Michigan Radio: The Associated Press

More than 300,000 children in the Horn of Africa are severely malnourished "and in imminent risk of dying" because of drought and famine, the head of the U.N. children's agency said Friday.

The United Nations says that tens of thousands of people have died in Somalia, Kenya, Ethiopia and Djibouti — and the organization warns that the famine hasn't peaked. More than 12 million people in the region need food aid, according to the U.N.

"The crisis in the Horn of Africa is a human disaster becoming a human catastrophe," UNICEF Executive Director Anthony Lake told reporters.

Libyan rebels say a close Moammar Gadhafi associate who was once the No. 2 top regime official has defected in another blow to the increasingly isolated Libyan leader.

Abdel Salam Jalloud helped Gadhafi stage the 1969 coup that propelled him to power and transformed Libya from a monarchy to a republic. He was Gadhafi's most trusted deputy for two decades but began to clash with the leader starting in the 1990s.

President Obama said Sunday that "we need to" work out a debt deal within the next 10 days as he convened a meeting with congressional leaders, aiming to fashion a deficit reduction package that would allow the country to avoid first ever default on U.S. debt.

Obama and the eight top House and Senate leaders assembled in the White House Cabinet Room for about 90 minutes during a rare Sunday session, less than 24 hours after House Speaker John Boehner abandoned plans to negotiate a massive $4 trillion deal for reducing the debt.

Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh must "expeditiously" sign a deal that would have him transfer power to his vice president and step down, the White House counterterrorism chief told Saleh in a meeting at a hospital where the Yemeni leader is being treated for serious injuries.

President Obama has ordered the suspension of $800 million in aid to the Pakistani military, his chief of staff said Sunday, as part of what experts say is a tougher line with a critical U.S. partner in the fight against terrorism.

Top aide William Daley described the U.S. relationship with Pakistan as "difficult" and said it must be made "to work over time." But he added that until "we get through that difficulty, we'll hold back some of the money that the American taxpayers are committed to give" Pakistan.