GEOFF BENNETT: In the day's other headlines: People across Western Afghanistan struggled for a third day to find anyone who lived through a catastrophic earthquake.

The magnitude-6.3 quake ravaged the area around Herat on Saturday.

Entire villages vanished, and official counts reported 4,000 dead and injured.

The lifeless body of a child pulled from her father's protective embrace.

Afghans near the quake's epicenter are digging through the rubble with shovels and their bare hands, looking for survivors while carrying the dead.

What used to be a village is now a wasteland.

The earthquake destroyed everything in sight, flattening mud brick homes in these remote villages in Western Afghanistan, leaving survivors to mourn and search for loved ones.

ASADULLAH KHAN, Earthquake Survivor (through translator): I have lost five members of my family, three daughters, my mother and my brother's wife, also five members of my uncle's family.

In total, we have lost 23 people in this village who have been martyred.

SALMA BEN AISSA BRAHAM, Afghanistan Director, Rescue Committee: Today, we had another aftershock, so people have panicked again.

GEOFF BENNETT: Salma Ben Aissa Braham is the Afghanistan director of the International Rescue Committee in Kabul.

SALMA BEN AISSA BRAHAM: These are like homes out of bricks.

It's very basic, so they are very vulnerable to any shock.

Immediately, with the first shock, everything has collapsed, So a complete disappearance of villages and houses in all these locations.

It's almost like nothing is there anymore.

GEOFF BENNETT: The quake devastated a country already burdened by a crippling humanitarian crisis.

Foreign aid is in short supply following the Taliban takeover in 2021. International programs severely underfunded are diverting the little they have left toward quake relief.

SALMA BEN AISSA BRAHAM: We were preparing ourselves for winterization, and then, unfortunately, we have been hit by this crisis.

We don't have funds to cover existing needs.

If you compare the past three years to this year, we have almost tripled the needs in Afghanistan.

So we are overstretched.

GEOFF BENNETT: Overstretched and overwhelmed as rescue efforts shift to burials, the smallest coffins also the heaviest.

A senior official of Afghanistan's ruling Taliban visited Herat province today.

The regime said they aim to ensure immediate and equitable delivery of aid.

Officials in Northeastern India report the death toll from last week's floods has risen to 74 people, with 100 still missing.

Authorities have recovered 34 bodies in Sikkim state since a dam broke last week.

Forty others have been found downstream in West Bengal state.

India's air force says it rescued scores of tourists today as weather conditions began to clear.

Here at home, former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy now says he'd serve in that post again if his fellow Republicans want him to.

He was ousted last week and initially said he would not compete for the job again.

Today, he was asked by a reporter if there is any way he would be a candidate.

REP. KEVIN MCCARTHY (R-CA): That's a decision by the conference.

I will allow the conference to make whatever decision.

Whether I'm speaker or not, I'm a member of this body.

I know what history has had.

And I can lead in any position it is.

GEOFF BENNETT: Republican Congressmen Steve Scalise and Jim Jordan have both entered the race for House speaker.

Former President Trump has endorsed Jordan.

A vote could come as early as Wednesday.

In the 2024 presidential race, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced today he's ending his bid for the Democratic nomination and will run as an independent.

He had so far failed to make much headway against President Biden.

In Philadelphia, Kennedy said he's making a new declaration of independence.

ROBERT F. KENNEDY JR., Presidential Candidate: So that I can stand before you as every leader should stand before you free of partisan allegiance, free from the -- free from the backroom deals, a servant to my conscience, to my creator and to you.

GEOFF BENNETT: Kennedy has become known for his anti-vaccine views and his ties to far right figures.

Today, his siblings denounced his campaign saying, he may share their father's name, but not his values.

Harvard Professor Claudia Goldin has claimed this year's Nobel Prize in economics for research on women in the work force.

Her decades-long body of work has helped show causes of the gender gap in pay and labor force participation.

In Boston today, she talked of trying to show that her field goes beyond finance.

CLAUDIA GOLDIN, Nobel Prize Winner: Economics is about people.

It's about inequality.

It's about the female labor force.

It's about health.

It's about economic development.

It's about well-being.

GEOFF BENNETT: Goldin is just the third woman to win the economics prize.

And on Wall Street, the Israel-Hamas war pushed oil prices more than $3.5 higher, but stocks rallied on signs that the Federal Reserve may pause interest rate hikes.

The Dow Jones industrial average gained 197 points to close at 33604.

The Nasdaq rose nearly 53 points.

The S&P 500 added 27.

And still to come on the "NewsHour": the Maui wildfires highlight the difficulty of preserving indigenous heritage in the face of climate change; and Simone Biles becomes the most decorated gymnast in history at the World Championships.