Ocean heat hit a record high in 2018, the United Nations said Thursday, raising urgent new concerns about the threat global warming is posing to marine life.

Germany recorded its warmest year in 2018, a period also marked by a drought lasting months, the country's DWD weather service said Tuesday.

"It was very scary, we were running in all direction, the water was full of snakes," recalls 39-year-old Otelea Jose after arriving from one of the areas worst hit by southern Africa's deadly cyclone.

Disease is threatening to aggravate the already dire conditions facing millions of survivors following the powerful tropical cyclone which ravaged southern Africa 10 days ago, officials warned on Sunday.

A "very destructive" category 4 cyclone slammed into Australia's remote northern coast on Saturday, while a second, equally powerful storm bore down on the country's west.

Cyclone Trevor, pushing a big storm tide and packing winds of up to 250 kilometres per hour (150 mph), made landfall on the sparsely populated Northern Territory coast near the Gulf of Carpentaria town of Port McArthur, the Bureau of Meteorology reported.

The Missouri River floodwater surging on to the air base housing the U.S. military's Strategic Command overwhelmed round-the-clock sandbagging by airmen and others. They had to scramble to save sensitive equipment, munitions and dozens of aircraft.

Days into the flooding, muddy water was still lapping at almost 80 flooded buildings at Nebraska's Offutt Air Force Base, some inundated by up to 7 feet (2.1 meters) of water. Piles of waterlogged corn cobs, husks and stalks lay heaped everywhere that the water had receded, swept onto the base from surrounding fields.

A cyclone that ravaged three southern African countries last week has killed at least 350 people, affected more than 1.7 million others and left 15,000 people still stranded by floods, according to estimates Thursday.

The United Nations said Wednesday it will be seeking a "large" amount of funding from member-states to help deal with the aftermath of Tropical Cyclone Idai.

A Thai tycoon accused of killing a black leopard was sentenced to 16 months in jail on other poaching-related charges Tuesday but allowed to go free pending an appeal, in a case that has caused an outcry in a country fed up with impunity for powerful figures.

A starving whale with 40 kilos (88 pounds) of plastic trash in its stomach has died after being washed ashore in the Philippines, activists said Monday, calling it one of the worst cases of poisoning they have seen.