HARARE (Reuters) - Zimbabwe's public sector workers on Friday rejected a government offer to nearly double salaries for the lowest paid employees because it was not enough to cushion them against soaring prices, their union said.

NIAMEY (Reuters) - Niger will launch a new military offensive against Islamist militants after their latest attack on an army base killed at least 25 soldiers, the defence minister said on Friday.

GENEVA (Reuters) - Killings, rapes and other barbaric violence committed by an ethnic armed group in northeastern Democratic Republic of Congo against a rival group may amount to crimes against humanity and possibly even genocide, the United Nations said on Friday.

LONDON (Reuters) - Angolan billionaire and former first daughter Isabel Dos Santos decried a New Year's Eve court order to freeze her vast assets as a "witch hunt" engineered to weaken her father's influence and distract from economic failures.

NAIROBI (Reuters) - Swarms of desert locusts have spread from Ethiopia and Somalia into eastern and northern Kenya, posing a threat to food production and grazing land, its agriculture minister said on Friday.

GENEVA (Reuters) - Killings, rapes and other violence committed by an ethnic armed group in northeastern Democratic Republic of Congo against a rival group may amount to crimes against humanity and possibly even genocide, the United Nations said on Friday.

CAIRO (Reuters) - Sudanese Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok visited the rebel bastion of Kauda in the South Kordofan region's Nuba Mountains on Thursday, the first senior Khartoum official to travel there since clashes resumed in the area more than eight years ago.

ADDIS ABABA (Reuters) - Egypt, Ethiopia and Sudan remained deadlocked after two days of talks in their disputes over a giant hydropower dam on the Nile though Cairo said it hoped the issues would be resolved by Jan. 15 in line with a deadline agreed with Washington.

KINSHASA (Reuters) - Paulin Bolumbu thought his family lived a safe distance from the Congo River, but in November the water overran its banks by more than half a kilometre, inundating his corrugated iron house.

GOMA, Democratic Republic of Congo (Reuters) - A South African military plane crash-landed on Thursday at the Goma airport in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, a U.N. spokesman said.

NIAMEY (Reuters) - Suspected Islamist militants killed 25 soldiers and wounded six others in an attack on an army outpost in west Niger near its border with Mali on Thursday, the government said in a statement.

CAPE TOWN (Reuters) - South Sudan is launching a tender for a comprehensive environmental audit of all its oil-producing fields in a bid to reduce pollution following years of neglect, the government said on Friday.