In reversal, Trump says he hasn’t ‘agreed to’ grant Ukraine licenses to produce Patriot missiles
Patriot launchers modules mounted on M983 HEMTT, part of the U.S.-made MIM-104 Patriot surface-to-air missile (SAM) system, are pictured on a open field on Feb. 18, 2023, in Zamosc, Poland. (Photo by Omar Marques/Getty Images)
(WASHINGTON) — President Donald Trump on Friday reversed course on his offer earlier this month to give Ukraine a license to produce Patriot air defense systems, saying during a Cabinet meeting that “we have not agreed to that.”
“We have to be very careful about letting somebody build them,” Trump said as he gathered his top officials at Camp David. “You have to be very judicious, but you have to be very careful. Now, we have not agreed to that. We’re talking about it. But it’s a hard thing to give away that kind of technology.”
The president’s remarks contradict Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s readout of their Tuesday meeting at the White House, in which Zelenskyy said Trump agreed to provide the license. Zelenskyy, while in Washington, met with executives at Lockheed Martin, the U.S. defense giant behind the Patriot missiles.
Trump’s Friday comments are also a departure from his own public message to Zelenskyy at the NATO summit in Turkey in early July.
“We’re going to give a license to you to make Patriots. That’s pretty cool, right?” Trump said to the Ukrainian president the time, adding: “This way he can’t complain that we’re not giving him enough. I said, ‘Make them yourself.'”
Zelenskyy has long raised alarm bells about the rapid depletion of U.S. Patriot missiles, which are widely considered to be the most effective tool to counter Russian missiles and drones.
Just as Trump’s Cabinet meeting was getting underway, Zelenskyy posted on X that he received a “good phone call” from Vice President JD Vance and reiterated that the Patriot missiles remain a “top priority.”
“He’d like to have some Patriots,” Trump said of Zelenskyy on Friday. “He’d like to have some Tomahawks, which are, you know, lethal. One offensive, one defensive.”
Trump called it a “big step” to provide such a license, and then suggested that Ukraine or any other nation given the sensitive technology could one day turn and use such weapons against the U.S.
“And I don’t think this would ever happen, but, you know, those people that you give that technology, they can someday turn on you. You know, that is possible,” Trump said.
“So, we have to be very careful,” he added.
Trump said he spoke to Zelenskyy, presumably during his visit to the White House earlier this week, about the weapons systems.
“I also spoke to him about let’s get this war over with,” Trump said.
Trump said both Ukraine and Russia will have to make concessions in order to end the yearslong war, which started when Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022.
“I said, ‘You got to get this war over.’ I think he wants to make a deal, and I think Putin wants to make a deal. But there’s a lot of dislike, as you probably notice,” Trump said. “Well, nobody wants concessions, but they’re both going to have to make some concessions. I mean, you got to make a deal.”
Undated photo of Karakoram Range, Pakistan (Photo by Uwe Steffens/ullstein bild via Getty Images)
(LONDON )– A team of 10 climbers, including one American, is missing after a reported avalanche on Broad Peak in Pakistan’s Karakoram mountain range, according to the Alpine Club of Pakistan.
The club said the avalanche was reported around midday Thursday and that it has lost contact with the expedition.
The team reportedly includes five Nepalese mountaineers led by climber Nims Dai, Pakistani climber Sohail Sakhi of Hunza, an Omani climber, American climber Mallory Geis, a Chinese climber and one other foreign climber, according to the Alpine Club of Pakistan. Renowned climber Nirmal Purja is also thought to be among the missing.
Broad Peak, where the climbers were traversing when the avalanche struck, is a 26,401-foot mountain in the Karakoram range in central Asia.
The Alpine Club of Pakistan said the entire team has been out of communication since the reported avalanche but confirmed that it is working with government authorities and relevant agencies to support an immediate search-and-rescue operation.
Two Pakistan Army aviation helicopters are carrying out rescue operations, while ground rescue teams are already searching the area.”Every possible effort is being made to ensure that helicopter support and all available rescue resources are mobilized at the earliest opportunity, subject to weather and operational conditions,” the club said in a statement.
The Alpine Club of Pakistan said it is continuing to monitor the situation and will provide updates as more information becomes available.
Burrowing sea anemone from the San Julian Peninsula in Argentina. (The Nippon Foundation-Nekton Ocean Census/Agustín Garese)
(NEW YORK) — Marine scientists have discovered a record number of new species living in the depths of the world’s oceans over the past year.
A total of 1,121 new marine species were discovered in a single year, marking a “significant step” in the research needed to understand and protect the oceans, according to the scientists behind The Nippon Foundation-Nekton Ocean Census, the world’s largest mission to accelerate ocean species discovery.
The whopping number of discoveries marks a 54% jump in identifications in a single year, the researchers said.
Among the new species discovered include corals, crabs, shrimps, sea urchins and anemones — some found living at depths of more than four miles beneath the ocean surface.
The “Ghost Shark” Chimaera, a distant relative of sharks and rays, was discovered in the Coral Sea Marine Park off the coast of Queensland, Australia. Chimaeras are among the most mysterious inhabitants of the deep ocean, the researchers said. They predate dinosaurs and diverged from rays and sharks into their own distinct evolutionary lineage nearly 400 million years ago.
Symbiotic bristle worms were found living within a “glass castle” on volcanic seamounts in Japan. The “castle” is actually intricate chambers of a glass sponge, whose skeleton is made of crystalline silica.
The ribbon worm, a predator marked by striking pigmentation, was discovered close to the surface, between depths of 3 and 16 feet.
A striking new species of shrimp — the Mediterranean shrimp — was also found in a sea cave off Marseille, France, the researchers said. It is marked by a vivid orange banding and intricate appendages.
The species were identified amid 13 expeditions across some of the world’s most remote and least-explored ocean regions, as well as nine discovery workshops, the researchers said.
“This year, Ocean Census has shown what is possible when scientific ambition is matched by global collaboration at scale,” Mitsuyuku Unno, executive director of the Nippon Foundation, said in a statement. “Through expeditions reaching polar depths to tropical seas, and the science to turn samples into discoveries, this team is revealing the extraordinary richness of ocean life.”
Up to 90% of ocean species remain undiscovered, previous research has suggested.
Documenting the breadth of species living in the oceans is necessary for policymakers and marine managers to properly protect the ocean, the researchers said.
The average time between a species’ initial discovery and its formal “description” in scientific literature is historically about 13.5 years, which puts species at risk of extinction before they are even catalogued, the researchers said.
“With many species at risk of disappearing before they are even documented, we are in a race against time to understand and protect ocean life,” Michelle Taylor, head of science at Ocean Census, said in a statement. “For too long, thousands of species have remained in a scientific “limbo” because the pace of discovery couldn’t keep up.”
To address this, marine scientists are now recognizing “discovered” as a formal scientific status that can immediately be recorded.
Iranians hold national flags as they gather in Tehran’s Revolution Square after the United States and Iran agreed to a two-week ceasefire, on April 8, 2026 in Tehran, Iran. (Majid Saeedi/Getty Images)
(LONDON) — As President Donald Trump pulled back from threats to annihilate “a whole civilization” when the Iranian regime agreed to a ceasefire and open the critical Strait of Hormuz, some people in the Islamic Republic expressed relief after juggling feelings ranging from despair to doom.
Trump had given the Iranian regime a deadline of 8 p.m. ET Tuesday — which would have been Wednesday, April 8, at 3:30 a.m. in Tehran — for the Iranian government to strike a peace deal or risk the destruction of all bridges and power plants in Iran.
He later extended the deadline to two more weeks as Iran agreed to open the Strait of Hormuz and work to forge a peace deal.
Sohreh, a 33-year-old journalist and resident of Tehran, told ABC News she felt an immediate sense of “relief” when she heard that a ceasefire agreement had been brokered.
“My heart was about to stop,” Sohreh said in a written message to ABC News of the hours she and other Iranian citizens spent on Tuesday bracing for the massive U.S. to strike on its power plants, bridges and infrastructure before the attack was called off. “I cried all day for Iran and prayed to a God I don’t believe in: ‘A miracle, please, send a miracle. I can’t live after the destruction of Iran.'”
Leading up to the ceasefire announcement, Iranians who have been in contact with ABC News throughout the conflict, which began with a Feb. 28 U.S.-Israel joint attack, recalled moments of joy as it appeared the Iranian regime was about to be toppled and disappointment that the Islamic Republican Guard Corps (IRGC) had refused to give up the fight.
An internet blackout imposed by the regime has made it challenging to communicate with people inside Iran, so it’s difficult to gauge how people in the country are feeling. Some have managed to get messages to ABC News.
“I am against the regime and I want them gone with every cell of my body. I have participated in the protests against the regime. But by no means I agree with a foreign power destroying what has been built by my people, for my people, and for the future of our children,” Fatemeh, a 40-year-old engineer who lives in Tehran, told ABC News in a written statement on Monday.
Citing security reasons, Iranians like Fatemeh and Sohreh who have communicated with ABC News, spoke on condition that their real names not be used.
Sohreh recalled a rollercoaster of emotions since the conflict began, from hope that the regime would be toppled to despair that it was hanging on and prolonging the pain of regular Iranians.
“I danced so much to the news of Khamenei’s death, so much that my legs hurt and I fell,” Sohreh said in a message to ABC News on Monday, referring to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the country’s supreme leader, who was assassinated in a strike on the first day of the conflict.
But as the war dragged on, Sohreh said she battled doubts that the U.S.-Israel attacks would bring the regime to its knees. “We ask ourselves what if the war continues?” she said.
“When they hit Asaluyeh, everyone was feeling terrible,” Sohreh said of Monday’s strike by Israel Defense Forces on Iran’s southern petrochemical infrastructure in the Persian Gulf port city of Asaluyeh. “We wonder what to do if they hit the infrastructure. They don’t belong to the Islamic Republic. They are built by our own children. They belong to Iran and the future of Iran.”
On Tuesday morning, Trump posted an ominous message on his social media platform, saying, “A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again.”
“I don’t want that to happen, but it probably will,” Trump wrote. “However, now that we have Complete and Total Regime Change, where different, smarter, and less radicalized minds prevail, maybe something revolutionarily wonderful can happen, WHO KNOWS?”
During a news conference on Wednesday morning, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth declared “a historic and overwhelming victory on the battlefield.
“A capital V military victory,” said Hegseth, adding that the U.S. military had “achieved every objective.”
Hegseth said that prior to the ceasefire being announced, the U.S. military was prepared to carry out the threat Trump made on Tuesday morning.
“Had Iran refused our terms, the next target would have been their power plants, their bridges and oil and energy infrastructure, targets they could not defend and could not realistically rebuild. It would have taken them decades. And we were locked and loaded,” Hegseth said.
He added, “President Trump had the power to cripple Iran’s economy in minutes, but he chose mercy. He spared those targets because Iran accepted the ceasefire under overwhelming pressure.”
Trump’s ominous statement on Tuesday came after he told reporters on Monday during the annual White House Easter Egg Roll, “The Iranian people, when they don’t hear bombs go off, they’re upset.”
“They want to hear bombs because they want to be free,” Trump said without attributing where he was getting his information from.
He went on to claim that the only reason Iranian civilians have not taken to the streets en masse to demonstrate against the regime is that “they will be shot immediately, and that’s an edict. That’s in writing.”
Leila, a 36-year-old resident of Tehran who works as a manager of a shipping company, said she agreed with Trump, telling ABC News on Monday that when she doesn’t hear bombs, she feels “upset.” Leila, who described herself as anti-regime, said she longs for the day she sees American soldiers in Iran to save them.
In an earlier message Leila sent to ABC News on March 30, she said, “We don’t have fear from the missile attacks, we just get very happy to watch them burning the bases of the IRGC.”
Darius, a 38-year-old anthropologist from Tehran, told ABC News in a message sent on March 25 that he was initially anti-regime, but as the bombing continued, his opinion of the regime had started to change.
“The noise of the bombs and the fact that they are actually killing a lot of civilians pushes us more towards let’s say rallying around the flag,” Darius wrote. “We are fighting this war as a country and even though the Iranian state is not my cup of tea and even though I detest many of the things they do, still, I prefer to stand by their side against a Nazi in the White House.”
At least 3,546 people, including 244 children and 1,616 other civilians, have been killed in Iran due to the U.S.-Israeli strikes since the war began, the U.S.-based Human Rights Activists News agency reported on Sunday.
