The deputy leader of the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah has said the only sure path to a cease-fire on the Lebanon-Israel border is a full cease-fire in Gaza.

"If there is a cease-fire in Gaza, we will stop without any discussion," Hezbollah's deputy leader, Sheikh Naim Qassem, said Tuesday in an interview with The Associated Press at the group's political office in Beirut's southern suburbs.

A powerful storm has swept through countries in the western Balkans after several days of sizzling temperatures, killing two people and damaging houses, pulling out trees and flooding streets, officials said on Tuesday.

Heavy rain, hail and strong winds tore through Slovenia on Monday before pushing east to pummel Croatia, Bosnia, Serbia and finally Montenegro on Tuesday morning. The storm sent temperatures plummeting in just several hours.

Victims of Hamas' Oct. 7 attack on Israel sued Iran, Syria and North Korea, saying their governments supplied the militants with money, weapons and know-how needed to carry out the assault that precipitated Israel's ongoing war in Gaza.

The lawsuit, filed in federal court in New York, seeks at least $4 billion in damages for "a coordination of extrajudicial killings, hostage takings, and related horrors for which the defendants provided material support and resources."

More than half of households in Yemen are not eating enough due to poor economic conditions and a months-long pause in food assistance to millions of people in the rebel-held north, the United Nations food agency said.

The World Food Program update said "severe food deprivation" has reached the highest it's ever seen in parts of northern Yemen including Al Jawf, Al Badya, Hajjah, Amran, and Al Hodeidah. WFP stopped food assistance to the north in December, citing limited funding and the lack of agreement with the rebel authorities on downscaling the program.

The U.N. weather agency said Tuesday that Tropical Cyclone Freddy, a deadly Indian Ocean storm that lashed eastern Africa last year, was confirmed to be the longest-lasting cyclone ever recorded at 36 days.

Freddy topped the previous record held by Hurricane John, which struck Hawaii and lasted almost 30 days in the northern Pacific three decades ago, the World Meteorological Organization said as it released a study which began as Freddy waned in March last year.

Floods and landslides triggered by heavy rains have killed at least 16 people over the last two weeks in India's northeast, where more than 300,000 have been displaced from their submerged homes, authorities said on Tuesday.

The Indian army and air force have been assisting with rescue efforts in Assam, one of the worst-hit states, where a military helicopter flew early Tuesday morning 13 fishermen to safety after being stranded for four days on a small island on the Brahmaputra, one of Asia's largest rivers, officials said.

Weather forecasters warned that much of New Mexico faces two more days of elevated threats of dangerous flooding like the walls of water over the weekend that caused severe damage, forced the rescues of 100 people and left parts of one town recently ravaged by wildfires covered in mud and debris.

The body of one person was recovered from the Rio Grande in Albuquerque on Sunday, but it wasn't immediately clear if the death was flood related, according to Albuquerque Fire Rescue and Bernalillo County Fire Rescue. The death remained under investigation and no other details had been released.

Over 20 years ago, Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei stood before a crowd at Friday prayers to denounce the United States for its disenchanted electorate.

"It is disgraceful for a nation to have a 35% or 40% voter turnout, as happens in some of the nations that you see having presidential elections," Khamenei said in 2001. "It is obvious that their people do not trust their political system, that they do not care about it and that they have no hope."

A United Nations-led meeting held in Qatar with the Taliban on increasing engagement with Afghanistan does not translate into a recognition of their government, a U.N. official said.

The gathering on Sunday and Monday in Qatar's capital of Doha with envoys from some two dozen countries was the first time that representatives of the Afghan Taliban administration attended such a U.N.-sponsored meeting.

President Joe Biden had the kind of weekend on which history pivots — trying to stabilize his campaign after a disastrous and demoralizing debate against former President Donald Trump, then gathering with family as previously planned at a secluded mountain retreat where they discussed the path forward.

The 81-year-old Democrat went into the Thursday night debate hoping to banish questions about his advanced age. But his meandering and at times incoherent answers only generated new fears that Democrats were stumbling toward a brutal loss in November's election and led to talk that he should bow out of the race.