Who is Elon Musk, and what made him big?

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.

Elon Musk has promised big changes at Twitter, after the social media platform accepted his takeover bid worth $44 billion. But the acquisition has sparked concern about how Musk will balance a commitment to free speech with rules about moderating content, as well as questions about his links to China. Meanwhile, Musk's electric car company Tesla has been rebuffed by Indian officials, who say they won't import the brand's cars from China.

After buying Twitter for $44 billion, Elon Musk is promising to protect free speech and bring about much-needed changes, including taking on bots and introducing an edit button to the platform. We take a closer look at the billionaire Tesla founder. For more analysis on what changes the latter might bring to Twitter, we speak to Chris Bail, Director of the Polarization Lab at Duke University.

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.

In the World This Week, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres tries to negotiate humanitarian corridors in Ukraine while on a visit to Kyiv. French President Emmanuel Macron's re-election honeymoon period proves short-lived, with the focus quickly turning to June legislative elections. And Tesla founder Elon Musk makes a $44 million offer for social media platform Twitter.

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.

The egg-sized white diamond was sold for $21.75 million at Christie's in Geneva. It was billed as the largest of its kind to go under the hammer.

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. Also, a former Congolese policemen gets a death sentence for murdering human rights activist Floribert Chebeya in 2010. And sanctions on Mali have hit neighbouring towns in Senegal. Within one month of the embargo, exports to Mali have fallen by close to a quarter.

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