By MOHAMMAD JAHJOUH, WAFAA SHURAFA and NATALIE MELZER, Associated Press

KHAN YOUNIS, Gaza Strip (AP) — Negotiations between Israel and Hamas on the next phase of the Gaza ceasefire began Thursday in the Egyptian capital, Egypt said, averting a collapse of the agreement ahead of Saturday’s expiration of the first phase.

Officials from Israel, Qatar and the United States started “intensive discussions” on the ceasefire accord’s second phase in Cairo, Egypt‘s state information service said in a statement.

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“The mediators are also discussing ways to enhance the delivery of humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip, as part of efforts to alleviate the suffering of the population and support stability in the region,” it said.

Phase 2 talks are meant to negotiate an end to the war, including the return of all remaining hostages in Gaza and the withdrawal of all Israeli troops from the territory.

It will be difficult to reconcile a deal with the war objectives of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has called for dismantling Hamas’ governing and military capabilities. After suffering heavy losses in the war, Hamas has nonetheless emerged intact during the ceasefire, and the group says it will not give up its weapons.

Hamas has been designated as a terrorist organization by the United States, Canada and the European Union.

Hours before talks began, an Israeli official said the country would not withdraw from a strategic corridor in the Gaza Strip as called for under the ceasefire, a refusal that could severely complicate negotiations with Hamas and key mediator Egypt at a sensitive moment for the fragile truce.

Overnight, Hamas released the remains of four hostages in exchange for over 600 Palestinian prisoners, the last planned swap of the ceasefire’s first phase.

U.S. President Donald Trump’s Mideast envoy, Steve Witkoff, was expected in the region in the coming days.

‘Blatant violation’

An Israeli official, speaking on condition of anonymity in line with regulations, said the army needed to remain in the so-called Philadelphi corridor, on the Gaza side of the border with Egypt, to prevent weapons smuggling.

Separately, Defense Minister Israel Katz said at a meeting with local leaders that he had seen tunnels penetrating the border on a recent visit to the corridor, without providing evidence or elaborating on Israel’s plans. Egypt says it destroyed the smuggling tunnels from its side years ago and set up a military buffer zone to halt smuggling.

Hamas said any Israeli attempt to maintain a buffer zone in the corridor would be a “blatant violation” of the ceasefire agreement. The group says that sticking to the agreement is the only way for Israel to secure the release of dozens of hostages still held in Gaza.

Israel was supposed to begin withdrawing from the Philadelphi corridor on Saturday, the last day of the first phase, and complete it within eight days. There was no immediate comment about the corridor from Egypt, which is opposed to any Israeli presence on the Gaza side of its border.

Remains of 4 hostages identified

The remains released Thursday were confirmed to be those of Ohad Yahalomi, Itzhak Elgarat, Shlomo Mantzur and Tsachi Idan, according to the Hostages and Missing Families Forum, which represents families of the captives.

Mantzur, 85, was killed in Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack that triggered the war, and his body was taken into the territory. Israel said the other three were killed in captivity, without elaborating.

“Our hearts ache upon receiving the bitter news,” Israeli President Isaac Herzog said. “In this painful moment, there is some solace in knowing that they will be laid to rest in dignity in Israel.”

French President Emmanuel Macron said he shared the “immense pain” of the family and loved ones of Yahalomi, who had French citizenship.

Hamas confirmed that over 600 prisoners had been released overnight. Most were detainees returned to Gaza, where they had been rounded up after the Oct. 7 attack and held without charge on security suspicions.

Israel releases dozens of women and teenagers

Dozens of Palestinian teenagers as well as women detained by Israel in Gaza were released Thursday back to hugs and tears from their loved ones.

The teenagers looked gaunt and skinny as they disembarked from Red Cross buses in the southern town of Khan Younis. Many fell into the arms of relatives, who spent days waiting for them after Israel held up their release last weekend to protest what it called cruel treatment of hostages by Hamas during their releases. Women cried and hugged the boys.

The Palestinian prisoners club, a group representing current and former prisoners, said those released into Gaza Thursday were 44 male teenagers aged 15-19 and two women.

In a separate prisoner release overnight, some fell to their knees in gratitude after disembarking in Khan Younis. In the West Bank town of Beitunia, dozens of prisoners were welcomed by crowds of relatives and well-wishers.

Israel had delayed the release of the prisoners on Saturday over Hamas’ practice of parading hostages before crowds and cameras during their release. Israel, along with the Red Cross and U.N. officials, have called the ceremonies humiliating for the hostages.

Hamas released the four bodies to the Red Cross in Gaza overnight without a public ceremony.

The prisoners released Thursday included 445 men, 21 teenagers and one woman, according to lists shared by Palestinian officials that did not specify their ages. Only around 50 Palestinians were released into the occupied West Bank and east Jerusalem in this round, while dozens sentenced to life over deadly attacks against Israelis were exiled.

Truce in peril

The latest handover was the final one planned under the ceasefire’s first six-week phase, which expires this weekend. Hamas has returned 33 hostages, including eight bodies, in exchange for nearly 2,000 Palestinian prisoners.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed to return all the hostages and destroy the military and governing capabilities of Hamas, which remains in control of Gaza. The Trump administration has endorsed both goals.

But it’s unclear how Israel would destroy Hamas without resuming the war, and Hamas is unlikely to release the remaining hostages — its main bargaining chips — without a lasting ceasefire.

The ceasefire, brokered by the United States, Egypt and Qatar, ended 15 months of war that erupted after Hamas’ 2023 attack on southern Israel that killed about 1,200 people. About 250 people were taken hostage.

If the identities of the four bodies are confirmed, then 59 captives will remain in Gaza, 32 of whom are believed to be dead. Nearly 150 have been released in ceasefire agreements or other deals, while dozens of bodies have been recovered by Israeli forces and eight captives have been rescued alive.

Israel’s military offensive has killed more than 48,000 Palestinians, according to Palestinian health officials, who don’t differentiate between civilian and combatant deaths but say over half the dead have been women and children.

The fighting displaced an estimated 90% of Gaza’s population and decimated the territory’s infrastructure and health system.

At least 8 wounded in suspected car attack in Israel

In northern Israel, police said a driver rammed his car into people at a highway bus stop, wounding at least eight Thursday in what authorities believe was a militant attack.

Police said they had “neutralized” the suspect, who they described as a 53-year-old Palestinian from the northern West Bank who lived in Israel and was married to an Israeli citizen.

Medical workers said the ramming injured at least eight people, two in serious condition, who they evacuated to the hospital.

Shurafa reported from Deir al-Balah, Gaza Strip and Melzer from Nahariya, Israel. Associated Press writer Josef Federman in Jerusalem contributed.

NEW YORK (AP) — The Consumer Finance Protection Bureau has dropped several enforcement actions against companies like Capital One and Rocket Homes, just weeks under new leadership and turmoil at the agency caused by orders from Trump administration.

In voluntary dismissals filed on Thursday, the CFPB dropped lawsuits it had brought against Capital One, Rocket Homes, Vanderbilt Mortgage and Finance, owned by Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway, and more.

Those suits were all filed under the agency’s previous director, Rohit Chopra, who President Donald Trump fired just weeks ago. The CPFB has since plunged into turmoil — with the White House later ordering it to halt nearly work, closing its headquarters and firing scores of its workers.

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Trump has defended his administration’s broadside against the CFPB — including recent claims about the agency being “set up to destroy people.” He’s nominated former Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation board member Jonathan McKernan to be agency’s new director, who faced a Senate committee hearing Thursday.

The CFPB is charged with creating rules and taking enforcement actions to protect consumers from unfair, deceptive, or abusive practices by a wide range of financial institutions and businesses. The agency has said that it’s obtained nearly $20 billion in financial relief for U.S. consumers since its founding — in the form of canceled debts, compensation, and reduced loans.

Legal action from the CFPB often involves banks, mortgage servicers, credit card companies, student loan processors, payday lenders, money transfer providers, credit reporting agencies and debt collectors.

Last month, the CFPB sued Capital One for allegedly misleading consumers about its offerings for high-interest savings accounts — with the bureau accusing the banking giant of “cheating” customers out of more than $2 billion in lost interest payments as a result. Meanwhile, its suit against Vanderbilt Mortgage, also filed last month, accused the company of pushing consumers into loans they couldn’t afford. And the CFPB’s December complaint against Rocket Homes alleged a “kickback scheme” from the company to illegally steer prospective borrowers to Rocket Mortgage, which operates under the same parent company, and away from other competitors.

But, on Thursday, court filings in the Rocket Homes case noted that the “Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, dismisses this action, with prejudice, against all Defendants.” Similar wording was used in the dismissals of the CFPB’s Capital One and Vanderbilt Mortgage suits.

In a statement Thursday, Rocket Homes welcomed its dismissal and said “it is good to see the truth come to light” — calling the suit “an empty claim brought forth by former CFPB director Chopra for the sole purpose of seeing his name in headlines during the final days in public office.”

Capital One also welcomed the CFPB’s Thursday decision, noting that it had “strongly disputed” the action filed against the company.

The Associated Press also reached out to Vanderbilt Mortgage for comment.

Recently there has been an unusual amount of interest in expanding U.S. territory. A better idea: why not go REALLY BIG and relocate the Prime Meridian from Greenwich, England, to Saint Paul, Minnesota, USA? What better place than the historically highest navigable point on the longest, most storied, and greatest river in the world, the Mississippi?

How is this possible? Latitude is a function of the rotation of the Earth. Our planet rotates on its axis determining the North and South poles, and the Equator. Latitude is a measure of the north/south distances in between.

Longitude, however, is absolutely arbitrary.

When longitude was first understood sailors measured their position by degrees east or west of their port of departure. Later many countries established their own prime meridians. It was not until the First International Meridan Conference in 1883 in Washington, D.C., where longitude was fixed by convention as Greenwich, England.

This was a logical agreement at the time in the 19th century. Great Britain had an empire. By the 20th century Great Britain had lost its empire. Further, Great Britain has recently separated from Europe with Brexit. Today Great Britain is a mostly lonely island with a proud history.

The 20th century was the American Century. In the first half of the century we won two world wars. In the second half our record was 3-1-1. After the collapse of the Soviet Union we won the Cold War and became the global hegemon.

Greenwich is unreflective of its central importance in the world. You reach it through the Isle of Dogs, its town square comprises a few salons and an unseaworthy sailing ship in the middle of the square. The former Royal Observatory is an old house on a hill and is not handicap accessible.

Saint Paul will celebrate the Prime Meridian with an interpretive museum on Raspberry Island. Its centerpiece will be an atomic clock. Saint Paul native Paul Manship’s sculpture Unisphere from the 1964 World’s Fair, now stored in a warehouse in New Jersey, will mark the spot of the meridian.

Achieving the relocation of the Prime Meridian is straightforward. An act of Congress will establish the location of the Prime Meridian by law. The ensuing global uproar will be debated endlessly in the United Nations and other world organizations while the United States reprograms all the satellites in the world signaling GPS coordinates with the new longitudes. Eventually we win!

Why take over the Panama Canal, an interoceanic ditch on an isthmus that may soon run out of water? Why buy Greenland, a misnomer by Eric the Red and a vast expanse of ice and snow? Why take over Gaza, a remote outpost in the center of a restive Arab world? Why annex Canada, our best ally ever (at least since we attempted to invade them over a century ago)?

Carpe diem! Make the center of this great nation, the Mississippi River Valley, the center of the world! Imagine everyone everywhere setting their clocks and watches to Saint Paul mean time!

Jim Miller and Peter Kramer are members of the Metaphysical Club in Saint Paul.

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St. Paul Johnson, one of Minnesota’s most storied boys hockey programs, has played its last independent season and will be folded into a St. Paul Public Schools co-op next season.

The district announced the news with a letter, obtained by the Pioneer Press, sent to players and families on Wednesday.

“It has been decided by SPPS administration and the athletic directors to combine (co-op) the hockey teams and create one SPPS starting in the 2025-26 season,” the letter said.

Highland Park will be the host school, and the program will be run by the Scots’ current coaching staff.

The move is the latest of many in the Twin Cities, mostly in St. Paul and Minneapolis, to consolidate ice hockey programs because of declining participation numbers. A 10-year co-op between Central and Como Park dissolved in 2016.

Highland Park, which dropped its program in 1987, then briefly joined Central in a co-op before relaunching its program for the 2010-11 season.

Johnson is a little bit different, though. The Governors were hockey royalty in St. Paul, advancing to 22 state tournaments and winning four. Five other St. Paul public high schools played at state — four of them now defunct — but none of them as many times, and none of them won it all.

Coaching legend Herb Brooks, the architect of the Miracle on Ice and NCAA title-winning coach with at Minnesota, played for the Governors. So did Wendell Anderson, who went on to play in the 1956 Olympic Games and become Minnesota’s 33rd governor from 1971-76.

Their last state tournament appearances was in 1995.

This is a developing story.