Lejone Mpotjoane says behaviour is unexpected from head of state, after Trump claimed ‘nobody has ever heard of’ the country

Lesotho was taken aback by US President Donald Trump’s mockery of the southern African nation, its foreign minister has said, vowing that the country was “not taking this matter lightly”.

Trump called Lesotho a country “nobody has ever heard of” as he defended his sweeping cuts in aid during an address to Congress on Tuesday. He singled out a past US aid project of “eight million dollars to promote LGBTQI+ in the African nation of Lesotho”.

Group claims regulator signed off on ‘broken system’ making customers pay for industry’s neglect

An environmental group is to take legal action against Ofwat, the water regulator, accusing it of unlawfully making customers pay for decades of neglect by the water industry.

River Action will file the legal claim this month, arguing that bill rises for customers that have been approved by the regulator could be used to fix infrastructure failures that should have been addressed years ago.

Survey reveals senior officials think changes will do little to address local authorities’ dire financial crisis

Ministers’ plans to shake up the structure of English local government by merging councils are “ill-thought-out”, “insane” and a “bizarre diversion” that will fail to deliver savings, according to a survey of town hall leaders.

The depth of unhappiness with the plans is revealed in an annual poll of senior councillors and executives, most of whom said the changes would be costly, time-consuming and do little to address the dire financial crisis facing councils.

Liverpool took a huge step towards the season’s end, thanks to one of the deep spirit animals of this team

Liverpool are fluid. Liverpool are polyvalent. Liverpool press and sit, then strike like jet fighters. Maybe they really are, as Luis Enrique enthused before this game, “a perfect team”. But sometimes, well, sometimes you just need a really good goalkeeper too.

Alisson wasn’t just good here in the conventional sense, bullocking around his area like a giant, yolk-coloured blur making game-saving blocks and dives. He was, as Liverpool defended desperately at times, triumphantly good. This was goalkeeping as an act of performance, goalkeeping as counter-aggression. You really believe you’re going to win this? How much, would you say?