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NPR's Julie McCarthy, reporting from New Delhi, says the remains of all eight people aboard a U.S. Marine helicopter that went down in Nepal east of the capital, Kathmandu, have been recovered.

"Nepali special forces along with U.S. Marines and Air Force personnel were inserted into the crash site early Saturday. The Joint Task Force coordinating the U.S. military's disaster relief in Nepal said they are investigation why the [UH-1 ] Huey helicopter went down."

The aircraft went missing while delivering aid in the district of Dolakha on Tuesday. Contact with the chopper was lost shortly after a second quake hit the area.

The first of the bodies, including six Marines and two Nepalis, were recovered on Friday.

Lt. Gen. John Wissler, commander of the Marine-led joint task force, was quoted by The Associated Press as telling reporters in Kathmandu on Friday that his team could not immediately determine the cause of the crash or identify the bodies found.

"He described the crash as 'severe,' and said the recovery team at the site encountered extreme weather and difficult terrain," the AP says.

U.S. Marine Corps

Nepal

After the Republican presidential candidates finish their first debate this summer, many will head to Atlanta for a summit hosted by Erick Erickson, conservative activist and editor-in-chief of RedState.com.

This year, Erickson's RedState Gathering is scheduled for the same weekend as the Iowa Straw Poll.

Jeb Bush has already indicated he will go to the RedState Gathering rather than Iowa. Scott Walker, Carly Fiorina, Bobby Jindal, Marco Rubio and Rick Perry are also going. Most will try to attend both events, Erickson says.

Erickson has asked his guests this year to not just criticize President Obama as they make their case to be president.

"I would rather [have] them talk about where they want the country to be, should they get elected," he told NPR's Scott Simon. "What do they actually want to do as president? How do they think the country needs to be changed, and what should it look like by the end of their four years?"

Erickson objects to the media's — and the public's — fixation on candidate squabbles and "gotcha" moments.

"I'm not doing the RedState Gathering for the media or even the public at large," he says. "I'm doing it for the Conservative grassroots who are going to play an outsized role in picking the next presidential candidate for the Republicans."

Interview Highlights

Erickson's argument against Democrat-bashing — including Obama and Hillary Clinton

I think we should be judging them based on what they want to accomplish, as opposed to a 50-point plan no one's going to read or the latest red meat they can throw about the president ...

They're going to govern differently than Hillary Clinton, but when we're in the primary season, it is how these candidates are different from each other, not how they're different from the Democrats. Oftentimes, we get through several primaries before we kind of figure out how they're actually different from each other.

On promoting campaigns of substance

I'm very critical of a lot of people on both sides at the base level who've developed cults of personality. They don't know what candidate X thinks, but they just love candidate X. I think we need to figure out what candidate X thinks.

On his hopes that the politics of substance will catch on

I would like to see this done in the presidential debates. Instead of really trying to do gotcha moments between the candidates, there should be a discussion about the future of the country. There are a lot of people — not just Republicans, Democrats alike, liberals, conservatives, non-partisans — who get the sense that a lot of the leaders in Washington feel like they're just managing the decline of the country, as opposed to trying to revitalize the country. Hearing their views on that, and probing to see which sides they fall on, I think should be important for picking the president.

By the end of July during last summer's war in the Gaza Strip, more than 3,000 Palestinians crowded into a United Nations-run elementary school in Jabaliya, a northern Gaza town. They had moved there for temporary shelter after the Israeli military warned them to leave their homes.

An hour before dawn on July 30, explosions shook the classrooms and the courtyard, all packed with people.

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Palestinians collect human remains from a classroom inside Jabaliya school after it was hit by shelling on July 30, 2014. Marco Longari/AFP/Getty Images hide caption

itoggle caption Marco Longari/AFP/Getty Images

Palestinians collect human remains from a classroom inside Jabaliya school after it was hit by shelling on July 30, 2014.

Marco Longari/AFP/Getty Images

Mahmoud Jaser was camped outside with his sons.

"We were sleeping when the attack started. As we woke up, it got worse," he said.

Shrapnel hit Jaser in the back. Three of his sons were also hurt. About 100 people were injured overall. Almost 20 were killed.

Jaser still plays those minutes over in his mind.

"My neighbor told me his children were killed," he remembers. "I saw people without legs or heads. Then I lost consciousness. I woke up in the hospital."

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Mahmoud Jaser was hit with shrapnel in the July 2014 attack. In this April photo he is surrounded by four of his sons: clockwise from upper left, Adham, Odai, Abdel Razik and Saqir. Emily Harris/NPR hide caption

itoggle caption Emily Harris/NPR

Mahmoud Jaser was hit with shrapnel in the July 2014 attack. In this April photo he is surrounded by four of his sons: clockwise from upper left, Adham, Odai, Abdel Razik and Saqir.

Emily Harris/NPR

An investigation commissioned by U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki Moon recently concluded that Israeli soldiers hit the Jabaliya school with four high-explosive artillery shells.

It holds the Israeli military responsible for that attack and two others. Together, nearly 50 Palestinians were killed in the three attacks.

The U.N. inquiry found that in nearby Beit Hanoun on July 24, at least two high explosive mortars landed in a school courtyard as people gathered to evacuate to a safer shelter. Between 12 and 14 Gazans were killed, the public summary of the commission's inquiry says, and 93 people were injured.

In Rafah, bordering Egypt in the southern Gaza strip, the U.N. inquiry says a precision-guided missile targeting three men on a motorcycle struck the street outside the school gates mid-morning on Aug. 3. Fifteen people were killed, including a U.N. guard inside the school compound.

Hundreds of Palestinian civilians were killed in the seven weeks of fighting in Gaza. In general, Israel says that the Islamist group Hamas was storing weapons and firing from densely packed civilian areas. Israel says it targeted Hamas and that civilian deaths were not intentional.

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Israel initially denied wrongdoing in the Jabaliya and Beit Hanoun attacks. But after further examination of evidence, military prosecutors decided there is "reasonable suspicion" that soldiers may have not followed all the rules.

Prosecutors have opened criminal investigations into both attacks.

The drone attack in Rafah is still under investigation, according to Israeli deputy military attorney general Col. Eli Baron.

Israel told the U.N. board of inquiry, according to its report, that by the time it became clear the missile would strike the motorcycle outside a school, it was too late to redirect.

Baron says there is a range of possible outcomes in any of the scores of incidents under review.

"There could be a criminal indictment," he said, during an interview in his office at the Kirya, Israel's military headquarters in central Tel Aviv. "There could be disciplinary measures."

He also said military prosecutors use these investigations to examine whether battlefield guidance given to soldiers could be improved.

Even when criminal investigations are opened, as has happened regarding Jabaliya and Beit Hanoun schools, indictments are far from certain, Baron said.

"Many people think the mere fact that you launch a criminal investigation means you have, you know, a war criminal at the end of the road. And it doesn't necessarily mean that."

After a similar war in late 2008, dubbed Operation Cast Lead by the military, Israel's internal investigations led to a few convictions. According to news reports at the time, the longest sentence was seven months in prison, for credit card theft.

The U.N inquiry after that war openly called for compensation, specifically for damaged U.N. property. Israel paid the U.N. more than $10 million.

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In April, the courtyard of Jabaliya elementary school was full of materials to rebuild the destroyed classrooms. Emily Harris/NPR hide caption

itoggle caption Emily Harris/NPR

In April, the courtyard of Jabaliya elementary school was full of materials to rebuild the destroyed classrooms.

Emily Harris/NPR

Jaser, who now walks with pain and takes medication to calm his nerves, says he'd like Israel's investigation to result in financial help for survivors now too injured to make a living.

But a neighbor, Tala Abu Ghnaim, who was also at the school when it was hit, dismisses the notion that it's even possible to compensate for the damage done.

"What, they can kill us then 'compensate' us?" he asked. "We want safety."

Asked whether Israel would consider compensation this time, Col. Baron said he didn't know.

"Obviously that's a political decision," he said. "The [U.N.] secretary general said nothing about compensation in his [recent] report."

That doesn't mean it won't come up, says Farhan Haq, deputy spokesman for U.N. Secretary General Moon.

"If there is a need to pursue the issue of compensation, we'll pursue it," he says.

But he said the real priority is a lasting peace between Israel and the Palestinians.

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Fatiyeh abu Gamar, far left, stands with her 11 children. Their father — her husband — was killed while working as a guard at the school in Jabaliya. Emily Harris/NPR hide caption

itoggle caption Emily Harris/NPR

Fatiyeh abu Gamar, far left, stands with her 11 children. Their father — her husband — was killed while working as a guard at the school in Jabaliya.

Emily Harris/NPR

Meanwhile, the Beit Hanoun school is back up and running, with two shifts of students daily, as is usual in crowded Gaza schools. The badly damaged classrooms of the Jabaliya school are being completely rebuilt.

Eleven children who lost their father in that attack are struggling to rebuild their lives. Their mother, Fatiyeh Abu Gamar, now a widow, says she simply misses her husband being around to take care of the family.

He was often unemployed she said, but "when he was alive nobody dared to interfere in our family life. It's different now," she says.

Now male relatives are trying to tell her what to do, including take her daughters out of university.

Her youngest, a 9-year-old boy, says when he grows up he wants to kill Israelis in revenge for killing his father. Abu Gamar says she told him no — we don't know exactly who did it. Israeli prosecutors say they don't know either yet, and they may never.

Gaza Strip

Israel

Many U.S. passengers who have been wedged into coach-class seats on long flights might welcome more flying options — even if that competition came from overseas.

But the chief executives for Delta, United and American airlines say it's not fair if such competition involves big government subsidies given to state-backed carriers.

Persian Gulf carriers, namely, Qatar Airways, Emirates Airlines and Etihad Airways, are "dumping airline seats" into the U.S. market, and covering market losses with government subsidies, United Airlines CEO Jeff Smisek said Friday at the National Press Club.

The Gulf carriers say the accusations are untrue, and they are not violating any rules.

Smisek, joined by Delta Air Lines CEO Richard Anderson and American Airlines CEO Doug Parker, said subsidized seats on trans-Atlantic flights may help the foreign carriers, but are "quite detrimental to U.S. jobs."

The pilots, flight attendants and other U.S. airline workers in the audience cheered such remarks. Their unions have joined with management to pressure the White House to investigate practices they say violate "Open Skies" agreements that govern international airline competition.

Earlier this month, the Obama administration said it is launching a review of the matter. U.S. airline executives say the Gulf carriers have "flooded" the U.S. market with about 11,000 new daily seats, traveling from this country to Dubai, Doha and Abu Dhabi.

Last week, Qatar Airways said it would launch three new U.S. destinations – Boston, Atlanta and Los Angeles – next year.

Delta's Anderson said the Gulf carriers' surge in to U.S. markets is disproportionate to demand, and clearly the result of subsidization.

"The evidence is overwhelming," he said.

But groups representing passengers strongly disagree. They say U.S. carriers have benefited from mergers that did not get tough anti-trust scrutiny; bankruptcy filings that shifted pension obligations to the Pension Benefits Guaranty Corp.; and other forms of relief.

"These airlines want to close down the U.S. market to foreign carriers with no regard for consumers or airports in the U.S. that have lost air service and robust competition due to consolidation," said a statement from the Business Travel Coalition.

On Thursday, Etihad, an UAE-based airline, released its own report, saying Delta, American and United have received more than $70 billion in subsidies since 2000, mostly in the form of pension guarantees and creditor protections in bankruptcy.

U.S. carriers say Chapter 11 bankruptcy protections are not a "subsidy" as established by international laws.

If the Obama administration doesn't do more to check the growth of the Gulf carriers in this market, then airlines will seek action from Congress. Anderson said Delta has been a leader in raising objections and will continue to do so.

"We've been at it over two years and we're not going to stop," he said.

Airlines