A Colombian peace campaigner and former senator, Piedad Cordoba, has left the country after receiving death threats. Ms Cordoba has negotiated the release of a number of hostages held by the left-wing rebel group, the Farc, but the Colombian government accused her of helping the rebels. Vanessa Buschschluter reports.

Piedad Cordoba is a

controversial

figure in Colombia, an

outspoken

advocate for peace talks with the country's left-wing rebel groups. She has in the past managed to convince the Farc to

unilaterally

release some of its hostages. But her negotiations with the rebels have also earned her sharp criticism, especially when she conducted some of them without the government's blessing, a move for which she was banned from public office for 18 years. It's not the first time she's been threatened, but her lawyer said this time she received information about an

imminent

plan to kill her.

The government of Zimbabwe has given foreign companies a 14-day

ultimatum

to submit plans for the transfer of majority stakes to local owners or risk losing their operating licences. State media said 13 companies - including the mining group Rio Tinto, British American Tobacco and foreign banks, such as Barclays and Standard Chartered - have been told to transfer 51% of their operations to local people.

World News from the BBC

Police in northern Nigeria say suspected members of a radical Islamist group have killed three policemen and a civilian. The men were watching television at the home of one of them when the gunmen burst in and opened fire. Police blame the attack on Boko Haram, a group responsible for killing security officers, local leaders and clerics in northern Nigeria.