The worst floods in a century in the Indian state of Kerala have killed 164 people and forced more than 200,000 into relief camps, officials said on Friday, with more misery expected as heavy rain pushed water levels higher.

A magnitude 6.6 offshore earthquake struck the Indonesian archipelago late on Friday, the U.S. Geological Survey said.

Militia violence in Democratic Republic of Congo has prevented aid workers from reaching some potential cases in an outbreak of Ebola that has so far killed 44 people, the World Health Organization said on Friday.

Bayer said on Friday that a German media report this week that U.S. farmers were suing its Monsanto unit over crop damage caused by weedkiller dicamba does not represent a new development.

For decades the Nairobi River has been besieged by the construction of buildings teetering perilously over its banks, bringing pollution, blockages and floods to the waterway that runs through the capital.

Russia has reported an outbreak of the highly pathogenic H5N2 bird flu virus on a farm in the Kostromskaya region in the west of the country, the World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE) said, citing a report from Russia's Agriculture Ministry.

A helicopter pilot died on Friday when his aircraft crashed while waterbombing rare winter bushfires in Australia that have swept across its drought-stricken southeast, police said.

The drought sweeping through large tracts of Australia is set to intensify over the next three months and is fuelling unseasonal winter bushfires, the leading meteorological agency and a fire official said on Thursday.

America's two biggest independent seed sellers, Beck's Hybrids and Stine Seed, told Reuters they are pushing U.S. environmental regulators to bar farmers from spraying dicamba weed killer during upcoming summers in a potential blow to Bayer AG's Monsanto Co.

Tropical storm Bebinca weakened as it made landfall in northern Vietnam on Friday, flooding some villages in one province but there were no reports of major damage.