An Israeli official said that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has appointed a close confidant to lead negotiations for the second stage of the ceasefire with Hamas.

The official says that Cabinet Minister Ron Dermer will head the Israeli team. Previous talks have been led by the heads of the Mossad and Shin Bet security agencies.

U.S. tech giants have quietly empowered Israel to track and kill many more alleged militants more quickly in Gaza and Lebanon through a sharp spike in artificial intelligence and computing services. But the number of civilians killed has also soared, along with fears that these tools are contributing to the deaths of innocent people.

Militaries have for years hired private companies to build custom autonomous weapons. However, Israel's recent wars mark a leading instance in which commercial AI models made in the United States have been used in active warfare, despite concerns that they were not originally developed to help decide who lives and who dies.

At least nine people have died in the most recent round of harsh weather to pummel the U.S., including eight people in Kentucky who died as creeks swelled from heavy rain and water covered roads.

Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear said Sunday that hundreds of people stranded by flooding had to be rescued. President Donald Trump approved the state's request for a disaster declaration, authorizing the Federal Emergency Management Agency to coordinate relief efforts throughout the state.

Coach Carlo Ancelotti is not buying Manchester City rival Pep Guardiola's suggestion that his own side has only a 1% chance of eliminating Real Madrid in the Champions League playoffs on Wednesday.

Madrid rallied late to win the first leg 3-2 last week in England to seize control ahead of its home match at the Santiago Bernabeu Stadium.

Wall Street is flirting with a record again as U.S. stock indexes creep higher on Tuesday.

The S&P 500 was up 0.1% in early trading and just above its all-time closing high set last month. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 59 points, or 0.2%, as of 9:35 a.m. Eastern time, and the Nasdaq composite was 0.3% higher.

Lebanese troops deployed Tuesday in the main square of the southern border town of Kfar Kila, as a military bulldozer removed rubble from the street.

A ceasefire in Gaza was in doubt as the region marked 500 days of Israel's war with Hamas, while Israel and the United States sent conflicting signals over whether they want the truce to continue. Talks on the ceasefire's second phase are yet to start.

500 days of war in Gaza

The top diplomats from Russia and the U.S. met Tuesday in Saudi Arabia to discuss improving ties and negotiating an end to the war in Ukraine — talks that represented a rapid and major change in American foreign policy under President Donald Trump.

No Ukrainian officials were present at the meeting, which came as the beleaguered country is slowly but steadily losing ground against more numerous Russian troops in a grinding war that began nearly three years ago. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said his country won't accept any outcome from this week's talks if Kyiv doesn't take part. European allies have also expressed concerns they are being sidelined.

Israelis have marked 500 days of war in Gaza with protests demanding further progress on a ceasefire so all remaining hostages can be returned.

People demonstrated in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem on Monday as less than two weeks remain in the ceasefire's current phase. Talks on the more difficult second phase are yet to start. Over 70 hostages remain in Gaza, around half thought to be dead.

Israeli forces withdrew from border villages in southern Lebanon on Tuesday, under a deadline spelled out in a U.S.-brokered ceasefire agreement that ended the latest Israel-Hezbollah war.

The Israeli troops, however, have remained in five strategic overlook points inside Lebanon — a sore point with Lebanese officials and the militant Hezbollah group, who have maintained that Israel is required to make a full withdrawal by Tuesday.