Vice President JD Vance joined the grieving family of a Kentucky man who was the seventh US service member to die in combat during the Iran war as his remains were brought back to the US Monday evening.

The dignified transfer, a solemn event that honors US service members killed in action, took place at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware for Army Sgt. Benjamin N. Pennington, 26, of Glendale, Kentucky. He died Sunday after being wounded during a March 1 attack on the Prince Sultan Air Base, Saudi Arabia, a Pentagon statement said.

Vance and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth saluted alongside high ranking military officials as the transfer case draped with the American flag was carried from the military aircraft and into an awaiting vehicle.

Mike Bell, retired pastor of Glendale Christian Church, said he’d known Pennington since he was a toddler and got a call from Pennington’s father when the soldier was hurt.

“I talked to Tim Saturday morning, and he was doing a little better, and they were talking about maybe moving him to Germany,” Bell said. Tim Pennington called again that evening, Bell said, to ask for prayers as his son’s condition was worsening, and then later told him the soldier had succumbed to his injuries.

“He was just a quiet person,” said Bell, noting that Pennington attended the church’s after-school program. “I mean, he never attracted attention because he was just steady doing what he needed to do to do it.”

State and local officials grieve

Pennington was assigned to the 1st Space Battalion, 1st Space Brigade of the U.S. Army Space and Missile Defense Command based at Fort Carson, Colorado.

The unit’s mission focused on “missile warning, GPS, and long-haul satellite communications,” according to their website.

“This just breaks my heart,” Keith Taul, judge-executive of Hardin County, where Pennington was from, said in a statement emailed to The Associated Press. “I have known the family for at least 30 years. I can’t imagine the pain and suffering they are experiencing.”

Glendale is an unincorporated town of about 300 residents south of the Hardin County seat of Elizabethtown.

In a statement posted on social media, Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear called Pennington “a hero who sacrificed everything serving our country.”

Six other soldiers killed

The other six service members killed since the conflict began on Feb. 28 were Army reservists killed in Kuwait when an Iranian drone struck an operations center at a civilian port.

President Donald Trump on Saturday joined grieving families at Dover Air Force Base at the dignified transfer for those six US soldiers.

The dignified transfer is considered one of the most somber duties of any commander in chief. During his first term, Trump said bearing witness to the transfer was “the toughest thing I have to do” as president.

‘An American hero’

Pennington graduated in 2017 from Central Hardin High School, where he was enrolled in the automotive technology pathway, district spokesman John Wright told the AP. Former automotive tech instructor Tom Pitt, who taught Pennington in 2017 at Hardin County Early College and Career Center, called him “an American hero.”

“A lot of times as a teacher, you have students who are smart, you have students who are charismatic, who are likable, dare I say, enchanting,” said Pitt, who called Pennington Nate. “Rarely do you have students who are all of those. And Ben Pennington was all of those. He was basically the quintessential all-American.”

Photos on his and family members’ Facebook pages show that Pennington achieved the rank of Eagle Scout in August 2017. His Eagle project was the demolition of some old baseball dugouts in Glendale, said Darin Life, former committee chairman for Troop 221.

“If you look up Eagle Scout, his picture’s probably there,” said Life, who knew Pennington throughout his scouting career. “He loved his country. I would have expected nothing less of him than to lose his life protecting his country.”

Awards and decorations

A month after his Eagle ceremony, Pennington posted a photo of himself taking the oath of enlistment. He entered the service as a unit supply specialist and was assigned to the Space and Missile Command on June 10, 2025, the Army said in a release.

Among his awards and decorations were the Army Commendation Medal, Army Achievement Medal, Army Good Conduct Medal, National Defense Service Medal, Global War on Terrorism Service Medal and the Army Service Ribbon.

“The U.S. Army Space and Missile Defense Command is deeply saddened by the loss of Sgt. Pennington,” said Lt. Gen. Sean A. Gainey, USASMDC commanding general. “He gave the ultimate sacrifice for the country he loved.”

Col. Michael F. Dyer, 1st Space Brigade commander, described Pennington as “a dedicated and experienced noncommissioned officer who led with strength, professionalism and sense of duty.”

Pennington will be posthumously promoted to staff sergeant, the Pentagon said.

San Francisco International Airport welcomed its first non-stop Emirates flight from the Middle East since the start of the Iran war.

Thursday marked long-awaited reunions as passengers from Dubai finally embraced their loved ones.

Several travelers told ABC7 Eyewitness News their work trips became ordeals, leaving them stranded as conflict erupted. They described tense days sheltering, hearing distant explosions, and uncertainty about when they could return home.

Heather Doherty of Alameda set out for India on business, but her plans changed when her connecting flight from Dubai was forced to return mid-air because of escalating violence.

“I couldn’t be more relieved to be home,” Doherty said.

“It was five days of uncertainty, but I’m thrilled to be back on American soil,” she told the outlet.

“I spent the first night huddled on the floor next to my bed, worried about the windows exploding — so you hear alerts going off, you hear explosions in the sky,” she added.

Susan Daley from Chicago was also in the Middle East for work and described her experience to ABC. “We had a lovely lunch, then the bombing started, so we went back to the hotel, and at that point, we were sheltering in place, locked down, doing whatever they told us to do.”

For Dubai residents Jeyaram and Jayant Deshpande, the idea of returning to the Middle East brought no hesitation.

“The civilians are so safe,” said Venkatesh Jeyaram of Dubai. “We are very well taken care of. I’m absolutely not worried about going back to Dubai.”

The joint U.S.-Israeli military campaign, Operation Epic Fury, has escalated into a full-scale conflict to dismantle Iran’s nuclear infrastructure and achieve regime change.

As of March 5, 2026, the strikes have reportedly killed Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and devastated the Iranian Navy, while Tehran has retaliated with massive missile and drone barrages against U.S. bases and allies across the Persian Gulf.

When Russian tanks rolled into Ukraine four years ago, there was never much doubt that Roman Ratushnyi would take up arms. The 24-year-old was a seasoned independence activist, having been a teenage leader of the street protests that toppled Kyiv’s pro-Kremlin government in 2014.

When he died just three months into his military service, a street in Kyiv was named after him, and today his grave is a place of pilgrimage for young Ukrainians. The pilgrims also learn, though, that war is irredeemably cruel — as proved by the extra headstone that now lies next to his own. It marks the grave of his brother, Vasyl, who died in combat a year ago this Friday, leaving his parents mourning the loss of both sons.

“Even now, a year later, I’m not sure I can quite accept that it’s happened,” says the brothers’ father, Taras, 52, himself now a captain in an artillery brigade. “We in Ukraine are living through the most horrific experience in Europe since World War II.”

It is men like Taras whom Vladimir Putin would have hoped to have broken by now, wearing their morale down to the point where they no longer wish to fight. Yet as the invasion marks its fourth anniversary today, Taras sees light at the end of a very long tunnel. Not because he thinks victory is immediately within grasp or because he has any faith in Donald Trump’s peace talks. Instead, it is because the past year has been Ukraine’s toughest so far — and yet it has pulled through.

Relentless Russia

After all, it was 12 months ago this week that President Volodymyr Zelensky had his infamous Oval Office fallout with Trump, when the US leader warned that he didn’t have “the cards” to win without US support.

Since then, Russia has continued its slow but steady gains on the battlefield, grinding Kyiv down by its simple willingness to sacrifice far more troops. This winter — the coldest in a decade — Putin has also tried to break Ukraine’s civilian morale, bombing power stations to leave cities unheated in minus-13 degrees. This past Sunday, though, Ukrainians finally observed Kolidii, the traditional Slavic festival that marks the end of winter. And even if temperatures are only up to a balmy 33 degrees, there’s a sense of having weathered the storm.

“The Russians left millions of Ukrainians without heating and electricity, but it’s still not enough,” says Taras. “Did they get our missile or drone factories? No. We are still a force to be reckoned with.”

“There is a sense that the Kremlin has failed to seize the advantage,” adds Alina Frolova, deputy chair of the Center for Defense Strategies, a Ukrainian military think tank. “While things aren’t great, we may yet prevail.”

The mood is certainly more upbeat than at the start of winter last November, when Zelensky admitted Ukraine was facing “one of the most difficult moments of our history.”

 His government was engulfed in a corruption scandal over the theft of millions of dollars from the state energy provider, the outfit tasked with keeping the country warm in winter. Russian troops were close to seizing Pokrovsk, a strategically important city in the eastern Donbas region. And in US-instigated peace talks, Trump was pressuring Kyiv to a deal that would hand over yet more of its territory to Putin, despite Zelensky warning that Ukrainians themselves would never accept it.

Drones guard line

So how have things changed? On the front lines, Ukraine has focused on using drones rather than infantry, creating a 12-mile deep defensive “kill zone” that is extremely hard for Russian troops to break through. All Moscow can do now is send in small groups of soldiers on near-suicidal raids, which often progress as little as 15 yards a day.

For every single Ukrainian soldier who dies, between five and 25 times that many Russians perish, a ratio that is gradually sapping Moscow’s manpower advantage. Until now, Moscow has bought in new recruits by offering signup bonuses of up to $50,000 — a life-changing sum for many Russians. But Ukrainian officials say that since December, Russian casualty levels have outstripped recruitment. Sanctions, including those imposed by Trump last year on Russian oil, are also starving Moscow of the cash it needs to pay its troops.

The talks, meanwhile, have largely petered out and while Trump may not be giving Ukraine US weapons anymore, he has not stopped his Europe allies buying them on Ukraine’s behalf.

“These are potentially the best prospects Ukraine has had since the war started,” reckons Glen Grant, a former British diplomat and advisor to Ukraine’s defense ministry. He says if Europe ups its weapons supply and follows America’s lead in cracking down on Russia’s “shadow fleet” of oil-smuggling ships, Ukraine could “catch the moment,” shortening a war that might otherwise drag on till 2030.

Whether Putin wants the conflict to stop is another matter. Peace would bring back hundreds of thousands of battle-hardened, traumatized troops from the front. And if sanctions-battered Russia is no longer a home fit for heroes, then hard questions may be asked about whether it was worth it.

Indeed, as Putin’s “Special Military Operation” becomes the most disastrous five-year plan since the days of the Soviet Union, the real miracle is not that Ukraine is still hanging on, but that he is. Zelensky may not have “the cards” to win, but no longer does Putin — despite having once held all the aces.

Colin Freeman is the author of “The Mad and The Brave: The Untold Story of Ukraine’s Foreign Legion.”

President Trump had an emotional phone call with the parents of Staten Island native and Army Staff Sgt. Michael Ollis to inform them that their son would be posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor for heroically sacrificing his life in Afghanistan over a decade ago.

Robert and Linda Ollis were in the kitchen of their Staten Island home on Monday when the commander in chief greeted the couple on the phone and asked how they were holding up, according to a video posted on the SSG Michael Ollis Freedom Foundation Facebook page.

“We’re very nervous,” Robert said on speakerphone.

“You should be, because your son is going to get the highest honor that you can have,” Trump shared. “There is no higher honor than the Congressional Medal of Honor.”

The soldier’s father’s eyes lit up at the announcement, his expression shifting into a proud smile.

“He’s looking down at you right now, he’s saying, ‘Well, my mom and dad are handling this pretty well,’” Trump said of their son.

Ollis was just 24 years old, serving as an Army infantryman, when he was killed in Afghanistan on Aug. 28, 2013, during a Taliban attack on Forward Operating Base Ghazni.

In the chaos of the attack, Ollis threw himself between a suicide bomber and a Polish officer, absorbing the deadly blast and laying down his life in an act of pure selflessness.

Witnesses said his actions likely protected more than 40 service members and civilians on the base.

Ollis was initially awarded the Distinguished Service Cross, the Army’s second-highest combat award, before efforts began to elevate the recognition to the Medal of Honor, according to Military Times.

After years of advocacy by his family, veteran groups, elected officials — most notably Rep. Nicole Malliotakis, R-NY — and the Staten Island community, Trump approved the nation’s highest military honor for Ollis.

The Medal of Honor is reserved only for service members who go above and beyond the call of duty by showing remarkable valor and selflessness in the heat of battle, at the risk of their own lives.

The Medal is awarded after cases are rigorously reviewed, a process that requires detailed battlefield reports, at least two sworn eyewitness accounts, and additional corroborating evidence.

The couple expressed deep gratitude to the president for approving the Medal of Honor, which has been awarded posthumously 618 times, according to the Army.

“Thank you so much, Mr. President. You have no idea the happiness we have,” Robert shared.

“Thank you for facilitating this! This is so wonderful,” Linda said, adding that the family had advocated for their son to receive the honor for years and reached out to countless people before he finally approved it.

Trump also applauded the parents for their tireless work to keep their son’s story alive for more than a decade.

“Otherwise, how are we going to know, right? You know, people don’t know. So I think that’s fantastic,” Trump said.

Trump then told the pair that they would head to the White House for the ceremony, where a “few” recipients would also receive the honor, noting that they were “all brave people.” The president did not clarify whom he was referring to.

“I read what your son did, and it’s — I wouldn’t do it, Linda,” Trump told Ollis’ mother about her son’s bravery.

“I’m not brave enough either,” Linda said with a soft laugh.

“Neither am I. Even though I’m a Vietnam Vet, I still wouldn’t have done it,” Robert added.

Trump encouraged them to gather the family and “go celebrate,” reminding them their son would be proud before ending the call.