US comedian Ellen DeGeneres and her wife, the former actress Portia de Rossi, met Rwanda's President Paul Kagame while on holiday in the East African country.

The trip saw the couple visit the Kigali Genocide Memorial site and present President Kagame with a shirt from DeGeneres' wildlife fund.

The couple are to build a gorilla conservation centre in Rwanda - one of the few countries where mountain gorillas are still found.

They also had time to pose with "Visit Rwanda" signs.

The slogan has generated some controversy in recent days over the government's sponsorship deal with Arsenal football club.

A South African student who spent more than $63,000 (£47,500) of $1.1m she received by mistake has appeared in court on a charge of theft.

Sibongile Mani, a 28-year-old accountancy student at Walter Sisulu University, was arrested by the police's serious commercial crime unit after she was asked to hand herself in, Anelisa Feni, spokeswoman for an elite police unit, the Hawks, told AFP news agency.

She qualified last year for $110 a month in food allowances from the government's National Students Financial Aid Scheme, which helps underprivileged students.

However, she was mistakenly transferred $1.1m in June and went on a spending spree, using $63,000 to party and to buy expensive clothes.

After the scheme detected the blunder three months later, it recovered the remainder of the money from her bank account.

Ms Mani was not asked to plead during her court appearance today.

She was released on warning and ordered to appear again on 2 July.

Ms Mani has gained some sympathy and criticism on Twitter:

The Malian migrant who scaled four floors to save a young boy in Paris has signed a contact for an internship with the fire service.

Mamoudou Gassama visited the Paris fire station in Champerret today.

According to Radio France Internationale, external, he signed a 10-month contract with the brigade.

It is apparently the first step towards becoming a trained firefighter.

"I'm going to do everything I can to get there," Mr Gassam said went he visited the fire station.

The 22-year-old endeared himself to the world when a video of him saving the young boy went viral.

French President Emmanuel Macron personally thanked him, gave him a medal for courage and said he would also be offered a role in the fire service.

Kalkidan Yibeltal
BBC Amharic Service, Addis Ababa

The British national freed by Ethiopia's government has said that his four years in jail was not much of a sacrifice.

Addressing several hundred of his supporters outside his family home in Ethiopia's capital, Addis Ababa, Andargachew 'Andy' Tsege said:

“I did not expect this much turn out. Four years in prison is not that much of a sacrifice. I’m meeting you first because I respect you. I haven’t yet met my father.”

A staunch opponent of the Ethiopian government, Mr Tsege was living in exile in the UK before he was seized during a stopover in Yemen and taken to Ethiopia nearly four years ago.

See earlier post for more details

Image source, AFP

Egyptian President Abdul Fattah al-Sisi will be sworn in for a second term on 2 June, state-owned Egpytian daily Al-Ahram newspaper reports.

Mr Sisi won a second term with 97% of the vote during the March presidential election.

His swearing in will be the first held in parliament since former ruler Hosni Mubarak began his fifth consecutive term in 2005, Al-Ahram reports.

It will be attended by religious leaders, ambassadors, lawmakers and media personalities.

Many saw March's election as a foregone conclusion, with Mr Sisi's sole opponent a little-known figure who had previously supported his re-election.

Mr Sisi's critics accuse him of being an authoritarian ruler who has crushed dissent. His allies say he has guaranteed stability in Egypt.

Image source, Kalkidan Yibeltal

A British citizen on death row in Ethiopia, Andargachew 'Andy' Tsege, has been freed, reports BBC Amharic's Kalkidan Yibeltal.

He is currently at his family's residence in the capital, Addis Ababa, where he is addressing a crowd, our reporter adds.

Image source, YEMI HAILEMARIAM

Mr Andargachew was seized nearly four years ago in Yemen and taken to Ethiopia.

The father of three was sentenced to death while in exile for plotting a coup - which he denied.

Mr Andargachew had been secretary-general of Ethiopia's banned Ginbot 7 movement.

The government announced earlier that he will be freed as part of efforts to promote reconciliation.

Read update: 'My sacrifice was not much'

Mercy Juma
BBC Africa, Nairobi

Once again, corruption is heading to the top of the political agenda in Kenya with nationwide demonstrations called for later this week to express public anger.

The $80m (£60m) missing from the National Youth Service (NYS) is the latest to hit the headlines and 20 people have now been formally arrested, including the director general Richard Ndubai.

It's the second corruption scandal to hit the youth service in under three years. Investigations into the first scam, worth $7m, went nowhere with all suspects were acquitted, except for one whose case drags on.

But speaking to the BBC, prosecutor Noordin Haji is determined that this latest prosecution will be successful. He is confident he has a watertight case:

The prosecutor will also be going for banks that were involved in the transactions.

Some did not follow the rules of the financial reporting centre or report suspicious activities like huge deposits and withdrawals made from some personal accounts.

Others before him have tried to break the cycle of corruption which is so deeply embedded in every level of society.

The public is watching to see whether this case will serve as a warning to others or whether it is intended distract the prosecutor from carrying out investigations involving bigger sums of money and more powerful individuals.

Kalkidan Yibeltal
BBC Amharic Service, Addis Ababa

The wait continues for the release of Ethiopia’s opposition figure Andargachew 'Andy' Tsege in his parents’ residence in the Bole neighbourhood of the capital, Addis Ababa

Fitsum Arega, the chief of staff to Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, tweeted that Mr Andargachew will be released today with more than 500 prisoners.

Mr Andargachew's younger sister Ayine Tsege told the BBC that she was denied the right to visit him in jail and has not seen him in four years.

"Only our 90-year-old father and our mother were allowed to visit him once a week," she said.

"I had never thought he’d be released until the new prime minister assumed power."

"I started seeing a glimmer of hope following the recent change in the country after Prime Minister Ahmed came to power," she added.

• Read more about him here

Will Ross
Africa editor, BBC World Service

The World Health Organization (WHO) says it is hoping to work with the government in the Democratic Republic of Congo to conduct trials using five experimental drugs in order to discover the most effective medicine to limit the spread of Ebola outbreaks.

The WHO says it is cautiously optimistic about the situation in DR Congo after vaccinating more than 800 of the 900 people who have come into contact with Ebola patients.

Twenty-five people are reported to have died during the current outbreak of the virus.

Catholic priest Father "Sweet Paul" raps his sermons at churches across Kenya.

However, not everyone is happy with his unconventional way of spreading the gospel.

Video journalist: Anthony Irungu

BBC World Service

Image source, AFP

The first court case brought by a commission investigating human rights abuses in Tunisia has opened in the city of Gabes.

Fourteen former officials, including ousted President Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali, are on trial in connection with the murder, in the early 1990s, of a member of the Islamist Ennahda movement.

The former president, who is exiled in Saudi Arabia, is being tried in absentia.

The Truth and Dignity Commission, set up after the Arab Spring uprisings, has received more than 60,000 allegations of human rights violations dating back to the late 1950s.

It has referred more than 30 cases of serious violations to Tunisian courts.

A plane belonging to German leisure airline Condor was forced to make an emergency landing in Kenya's coastal city of Mombasa after two crows flew into one of its engines, Kenya's Daily Nation newspaper reports, external.

The plane was flying to the Tanzanian island of Zanzibar when the incident happened. No-one was injured.

Bird strokes are increasingly affecting flights in Mombasa, the newspaper reports, pointing out that in October a Turkish Airlines flight was forced to make an emergency landing after a bird was sucked into one of its engines.

Rival Libyan factions have agreed to hold parliamentary and presidential elections on 10 December, Taher al-Sonni, an adviser to Libya's Prime Minister Fayez Seraj, has said.

The deal was struck in talks hosted by French President Emmanuel Macron in Paris.

The four parties at the talks had also agreed on "finalising a constitutional base for elections" by 16 September, Mr al-Sonni said.

In a tweet, Malta's Prime Minister Joseph Muscat, who attended the talks, welcomed the deal:

Image source, Reuters

A high-level policy conference, which is addressing ways tackle plastic pollution in Rwanda, decided to practice what it preached and refused to provide disposable plastic water bottles.

Delegates were instead provided glasses and jugs of water.

"The world is changing and we need to change with it. Refusing single-use plastic is possible if we work together," Vincent Biruta, Minister of Environment, told Rwanda's New Times newspaper.

"Why should one use a straw to drink juice in a glass? We should abandon such habits which contribute to plastic pollution in Rwanda."

Rwanda banned plastic bags in 2008. Rwandans can be fined, jailed or forced to make public confessions if caught with non-biodegradable polythene bags.

Mali's President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita has thrown his hat into the upcoming election, announcing that he will seek re-election in July's poll.

The 73-year old will face around a dozen challengers, including Hamadoun Toure, who runs the "Smart Africa" initiative to drive development on the continent via technology, and Modibo Kone, a rural development expert at the West African Development Bank, AFP reports.

The 29 July election has a second round planned for 12 August if no candidate gains an absolute majority of votes.

Elections have been postponed repeatedly since 2013, partly because of security concerns related to Islamist extremism.

Image source, Reuters

The governor of Kenya's central bank says some bankers may have ignored anti-money laundering laws in transfers involving the National Youth Service (NYS).

Patrick Njoroge said the bank was working with police in an investigation into the theft of nearly $100m (£75m) of public funds at the government agency.

The head of the agency, Richard Ndubai, was arrested on Monday on suspicion of involvement in the scandal and is expected to appear in court today, along with more than 50 others.

The NYS is at the forefront of President Uhuru Kenyatta's plans to combat youth unemployment.

Rwanda has defended its Arsenal sponsorship deal, which will see players sport ‘Visit Rwanda’ on their shirt sleeves, saying that it used tourism revenue to pay for the deal, not aid payments as alleged by the Daily Mail.

Speaking to BBC Radio 4, Clare Akamanzi, chief executive of the Rwanda Development Board, said the three-year deal was funded by "money that we directly generated from tourism".

She gave an example of how much the country makes through selling permits to see gorillas: "We sell 96 gorilla permits a day, each gorilla permit costs $1,500 (£1,300), that means we make more than $50 million a year."

She also said that what the country paid for the deal was less than the £30m claimed by the Daily Mail, external, but declined to reveal the figure.

The Daily Mail claimed the figure of £30m was almost half the amount the UK spends in aid in the country each year.

"First of all let me clarify the amount of money paid to Arsenal was less than what you mentioned," Ms Akamanzi said.

Ms Akamanzi added that Rwanda had reduced reliance on foreign aid from 80% of its budget a decade ago to 17% today.

"Rwanda has made choices to strive for self reliance and economic development and to not perpetually look at itself as an aid recipient.

"Our goal is to not to remain a poor country. In fact, Rwanda's per capital income has tripled over the last 15 years," she said.

This month, British singer FKA twigs and Nigerian TV host and vlogger Toke Makinwa both announced they'd had fibroids removed. Black women are around three times more likely to suffer from fibroids - so what are the symptoms? BBC Newsday spoke to Zainab Aminu, a Nigerian nurse who has suffered from fibroids.

BBC World Service

Image source, AFP

There are reports that at least 10 people have been beheaded by suspected Islamist militants in northern Mozambique.

An official in the Palma district of Cabo Delgado Province confirmed the incident but gave no details.

A group known locally as al-Shabab or al-Sunna started out as a religious organisation in 2015 but has carried out several attacks over the last year.

The group is believed to be making millions of dollars from selling timber and rubies.

The Mozambican authorities have closed down several mosques but have been reluctant to give details about jihadist attacks.

The family of a small boy dramatically rescued after dangling from a balcony in Paris have expressed their gratitude the Malian man who saved him.

"He's truly a hero," the boy's grandmother said of migrant Mamoudou Gassama, who scaled four floors to pluck the child from danger.

The four-year-old's father, who had left him in their flat and gone shopping, faces charges of failing to look after his child, reports say.

Mr Gassama is to be given citizenship.

President Emmanuel Macron personally thanked him, gave him a medal for courage and said he would also be offered a role in the fire service.

Read the full BBC story here