South Africa detects new coronavirus variant, C.1.2

Thousands have been displaced and scores are missing in what is considered to be one of the worst natural disasters on record. South Africa's weather service is warning of even more heavy rains.

The death toll from South Africa's unprecedented floods has risen to nearly 400. Police army and volunteers have widened the search, and the dozens of people still missing after the storm that devastated Durban over the weekend. In Senegal, citizens express their anger at the failures of the healthcare system after a pregnant woman died in hospital. And in South Sudan, the World Food Programme warns that millions are on the brink of hunger.

Thousands of troops have been deployed to South Africa's flood-ravaged KwaZulu-Natal province where residents are still searching for the missing more than a week after torrential rains began.

South Africa is grappling with one of the biggest natural disasters in the country's history. Floods killed more than 400 people and destroyed thousands of homes.

Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky has held a phone call with South Africa's Cyril Ramaphosa about the war in Ukraine, but Pretoria has still stopped short of condemning the Russian invasion. Also, Nairobi says it will host talks between the Congolese government and rebels that have been terrorising parts of eastern DR Congo. The announcement comes after leaders from across East Africa met in Kenya to discuss the crisis. Plus, our correspondents report on how park rangers in Burkina Faso are facing the twin threat of poachers and jihadists.

Helicopters and sniffer dogs joined search and rescue teams on the ground, looking for bodies after heavy rains caused flooding , close to Durban in South Africa on Tuesday

The WHO chief has urged countries to ramp up testing to accurately reflect global transmission trends. Meanwhile, Mexico said it is transitioning from pandemic to endemic.

Four Argentine friends will cycle 10,500 kilometres from South Africa to Qatar to support their country at the World Cup in November, an initiative that will also lead to 10,500 new trees being planted in their homeland.

While the official threshold for a COVID wave has not yet been reached, South Africa is facing a surge of infections driven by omicron sub-variants.

The latest installment in a scathing report into the presidency of former South African leader Jacob Zuma says that he played a critical role in the plunder of state entities. About 880 million euros worth of contracts for the Eskom power utility are thought to have been shadily awarded.

Cyril Ramaphosa was widely seen as the saving grace of South Africa's ruling ANC party when he became president in 2018. But his credibility with the working class and the poor is falling.

After struggling through the early years of the pandemic to get enough Covid 19 vaccinations, Africa's first factory to produce the doses says it may have to stop because it hasn't had enough orders. A former Congolese policemen gets a death sentence for murdereing a rights activist in 2010. And sanctions on Mali have hit Senegalese neighbouring towns. Within one month of the embargo exports to Mali have fallen by close to a quarter.