Nigerian lawmakers have suspended a senator for six months, after she submitted a petition alleging she had been sexually harassed by the senate president.

Natasha Akpoti-Uduaghan first made the accusations against one of the country's top politicians, Godswill Akpabio in an interview last Friday.

After dismissing her petition on procedural grounds, the ethics committee recommended Uduaghan's suspension, saying she had brought ridicule to the upper chamber of the National Assembly.

Some senators argued that her suspension be cut to three months but a majority voted to stick with the six months suspension recommended by the ethics committee.

Women's rights activist Hadiza Ado told the BBC that Senator Uduaghan's suspension was a “sad day for Nigerian women".

Uduaghan afterwards described her suspension as "an injustice that will not be sustained".

She vowed to continue her "pursuit for justice" over her treatment.

The accusations have dominated discussions across Nigeria since she first made them nearly a week ago.

Many highly placed people and groups have called for a transparent investigation.

On Wednesday, two groups of protesters gathered at the assembly ground in the capital, Abuja - one backing Akpabio and the other in support of his colleague, chanting ''Akpabio must go.''

Mrs Ado, who founded the Women and Children Initiative, said: “We’ve been following events at the Assembly keenly and hoping that investigation into Natasha’s allegations would follow.”

“All we can say is that today is a sad day for Nigerian women fighting for emancipation. Out of 109 senators, only four are women and one is now suspended,” she said.

Many women on social media also expressed their anger over the suspension, with some calling it “oppression.”

During her suspension, Uduaghan will be barred from the National Assembly premises and her office will be locked.

Lesotho's government says it is shocked by US President Donald Trump saying that "nobody has ever heard of" the southern African nation.

Trump, addressing the US Congress in his first speech since his return to the Oval Office, made the reference as he listed cuts made to what he said was wasteful expenditure.

"Eight million dollars to promote LGBTQI+ in the African nation of Lesotho, which nobody has ever heard of," Trump said, eliciting laughter from some US lawmakers.

A spokesperson for Lesotho's foreign affairs department told the BBC that Lesotho enjoyed "warm and cordial" relations with the US.

Lesotho is one of the biggest beneficiaries of the US's African Growth and Opportunity Act (Agoa), which gives favourable trade access to some countries to promote their economic growth.

According to the US government, the two countries traded goods worth $240m (£187m) in 2024, mostly exports from Lesotho to the US, in particular textiles and clothing.

Lesotho's Foreign Affairs Minister Lejone Mpotjoane said it was "shocking" to hear a head of state "refer to another sovereign state in that manner".

"To my surprise, 'the country that nobody has heard of' is the country where the US has a permanent mission," Mpotjoane told the BBC.

"Lesotho is a member of the UN and of a number of other international bodies. And the US has an embassy here and [there are] a number of US organisations we've accommodated here in Maseru."

He later told the AFP news agency: "We are not taking this matter lightly," adding that they would send an official protest letter to Washington.

Officials dismissed Trump's remarks as "off the cuff" and a "political statement", adding that they were "uncalled-for" given the good relations between the two nations.

"We maintain very warm and cordial relations with the US. They've got a mission in Maseru and we also have [one] in Washington," foreign affairs spokesperson Kutloano Pheko told the BBC.

Mr Pheko was unable to confirm Trump's comments on the funding that went to LGBTQ organisations, saying that as the money went directly to them, they would be best placed to comment.

Mpotjoane, on his part, confirmed that the country had been affected by Trump's sudden decision to pause aid funding to countries around the world.

Many organisations, mostly non-governmental, were thrown into chaos after the Trump administration announced a permanent end to the US President's Emergency Plan for Aids Relief (Pepfar) funding as part of a wider cost-cutting drive to reduce US government spending.

Pepfar was launched in 2003 by then US President George W Bush and its finances are distributed via the US government's main overseas aid agency USAID, whose funding has also been cut.

Lesotho is among those countries that benefited from Pepfar, its health ministry told South African publication GroundUp in February, with TB and HIV programmes among those receiving the critical funds.

But Mpotjoane declined to criticise this decision, saying it was the US's "prerogative to cut aid if they want to".

The UK government has said it will not send further payments to Rwanda following the cancellation of the migrant deal between the two countries.

On Monday, Rwanda's government spokesperson Yolande Makolo said the UK had asked Rwanda to "quietly forgo" the remaining payment - reportedly amounting to £50m ($64m) - based on "trust and good faith".

However, Rwanda has now asked the UK to pay the remainder of the money it says it is owed, accusing the UK of breaching trust by suspending some aid to the country.

In a statement, a UK government spokesperson said that "no further payments in relation to this policy will be made and Rwanda has waived any additional payments".

The row over payments linked to the Rwanda scheme comes after the UK government announced it would halt bilateral aid to the east African country last month, except for "support to the poorest and most vulnerable".

The UK took the decision to cut aid after accusing the country of supporting M23, a rebel group that has captured swathes of eastern Democratic Republic of Congo in a deadly uprising.

The aid cuts have amounted to "unjustified punitive measures to coerce Rwanda into compromising our national security", Makolo said on Monday.

Rwanda has often denied backing the M23 rebel group, but has recently been more defensive, saying it has had to take measures to deal with the "existential threat" posed by genocidal militia near its borders.

UN experts have previously estimated that between 3,000 and 4,000 Rwandan troops are in eastern DR Congo.

Makolo said Rwanda would now be "following up" on outstanding payments relating to the migrant deal to which the UK was "legally bound".

The plan to deport some asylum seekers to Rwanda, devised by the previous Conservative government in 2022, cost the UK £240m ($310m) before being scrapped by Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer.

Speaking in July last year, shortly after being elected, Starmer said the plan was "dead and buried", arguing that the scheme had "never been a deterrent" and would only deport "less than 1%" of small boat arrivals.

In a statement, a UK government spokesperson said: "The Home Secretary has been clear that the costly Migration and Economic Development Partnership with Rwanda wasted tax-payer money and should not continue."

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie says the writer's block she experienced after becoming pregnant with her first child was "terrifying".

"It's a really frightening place to be, because writing is the thing that gives me meaning," the acclaimed Nigerian author, 47, tells the BBC's Emma Barnett.

"I'm not sure that it was just entirely physiological but something changed, and I just could not get back into that magical place where I can write fiction."

Adichie had her first child, a daughter, in 2016. Last year, she had twin boys, now 11 months old.

While she was pregnant, she had a "very foggy feeling" and "couldn't think as clearly," she says.

"I'm a person for whom thinking clearly is so important, and so to be in that kind of place emotionally is very frightening," she says.

Adichie is now releasing her first novel in more than a decade, Dream Count.

The book tells the story of four women navigating lives that aren't going to plan.

"I couldn't write for a while, and then I started writing again," she says.

Adichie is known for work that explores themes including feminism, gender and immigration. The novelist's 2012 Ted Talk We Should All Be Feminists helped push her to greater prominence, and was even sampled by Beyoncé on her 2013 song Flawless.

In a wide-ranging interview with the BBC, she speaks about topics including parenthood, grief and artificial intelligence (AI).

Adichie's beliefs about gender have led her to reflect on how she'd like to bring up her sons. "I'm determined to raise good men," she says.

"I want to raise my boys to be emotionally comfortable, to be in touch with emotion, to not be afraid of emotion, and also to not be afraid of fear," she continues.

Compared to girls, Adichie believes boys don't have many "wholesome" role models. "This space is just occupied by noxious characters and ideas," she says.

The writer adds that she wants her sons to be "the kind of boys that never start a fight but if you bring a fight to them, they will beat you up".

As well as having her three children, since writing her last novel, Adichie has also lost both of her parents.

"Grief recedes but only in waves and then, at some point, it comes back," she says.

Adichie was surprised by how physical grief felt. "Your heart really is very heavy, you feel as though your body is somehow no longer able to carry the weight of your heart," she says.

The novelist says that grieving for her mother, who died suddenly on her father's birthday in 2021, had a role in shaping her new novel.

When she started writing the book - after her mother died - "I did not think I was writing about my mother," she says. But when she had nearly finished, she reread the manuscript and realised there was "so much about mothers and daughters" in it, even though she hadn't been conscious of this while writing.

"I felt very strongly that, in some ways, my mother had opened the door for me to get back into this magical place that means that I can write fiction," Adichie says. "I kind of thought that she's comforting me, and it was actually deeply emotional for me to make that realisation."

As someone with a deep emotional connection to the creative process, it is perhaps unsurprising that when the conversation turns to AI, Adichie has a strong stance.

The author says that we should not refer to any written content produced by generative AI produces as stories and that the technology is going to make all of us, if we embrace it widely, "increasingly stupid".

She argues that AI could limit human creativity, something she says "we should never think that we can somehow replace".

Even using AI for tasks like summarising work emails can be damaging, she says.

"The ability to summarise is something that requires a certain level of creativity and imagination and intelligence, and it just seems to me that if you're ceding that to something else, what are we going to let our brains do for us?"

The army of the Democratic Republic of Congo has accused Rwanda of dressing up prisoners in military uniforms in an effort to pass them off as newly-captured rebels linked to the Rwandan genocide.

It comes after Rwanda-backed M23 rebels in eastern DR Congo said they had captured fighters from the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR) - a militia founded by ethnic Hutus who took part in the 1994 genocide against Rwanda's Tutsis.

But the DR Congo military said a video allegedly showing the handover of 20 FDLR rebels at a border crossing was "faked".

M23 fighters have been advancing through eastern DR Congo since January, seizing Bukavu and Goma, the biggest city in the region.

The fighting has forced about 500,000 people from their homes, worsening an already dire humanitarian crisis, according to the UN.

In its statement, the Congolese military said the Rwandan video was a "faked incident in poor taste orchestrated with the sole aim of discrediting our army".

It said Rwanda had taken old FDLR prisoners and dressed them in new military uniforms to claim they had been newly captured in Goma.

"This is part of the Rwandan strategy to justify the invasion of parts of the DRC's territory," it added.

Rwanda has used the presence of FDLR forces in eastern Congo to justify its support for the M23.

The country previously denied backing the M23, but it has also stressed that due to the FDLR presence in eastern Congo it has a right to take military action in eastern Congo.

UN experts have previously estimated that between 3,000 and 4,000 Rwandan troops are in eastern Congo.

UN experts also reported last year that the Congolese military had been using several armed groups, including the FDLR, as proxies in the fight against the M23.

The genocide in Rwanda took place over 100 days in 1994.

The ethnic Hutu militia involved in killing up to 800,000 people - the vast majority from the Tutsi community - fled to what is now DR Congo, some forming the FDLR.

Kagame, who headed the rebel Tutsi force that ended the killing more than three decades ago, sees this "genocidal militia" as an existential threat.

On Thursday, gunfire and explosions ripped through a rally held by rebel leaders in Bukavu, the second-biggest city in the east. Videos showed chaotic scenes with bodies on the streets after the crowd fled.

M23 rebels seized Bukavu from government forces last month following their rapid advance through the region.

The rally had earlier been addressed by Corneille Nangaa, the head of an alliance of rebel groups that includes the M23.

The rebels accused DR Congo President Felix Tshisekedi's government of orchestrating the attack. However, Tshisekedi blamed it on "a foreign army" that he said was operating in the east.

The African Union and the UN have called for a ceasefire and for the rebels to withdraw from areas they now control.