By JULIA FRANKEL and SAMY MAGDY, Associated Press

JERUSALEM (AP) — The remains of the final hostage in Gaza have been recovered, Israel’s military said Monday, clearing the way for the next phase of the ceasefire that paused the Israel-Hamas war.

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The announcement that the remains of Ran Gvili had been found and identified came a day after Israel’s government said the military was conducting a “large-scale operation” in a cemetery in northern Gaza to locate them.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called it “an incredible achievement” for Israel and its soldiers, telling Israeli media that “I promised we would bring everyone home and we have brought everyone home.” He said Gvili, who was killed during the Hamas-led attack on Oct. 7, 2023, that sparked the war, was among the first to be taken into Gaza.

The return of all remaining hostages, living or dead, has been a key part of the Gaza ceasefire’s first phase, and Gvili’s family had urged Israel’s government not to enter the second phase until his remains were recovered and returned.

Netanyahu’s office said Sunday that Israel would open the Rafah crossing between Gaza and Egypt, which Palestinians see as their lifeline to the world, once the search for Gvili was finished. It has been largely shut since May 2024, except for a small period in early 2025.

Israel and Hamas had been under pressure from ceasefire mediators including Washington to move into the second phase of the U.S.-brokered truce, which took effect on Oct. 10.

Israel had repeatedly accused Hamas of dragging its feet in the recovery of the final hostage. Hamas said it had provided all the information it had about Gvili’s remains, and accused Israel of obstructing efforts to search for them in areas of Gaza under Israeli military control.

Israel’s military had said the large-scale operation to locate Gvili’s remains was “in the area of the Yellow Line” that divides the territory.

The Oct. 7, 2023 attack killed about 1,200 people and saw 251 taken hostage. Gvili, a 24-year-old police officer known affectionately as “Rani,” was killed while fighting Hamas militants.

Before Gvili’s remains were recovered, 20 living hostages and the remains of 27 others had been returned to Israel since the ceasefire, most recently in early December. Israel in exchange has released the bodies of hundreds Palestinians to Gaza.

The next phase of the 20-point ceasefire plan has called for creating an international stabilization force, forming a technocratic Palestinian government and disarming Hamas.

Palestinians killed in Gaza

Israeli forces on Monday fatally shot a man in Gaza City’s Tuffah neighborhood, according to Shifa Hospital, which received the body. The man was close to an area where the military has launched the search operation for Gvili, the hospital said.

Another man was killed in the eastern side of Bureij refugee camp in central Gaza, according to Al-Aqsa Martyrs hospital, which received his body. The circumstances of his death were not immediately clear.

More than 480 Palestinians were killed by Israeli fire since Oct. 10, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry. The ministry, which is part of the Hamas-led government, maintains detailed casualty records that are seen as generally reliable by U.N. agencies and independent experts.

Israel’s top court considers petition to open Gaza for international journalists

The Foreign Press Association on Monday asked Israel’s Supreme Court to allow journalists to enter Gaza freely and independently.

The FPA, which represents dozens of global news organizations, has been fighting for more than two years for independent media access to Gaza. Israel has barred reporters from entering Gaza independently since the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks by Hamas, which triggered the war, saying entry could put both journalists and soldiers at risk.

The army has offered journalists brief, occasional visits under strict military supervision.

FPA lawyers told the three judge panel that the restrictions are not justified and that with aid workers moving in and out of Gaza, journalists should be allowed in as well. They also said the tightly controlled embeds with the military are no substitute for independent access. The judges are expected to rule in the coming days.

Magdy reported from Cairo.

On a hilltop overlooking the Rio Grande, just below a picnic area along Highway 83 in San Ygnacio, there’s an unmarked grave. The river—as well as its new razor-sharp decorations—stretches as far as the eye can see in either direction. Occasionally a car passes, but mostly there’s a quiet stillness.

The riverine border between Texas and Mexico is 1,254 miles long, a distance too great to be understood by those who’ve never seen it. This leaves room for interpretation, so the river becomes many things to many people. Lately, according to Texas Governor Greg Abbott, the border has been the front lines of an “invasion.” Most recently, the Trump administration has established “national defense areas” along sections of the Rio Grande, apparently restricting Texans’ access to U.S. soil.

This river that was once a squiggly line on a map is now the front line of an intense militarization. Where white-tailed deer and largemouth bass used to live in relative peace, now there are Stryker armored vehicles and dangerous floating barriers.

It’s surreal to think of the river’s ancient history, with the Rio Grande reaching the Gulf more than half a million years ago. Today, the surreal nature of the Rio Grande has taken on a different character. 

This photo essay aims to see the border in a new light. Inspired by a decades-old method, I’ve examined this region through infrared imagery—recasting the militarization of the area using the military’s own technology. 

In the 1940s, the U.S. military enlisted Kodak to help it with aerial reconnaissance. Kodak, in turn, developed infrared-sensitive film that allowed aerial photographers to detect enemy camouflage. The film was called Aerochrome. Live vegetation reflects infrared light, and Aerochrome was engineered to render this reflected light in false-color hues of red or pink.

Using this specialized infrared-sensitive film in their reconnaissance missions, American troops were able to spot enemy positions, which did not reflect the same wavelength as living foliage and appeared as brown spots in a sea of pink and red.

Later, Kodak made a modified version of the film stock available to the public.

This is a relatively harmless example of a larger, more devastating phenomenon whereby military technology is first deployed abroad, then later finds applications at home.

As military violence escalates around the country, and scholars say American democracy is sliding toward authoritarianism, I decided to use once-military technology to examine the current political moment in Texas.

Unfortunately, Kodak discontinued Aerochrome film stocks in 2009—but modern digital cameras can be converted to record images in the same way. The spectrum of light visible to the human eye is roughly 400 to 700 nanometers in wavelength; however, a converted modern digital camera can see wavelengths in the ultraviolet and infrared spectrums, below and above the visible range respectively. This conversion is achieved by removing a filter that normally sits on top of the sensor in a digital camera. By removing it, the sensor sees well beyond what the human eye can see.

Different filters can then be used to isolate specific ranges of light. The Aerochrome look is recreated using a converted camera and an IR Chrome filter made by Korali Vision, which records only visible light and light at the lower end of the infrared spectrum.

This technology allows the viewer to see anew the intense militarization along Texas’ border with Mexico, showing how an already surreal landscape has been pushed further beyond reality.

Editor’s Note: This photo essay is published in partnership with the Economic Hardship Reporting Project.

The post The River and the Fever Dream appeared first on The Texas Observer.

By JOSH FUNK, Associated Press Transportation Writer

So many things went wrong last Jan. 29 to contribute to the deadliest plane crash on American soil since 2001 that the National Transportation Safety Board isn’t likely to identify a single cause of the collision between an airliner and an Army helicopter near Washington, D.C., that killed 67 people at its hearing Tuesday.

FILE – Rescue and salvage crews pull up a part of a Army Black Hawk helicopter that collided midair with an American Airlines jet, at a wreckage site in the Potomac River from Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, Feb. 6, 2025, in Arlington, Va. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana, File)

Instead, their investigators will detail what they found that played a role in the crash, and the board will recommend changes to help prevent a similar tragedy. Last week, the Federal Aviation Administration already took the temporary restrictions it imposed after the crash and made them permanent to ensure planes and helicopters won’t share the same airspace again around Reagan National Airport.

Family members of victims hope those suggestions won’t be ignored the same way many past NTSB recommendations have been. Tim Lilley, whose son Sam was the first officer on the American Airlines plane, said he hopes officials in Congress and the administration will make changes now instead of waiting until for another disaster.

“Instead of writing aviation regulation in blood, let’s start writing it in data,” said Lilley, who is a pilot himself and earlier in his career flew Black Hawk helicopters in the Washington area. “Because all the data was there to show this accident was going to happen. This accident was completely preventable.”

Over the past year, the NTSB has already highlighted a number of the factors that contributed to the crash including a poorly designed helicopter route past Reagan Airport, the fact that the Black Hawk was flying 78 feet higher than it should have been, the warnings that the FAA ignored in the years beforehand and the Army’s move to turn off a key system that would have broadcast the helicopter’s location more clearly.

The D.C. plane crash was the first in a number of high-profile crashes and close calls throughout 2025 that alarmed the public, but the total number of crashes last year was actually the lowest since the COVID-19 pandemic hit in 2020 with 1,405 crashes nationwide.

FILE – Crosses are seen at a makeshift memorial for the victims of the plane crash in the Potomac River near Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, Jan. 31, 2025, in Arlington, Va. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana, File)

Experts say flying remains the safest way to travel because of all the overlapping layers of precautions built into the system, but too many of those safety measures failed at the same time last Jan. 29.

Here is some of what we have learned about the crash:

The helicopter route didn’t ensure enough separation

The route along the Potomac River the Black Hawk was following that night allowed for helicopters and planes to come within 75 feet of each other when a plane was landing on the airport’s secondary runway that typically handles less than 5% of the flights landing at Reagan. And that distance was only ensured when the helicopter stuck to flying along the bank of the river, but the official route didn’t require that.

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Normally, air traffic controllers work to keep aircraft at least 500 feet apart to keep them safe, so the scant separation on Route 4 posed what NTSB Chairwoman Jennifer Homendy called “an intolerable risk to flight safety.”

The controllers at Reagan also had been in the habit of asking pilots to watch out for other aircraft themselves and maintain visual separation as they tried to squeeze in more planes to land on what the Metropolitan Washington Airport Authority has called the busiest runway in the country. The FAA halted that practice after the crash.

That night a controller twice asked the helicopter pilots whether they had the jet in sight, and the pilots said they did and asked for visual separation approval so they could use their own eyes to maintain distance. But at the investigative hearings last summer, board members questioned how well the crew could spot the plane while wearing night vision goggles and whether the pilots were even looking in the right spot.

The Black Hawk was flying too high

The American Airlines plane flying from Wichita, Kansas, collided with the helicopter 278 feet above the river, but the Black Hawk was never supposed to fly above 200 feet as it passed by the airport, according to the official route.

Before investigators revealed how high the helicopter was flying, Tim Lilley was asking tough questions about it at some of the first meetings NTSB officials had with the families. His background as a pilot gave him detailed knowledge of the issues.

“We had a moral mandate because we had such an in-depth insight into what happened. We didn’t want to become advocates, but we could not shirk the responsibility,” said Lilley, who started meeting with top lawmakers in Congress, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy and Army officials not long after the crash to push for changes.

The NTSB has said the Black Hawk pilots may not have realized how high the helicopter was because the barometric altimeter they were relying on was reading 80 to 100 feet lower than the altitude registered by the flight data recorder.

Investigators tested out the altimeters of three other Black Hawks of the same model from the same Army unit and found similar discrepancies.

Past warnings and alarming data were ignored

FAA controllers were warning about the risks all the helicopter traffic around Reagan airport created at least since 2022.

And the NTSB found there had been 85 near misses between planes and helicopters around the airport in the three years before the crash along with more than 15,000 close proximity events. Pilots reported collision alarms going off in their cockpits at least once a month.

Officials refused to add a warning to helicopter charts urging pilots to use caution when they used the secondary runway at Reagan the jet was trying to use before the collision.

Rachel Feres said it was hard to hear about all the known concerns that were never addressed before the crash that killed her cousin Peter Livingston and his wife Donna and two young daughters, Everly and Alydia, who were both promising figure skaters.

“It became very quickly clear that this crash should never have happened,” Feres said. “And as someone who is not particularly familiar with aviation and how our aviation system works, we were just hearing things over and over again that I think really, really shocked people, really surprised people.”

Negotiations aimed at ending Russia’s invasion of Ukraine are yielding apparent signs of progress, but major challenges remain on the path to a final settlement, a senior Kremlin official said Monday.

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Talks between envoys from Ukraine, Russia and the United States in recent days in Abu Dhabi were constructive and another round is planned for next week, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told journalists.

He reported no major breakthrough so far, however, and added: “The very fact that these contacts have begun in a constructive way can be assessed positively, but there is still serious work ahead.”

Officials revealed few details of the talks held on Friday and Saturday, which were part of a yearlong effort by the Trump administration to steer the sides toward a peace deal and end almost four years of all-out war.

While Ukrainian and Russian officials have agreed in principle with Washington’s calls for a compromise, Moscow and Kyiv differ deeply over what an agreement should look like.

Meanwhile, the grinding war of attrition along the roughly 600-mile front line snaking through eastern and southern Ukraine has dragged on, and Ukrainian civilians are enduring another winter of hardship after Russian bombardment of cities in the rear.

U.S. President Donald Trump has set out deadlines for an agreement and threatened additional sanctions on Moscow, but Russian President Vladimir Putin apparently hasn’t budged from his public demands.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy also described the Abu Dhabi talks as constructive. He added Sunday that a document setting out U.S. security guarantees for Ukraine in a postwar scenario is “100% ready,” although it still needs to be formally signed.

Kyiv has insisted on postwar American security commitments as part of any broader peace agreement with Moscow after Russia’s 2014 illegal annexation of Crimea and support for separatist rebels in eastern Ukraine, followed by its full-scale invasion in February 2022.

Zelenskyy has acknowledged that there are fundamental differences between Ukrainian and Russian positions, though he said last week that peace proposals are “nearly ready.”

A central issue is whether Russia should keep or withdraw from areas of Ukraine its forces have occupied, especially Ukraine’s eastern industrial heartland called the Donbas, and whether it should get land there that it hasn’t yet captured.

Negotiators will return to the United Arab Emirates on Feb. 1 for another round of talks, according to a U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media. The weekend talks covered a broad range of military and economic matters and included the possibility of a ceasefire before a comprehensive deal, the official said.

Russia’s Defense Ministry said Monday that air defenses downed 40 Ukrainian drones late Sunday and early Monday, including 34 over the Krasnodar region and four over the Sea of Azov.

In this photo provided by Ukraine’s 24th Mechanized Brigade press service, servicemen fire a 2S1 Gvozdika self propelled howitzer towards Russian positions near Chasiv Yar town, Donetsk region, Ukraine, Sunday, Jan. 18, 2026. (Oleg Petrasiuk/Ukraine’s 24th Mechanized Brigade via AP)

Krasnodar officials said drone fragments fell on two industrial plants in the city of Slavyansk, sparking fires that were extinguished. One person was injured, they said.

By contrast, Ukraine’s general staff said an oil refinery in the Krasnodar region was targeted by Ukrainian forces. The facility supplied the Russian military, it added.

Russian forces launched 138 drones at Ukraine overnight, 110 of which were shot down or suppressed, Ukraine’s air force said, and 21 of them hit targets in 11 locations.