WASHINGTON (AP) — The National Transportation Safety Board will hold three days of hearings starting Wednesday on January’s midair collision between an American Airlines passenger jet and an Army helicopter over the nation’s capital that killed 67 people.

The goal: Pinpoint exactly what went wrong and what can be done to avoid similar midair crashes between passenger planes and military aircraft. The accident was the nation’s deadliest plane crash since November 2001.

Related Articles

What to know about the shooting at a New York City office tower that killed 4

How US adults are using AI, according to polling

US consumer confidence improves slightly in July, but Americans remain concerned about tariffs

US job openings fell to 7.4 million last month as job market continues to cool

Church sales ‘exploding’ as religious affiliation fades

The hearings in Washington will involve NTSB board members, investigators and witnesses. Panels will focus on military helicopter routes in the Washington area, collision avoidance technology and training for air traffic controllers at Ronald Reagan National Airport, among other subjects.

NTSB officials have already said the FAA failed to recognize a concerning pattern after there were 85 near misses in Washington airspace in just three years. The FAA has since banned some helicopter routes to make sure helicopters and planes no longer share the same airspace, but there have still been additional near misses in recent months.

Investigators have also said that the Army helicopter may have had inaccurate altitude readings, and the crew may not have heard key instructions from air traffic controllers.

Meanwhile, federal officials have raised concerns over the nation’s overtaxed and understaffed air traffic control system. During January’s mid-air crash above Washington, one controller was handing both commercial airline and helicopter traffic at the busy airport.

The hearings come at a time of heightened scrutiny of the safety of air travel amid the growing list of aircraft tragedies, mishaps and near misses in 2025. They include an Air India plane crash in June that killed at least 260 people as well as two unrelatedclose calls in the U.S. this month in which passenger jets took evasive action to avoid military planes.

Here’s a look at the crash, the investigation so far and other notable aircraft incidents this year.

What happened?

American Airlines Flight 5342 from Wichita, Kansas, was carrying 60 passengers and four crew members as it approached to land on a clear night at Ronald Reagan National Airport. Nearby, the Army Black Hawk, with three soldiers on board, was practicing emergency evacuation routes that would be used to ferry out key government officials in an emergency.

Investigators have said the helicopter crew was wearing night-vision goggles that would have limited their peripheral vision.

A few minutes before the twin-engine jet was to land, air traffic controllers asked if it could use a shorter runway. The pilots agreed, and flight-tracking sites show the plane turned to adjust its approach. The FAA has since permanently banned that particular helicopter route when planes are using that runway.

Shortly before the collision, a controller got an alert saying the plane and Black Hawk were converging and asked the helicopter if it had the jet in sight. The military pilot said yes and asked for “visual separation” with the jet for a second time, allowing it to fly closer than if the pilots couldn’t see the plane.

Controllers approved the request roughly 20 seconds before the collision.

The NTSB has said there were 85 dangerous close calls between planes and helicopters near Reagan National in the three years before the crash, and collision alarms had been ordering pilots to take evasive action at least once a month since 2011.

The investigation

NTSB Chairwoman Jennifer Homendy told reporters in February that the Black Hawk’s cockpit recorder suggested an incomplete radio transmission may have left the crew unable to hear air traffic control tell them, just before the crash, to move behind the jet. She said the crew was unable to hear the words “pass behind the” because its microphone key was pressed.

The radio altitude of the helicopter was 278 feet (85 meters) at the time, which would put it above its 200-foot (61-meter) limit for that location.

Cockpit conversations a few minutes before the crash indicate that the crew may not have had accurate altitude readings, with the helicopter’s pilot calling out that they were at 300 feet (91 meters) but the instructor pilot saying 400 feet (122 meters), Homendy said.

That generation of Black Hawks typically has two types of altimeters: one relying on barometric pressure and the other on radio frequency signals bounced off the ground. Helicopter pilots typically rely on barometric readings while flying, but the helicopter’s black box captures its radio altitude.

Almost immediately after the crash, President Donald Trump faulted the helicopter for flying too high. He also blamed federal diversity and inclusion efforts, particularly regarding air traffic controllers. When pressed by reporters, the president could not back up those claims. A few days later, he blamed an “obsolete” air traffic control system.

January’s crash prompted the Federal Aviation Administration in March to announce that helicopters would be permanently restricted from flying on the same route where the collision occurred.

However, concerns over Washington’s airspace have persisted. On May 1, military air traffic controllers lost contact with an Army helicopter for about 20 seconds as it neared the Pentagon on a flight that caused two commercial jets to abort their landings. After that incident, the Army paused all flights into and out of the Pentagon as it works with the FAA to address safety issues.

The victims

The Army identified the Black Hawk crew as Capt. Rebecca M. Lobach, 28, of Durham, North Carolina; Staff Sgt. Ryan Austin O’Hara, 28, of Lilburn, Georgia; and Chief Warrant Officer 2 Andrew Loyd Eaves, 39, of Great Mills, Maryland. O’Hara was the crew chief, and Eaves and Lobach were pilots.

Among the jet’s passengers were several members of the Skating Club of Boston who were returning from a development camp for elite junior skaters that followed the 2025 U.S. Figure Skating Championships in Wichita. A figure skating tribute event in Washington raised $1.2 million for the crash victims’ families.

Others included a group of hunters returning from a guided trip in Kansas; four members of a steamfitters’ union in suburban Maryland; nine students and parents from schools in Fairfax County, Virginia; and two Chinese nationals.

What about other crashes this year?

Besides the midair collision above Washington, a string of other recent crashes have brought attention to air travel, which remains overwhelmingly safe. The crashes include:

On Jan. 31 a medical transport jet crashed into a Philadelphia neighborhood, killing seven.

On Feb. 6 a small commuter aircraft went down off western Alaska, killing 10.

On Feb. 17, a Delta plane crashed and flipped over upon landing in Toronto but everyone survived. Two small planes collided in midair in Arizona on Feb. 19, killing two people.

On April 10, a New York City sightseeing helicopter broke apart in midair and crashed upside-down into the Hudson River, killing the pilot and a family of five Spanish tourists.

On April 11, three people were killed and one was injured when a small plane crashed in Boca Raton, Florida.

The crash of the Air India passenger plane in June occurred in the northwestern city of Ahmedabad, killing more than 240 people bound for London and others on the ground, officials said. A single passenger survived. The same month, a small plane crashed off the San Diego coast shortly after takeoff, killing all six people on board.

July included at least three fatal plane crashes. Two student pilots died when their single-engine planes crashed in midair south of Steinbach, in the Canadian province of Manitoba. A small plane crashed shortly after taking off from London Southend Airport, killing four people. A North Carolina family of four, including two school-age children, died when their small plane crashed as they flew back from Florida.

By SAM MEDNICK and CARA ANNA, Associated Press

TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) — The “worst-case scenario of famine is currently playing out in the Gaza Strip,” the leading international authority on food crises said in a new alert Tuesday, predicting “widespread death” without immediate action.

Related Articles

Starmer says UK will recognize Palestinian state unless Israel agrees ceasefire, ends Gaza suffering

Palestinian death toll in Israel-Hamas war passes 60,000, Gaza Health Ministry says

Democrats implore Trump to step up role in addressing suffering and starvation in Gaza

‘My family deserved to live with dignity:’ Twin Cities residents share stories of relatives in Gaza

Israeli fire kills dozens in Gaza, officials say, as aid delivery remains chaotic after new measures

The alert, still short of a formal famine declaration, follows an outcry over images of emaciated children in Gaza and reports of dozens of hunger-related deaths after nearly 22 months of war. International pressure led Israel over the weekend to announce measures, including daily humanitarian pauses in fighting in parts of Gaza and airdrops. The U.N. and Palestinians on the ground say little has changed, and desperate crowds continue to overwhelm delivery trucks before they reach their destinations.

The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, or IPC, said Gaza has teetered on the brink of famine for two years, but recent developments have “dramatically worsened” the situation, including “increasingly stringent blockades” by Israel.

A formal famine declaration, which is rare, requires the kind of data that the lack of access to Gaza, and mobility within, has largely denied. The IPC has only declared famine a few times — in Somalia in 2011, South Sudan in 2017 and 2020, and parts of Sudan’s western Darfur region last year.

But independent experts say they don’t need a formal declaration to know what they’re seeing in Gaza.

“Just as a family physician can often diagnose a patient she’s familiar with based on visible symptoms without having to send samples to the lab and wait for results, so too we can interpret Gaza’s symptoms. This is famine,” Alex de Waal, author of “Mass Starvation: The History and Future of Famine” and executive director of the World Peace Foundation, told The Associated Press.

Palestinians struggle to get donated food at a community kitchen, in Gaza City, northern Gaza Strip, Saturday, July 26, 2025. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)

What it takes to declare famine

An area is classified as in famine when all three of the following conditions are confirmed:

At least 20% of households have an extreme lack of food, or are essentially starving. At least 30% of children six months to 5 years old suffer from acute malnutrition or wasting, meaning they’re too thin for their height. And at least two people or four children under 5 per 10,000 are dying daily due to starvation or the interaction of malnutrition and disease.

The report is based on available information through July 25 and says the crisis has reached “an alarming and deadly turning point.” It says data indicate that famine thresholds have been reached for food consumption in most of Gaza — at its lowest level since the war began — and for acute malnutrition in Gaza City. The report says nearly 17 out of every 100 children under the age of 5 in Gaza City are acutely malnourished.

Mounting evidence shows “widespread starvation.” Essential health and other services have collapsed. One in three people in Gaza is going without food for days at a time, according to the World Food Program. Hospitals report a rapid increase in hunger-related deaths in children under 5. Gaza’s population of over 2 million has been squeezed into increasingly tiny areas of the devastated territory.

“This is not a warning. It is a reality unfolding before our eyes,” U.N. secretary-general Antonio Guterres said in a statement on the new report, adding that the “trickle of aid must become an ocean.”

Naima Abu Ful poses for a photo with her 2-year-old malnourished child, Yazan, at their home in the Shati refugee camp in Gaza City, Wednesday, July 23, 2025. (AP Photo/Jehad Alshrafi)

More deaths to come

The IPC alert calls for immediate and large-scale action and warns: “Failure to act now will result in widespread death in much of the strip.”

Humanitarian workers agreed.

“If we don’t have the conditions to react to this mass starvation, we will see this exponential rise,” said Rachael Cummings, humanitarian director for Save the Children International, based in Gaza. “So we will see thousands and potentially tens of thousands of people die in Gaza. That is preventable.” She described children digging through trash piles outside their office, looking for food.

Anything less than a ceasefire and a return to the U.N.-led aid system in place before Israel’s blockade in early March “is policymakers condemning tens of thousands of people in Gaza to death, starvation and disease,” said Rob Williams, CEO for War Child Alliance.

“All of the children who are currently malnourished will die. That is, unless there’s an absolutely rapid and consistent reversal of what is happening,” said Dr. Tarek Loubani, medical director for Glia, based in Gaza.

‘Open every border crossing’

Israel has restricted aid to varying degrees throughout the war. In March, it cut off the entry of all goods, including fuel, food and medicine, to pressure Hamas to free hostages. Hamas has been designated as a terrorist organization by the United States, Canada and the European Union.

Israel eased those restrictions in May but also pushed ahead with a new U.S.-backed aid delivery system that has been wracked by chaos and violence. The traditional, U.N.-led aid providers say deliveries have been hampered by Israeli military restrictions and incidents of looting, while criminals and hungry crowds swarm entering convoys.

While Israel says there’s no limit on how many aid trucks can enter Gaza, U.N. agencies and aid groups say even the latest humanitarian measures are not enough to counter the worsening starvation.

“The fastest and most effective way to save lives right now is to open every border crossing,” Tjada D’Oyen McKenna, head of Mercy Corps. the international relief agency, said in a statement Tuesday. Aid groups call the airdrops ineffective and dangerous, saying they deliver less aid than trucks.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said no one is starving in Gaza and that Israel has supplied enough aid throughout the war, “otherwise, there would be no Gazans.”

Israel’s closest ally now appears to disagree. “Those children look very hungry,” President Donald Trump said Monday.

Anna reported from Lowville, New York. Associated Press writer Fatma Khaled in Cairo contributed.

By MATTHEW PERRONE, AP Health Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. health officials are warning Americans about the risks of an opioid-related ingredient increasingly added to energy drinks, gummies and supplements sold at gas stations and convenience stores, recommending a nationwide ban.

The chemical, known as 7- hydroxymitragynine, is a component of kratom, a plant native to Southeast Asia that has gained popularity in the U.S. as an unapproved treatment for pain, anxiety and drug dependence.

In recent months, dietary supplement companies that sell kratom have been urging the Food and Drug Administration to crack down on the products containing 7-OH, portraying it as a dangerously concentrated, synthetic form of the original ingredient.

The FDA action “is not focused on natural kratom leaf products,” according to a statement Tuesday by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

The agency said it was releasing a report to educate about the risks of “7-OH and its distinction from the kratom plant leaf.” Regulators are also recommending that the ingredient be placed on the federal government’s most restrictive list of illegal drugs, which includes LSD and heroin.

“7-OH is an opioid that can be more potent than morphine,” said FDA Commissioner Marty Makary. “We need regulation and public education to prevent another wave of the opioid epidemic.”

The agency’s recommendation will be reviewed by the Drug Enforcement Administration, which sets federal rules for high-risk drugs including prescription medicines and illicit substances. A federal ban wouldn’t take effect until the agency drafts and finalizes new rules governing the ingredient.

Federal regulators have been scrutinizing kratom for about a decade after reports of addiction, injury and overdose. But users and distributors have long opposed efforts to regulate it, saying kratom could be a safer alternative to opioid painkillers that sparked the ongoing drug addiction epidemic.

Last month, the FDA issued warning letters to seven companies selling drinks, gummies and powders infused with 7-OH. Regulators said the products violated FDA rules because they have not been evaluated for safety and, in some cases, claimed to treat medical conditions, including pain, arthritis and anxiety.

Supplement executives quickly applauded the move.

Related Articles

Deion Sanders had bladder cancer. Here’s what to know about a disease that’s more common in men

Continuous glucose monitors are in vogue. But do you really need to track your blood sugar?

State forecasts loss of $1.4B in Medicaid funding; 140K will lose coverage

To stay sharper while aging, get active, challenge your brain, and eat healthy

Inside one Minnesota county’s push for murder charges in overdose deaths

The FDA “demonstrated the exact kind of data-driven, proactive regulatory excellence needed to safeguard unwitting consumers across the U.S.,” said Ryan Niddel of Diversified Botanics, a Utah-based company that sells kratom supplements.

An industry group, the American Kratom Association, has lobbied Congress for years against restrictions on the plant. Legislation supported by the group would prohibit the FDA from regulating kratom more strictly than food and dietary supplements

Nearly a decade ago, the federal government came close to banning the substance.

In 2016, the DEA announced plans to add kratom to the government’s most restrictive schedule 1, reserved for drugs that have no medial use and a high potential for abuse. But the plan stalled after a flood of public complaints, including a letter signed by more than 60 members of Congress.

The FDA then began studying the ingredient, concluding in 2018 that kratom contains many of the same chemicals as opioids, the addictive class of drugs that includes painkillers like OxyContin as well as heroin and fentanyl.

Since then, FDA regulators have continued to issue warnings about cases of injury, addiction and death with kratom supplements, which are usually sold in capsules or powders.

In recent months, the FDA has also issued warnings on other unapproved drugs sold as supplements or energy drinks, including the antidepressant tianeptine. Sometimes referred to collectively as “gas station heroin,” the drugs have been restricted by several states, but they are not scheduled at the federal level.

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

By HANNA ARHIROVA and ILLIA NOVIKOV

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russian glide bombs and ballistic missiles struck a Ukrainian prison and a medical facility overnight as Russia’s relentless strikes on civilian areas killed at least 27 people across the country, officials said Tuesday, despite U.S. President Donald Trump’s threat to soon punish Russia with sanctions and tariffs unless it stops.

Related Articles

Starmer says UK will recognize Palestinian state unless Israel agrees to a ceasefire

Trump’s religious rhetoric clashes with Canada’s secular politics

Palestinian death toll in Israel-Hamas war passes 60,000, Gaza Health Ministry says

Today in History: July 29, USS Forrestal accident

‘My family deserved to live with dignity:’ Twin Cities residents share stories of relatives in Gaza

Four powerful Russian glide bombs hit a prison in Ukraine’s southeastern Zaporizhzhia region, authorities said. They killed at least 16 inmates and wounded more than 90 others, Ukraine’s Justice Ministry said.

In the Dnipro region of central Ukraine, authorities said Russian missiles partially destroyed a three-story building and damaged nearby medical facilities, including a maternity hospital and a city hospital ward. At least three people were killed, including a 23-year-old pregnant woman, and two other people were killed elsewhere in the region, regional authorities said.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that overnight Russian strikes across the country hit 73 cities, towns and villages. “These were conscious, deliberate strikes — not accidental,” Zelenskyy said on Telegram.

Trump said Monday he is giving Russian President Vladimir Putin 10 to 12 days to stop the killing in Ukraine after three years of war, moving up a 50-day deadline he had given the Russian leader two weeks ago. The move meant Trump wants peace efforts to make progress by Aug. 7-9.

Trump has repeatedly rebuked Putin for talking about ending the war but continuing to bombard Ukrainian civilians. But the Kremlin hasn’t changed its tactics.

“I’m disappointed in President Putin,” Trump said during a visit to Scotland.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Tuesday that Russia is determined to achieve its goals in Ukraine, though he said Moscow has “taken note” of Trump’s announcement and is committed to seeking a peaceful solution.

Zelenskyy welcomed Trump’s shortening of the deadline. “Everyone needs peace — Ukraine, Europe, the United States and responsible leaders across the globe,” Zelenskyy wrote in a post on Telegram. “Everyone except Russia.”

The Kremlin pushes back against Trump

The Kremlin pushed back, with a top Putin lieutenant warning Trump against “playing the ultimatum game with Russia.”

“Russia isn’t Israel or even Iran,” former president Dmitry Medvedev, who is deputy head of the country’s Security Council, wrote on social platform X.

“Each new ultimatum is a threat and a step towards war. Not between Russia and Ukraine, but with his own country,” Medvedev said.

Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of its neighbor, the Kremlin has warned Kyiv’s Western backers that their involvement could end up broadening the war to NATO countries.

“Kremlin officials continue to frame Russia as in direct geopolitical confrontation with the West in order to generate domestic support for the war in Ukraine and future Russian aggression against NATO,” the Institute for the Study of War, a Washington think tank, said late Monday.

Russia attacks with glide bombs, drones and missiles

The Ukrainian air force said Russia launched two Iskander-M ballistic missiles along with 37 Shahed-type strike drones and decoys at Ukraine overnight. It said 32 Shahed drones were intercepted or neutralized by Ukrainian air defenses.

The Russian attack close to midnight Monday hit the Bilenkivska Correctional Facility with glide bombs, according to the State Criminal Executive Service of Ukraine.

Glide bombs, which are Soviet-era bombs retrofitted with retractable fins and guidance systems, have been laying waste to cities in eastern Ukraine, where the Russian army is trying to pierce Ukrainian defenses. The bombs carry up to 3,000 kilograms (6,600 pounds) of explosives.

At least 42 inmates were hospitalized with serious injuries, while another 40 people, including one staff member, sustained various injuries.

The strike destroyed the prison’s dining hall, damaged administrative and quarantine buildings, but the perimeter fence held and no escapes were reported, authorities said.

Ukrainian officials condemned the attack, saying that targeting civilian infrastructure, such as prisons, is a war crime under international conventions.

The assault occurred exactly three years after an explosion killed more than 50 people at the Olenivka detention facility in the Russia-occupied Donetsk region, where dozens of Ukrainian prisoners were killed.

Russia and Ukraine accused each other of shelling the prison. The Associated Press interviewed over a dozen people with direct knowledge of details of that attack, including survivors, investigators and families of the dead and missing. All described evidence they believed points directly to Russia as the culprit. The AP also obtained an internal United Nations analysis that found the same.

Russian forces also struck a grocery store in a village in the northeastern Kharkiv region, police said, killing five and wounding three civilians.

Authorities in the southern Kherson region reported one civilian killed and three wounded over the past 24 hours.

Alongside the barrages, Russia has also kept up its grinding war of attrition, which has slowly churned across the eastern side of Ukraine at a heavy cost in troop losses and military hardware.

The Russian Defense Ministry claimed Tuesday that Russian troops have captured the villages of Novoukrainka in the Donetsk region and Temyrivka in the Zaporizhzhia region.

Ukraine launches long-range drones

Ukraine has sought to fight back against Russian strikes by developing its own long-range drone technology, hitting oil depots, weapons plants and disrupting commercial flights.

Russia’s Defense Ministry said Tuesday that air defenses downed 74 Ukrainian drones over several regions overnight, including 43 over the Bryansk region.

Yuri Slyusar, the head of the Rostov region said a man in the city of Salsk was killed in a drone attack, which started a fire at the Salsk railway station.

Officials said a cargo train was set ablaze at the Salsk station and the railway traffic via Salsk was suspended. Explosions shattered windows in two cars of a passenger train and passengers were evacuated.