrive, and it's not very flattering,

so how come our man in Somalia is so happy with his new nickname?

It's rarely good news from Iraq.

In recent months, the levels of violence, of shootings and bombings

are running at the highest they've been for years.

Iraq's Prime Minister has blamed the surge in violence on a spillover from Syria, but his critics

have blamed his own policies for increasing the sectarian divide.

Mark Urban has just been to see for himself.

Filming can be a tense business in Baghdad these days. There are just too many people trying to stop you.

So I didn't mind when a major in the police started chatting away while we recorded street

scenes if that was the price of getting our shots done.

We never had this sectarian business before the Americans came, he told me, forcefully.

It's all their fault. This emphatic message was delivered within earshot of several of his colleagues.

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