Treetop girl invited to the US

An American university Howard University in Washington has invited a baby girl born in a tree during Mozambique's floods earlier this year, to visit the United States.

The baby, Rosita, and her mother, Sophia Pedro, are due to travel later this week on a fourteen-day sponsored visit.

The baby and her mother became instant celebrities when a television crew filmed their rescue by a South African helicopter shortly after the treetop birth on the first of March.

Meanwhile, South Africa's environment minister, Mohammed Valli Moosa, has told a conference on disaster management in Cape Town that Southern Africa needs a regional response to crises such as the widespread flooding of earlier this year. Hundreds of people died and tens of thousands lost their homes when cyclones swept across Mozambique and parts of South Africa and Zimbabwe in February and March.

From the newsroom of the BBC World Service