How to watch the Orionid meteor shower, debris of Halley’s comet

How to watch the Orionid meteor shower, debris of Halley’s comet

By CHRISTINA LARSON AP Science Writer

The Orionids — one of two major meteor showers caused by remnants from Halley’s comet — will peak with the arrival of a new moon, providing an excellent opportunity to see shooting stars without interference from moonlight.

During Tuesday morning’s peak, expect to see up to 20 meteors per hour in ideal viewing conditions, said Thaddeus LaCoursiere, planetarium program coordinator at the Bell Museum in St. Paul, Minnesota. Viewing lasts until Nov. 7.

“Weather permitting, it will be a great show,” LaCoursiere said.

Halley’s comet passes near Earth every 75 years. Debris left by the comet leads to two major meteor showers every year.

“Sometimes the Orionids leave trains, these bright lingering streak in the sky,” LaCoursiere said.

Here’s what to know about the Orionids and other meteor showers.

What is a meteor shower?

As the Earth orbits the sun, several times a year it passes through debris left by passing comets and sometimes asteroids. The source of the Orionids is debris from Halley’s comet.

When these fast-moving space rocks enter Earth’s atmosphere, the debris encounters new resistance from the air and becomes very hot, eventually burning up.

Sometimes the surrounding air glows briefly, leaving behind a fiery tail — the end of a “shooting star.”

You don’t need special equipment to see the meteor showers that flash across the sky annually, just a spot away from city lights.

How to view a meteor shower

The best time to watch a meteor shower is typically after midnight, or in the early pre-dawn hours, when there’s usually less interference from moonlight.

Competing sources of light — such as a bright moon or artificial glow from lights on the ground — are the main obstacles to a clear view of meteors. Cloudless nights when the moon wanes smallest provide optimal viewing opportunities.

And keep looking up, not down. Your eyes will be better adapted to spot shooting stars if you aren’t checking your phone.

When is the next meteor shower?

The next major meteor shower, the Southern Taurids, is expected to peak early Nov. 5, when the moon is full.

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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

Meta adds parental controls for AI-teen interactions

Meta adds parental controls for AI-teen interactions

By BARBARA ORTUTAY AP Technology Writer

Meta is adding parental controls for kids’ interactions with artificial intelligence chatbots — including the ability to turn off one-on-one chats with AI characters altogether — beginning early next year.

But parents won’t be able to turn off Meta’s AI assistant, which Meta says will “will remain available to offer helpful information and educational opportunities, with default, age-appropriate protections in place to help keep teens safe.”

Parents who don’t want to turn off all chats with all AI characters will also be able to block specific chatbots. And Meta said Friday that parents will be able to get “insights” about what their kids are chatting about with AI characters — although they won’t get access to the full chats.

The changes come as the social media giant faces ongoing criticism over harms to children from its platforms. AI chatbots are also drawing scrutiny over their interactions with children that lawsuits claim have driven some to suicide.

Even so, more than 70% of teens have used AI companions and half use them regularly, according to a recent study from Common Sense Media, a nonprofit that studies and advocates for using screens and digital media sensibly.

On Tuesday, Meta announced that teen accounts on Instagram will be restricted to seeing PG-13 content by default and won’t be able to change their settings without a parent’s permission. This means kids using teen-specific accounts will see photos and videos on Instagram that are similar to what they would see in a PG-13 movie — no sex, drugs or dangerous stunts.

Meta said the PG-13 restrictions will also apply to AI chats.

Children’s online advocacy groups, however, are skeptical about Meta’s intentions.

“Meta’s new parental controls on Instagram are an insufficient, reactive concession that wouldn’t be necessary if Meta had been proactive about protecting kids in the first place,” said James Steyer, Common Sense Media founder and CEO. “On top of this, Meta is taking its sweet time, waiting months to implement this new feature at a pivotal moment where every second counts.”

“For too long, this company has put the relentless pursuit of engagement over our kids’ safety, ignoring warnings from parents, experts, and even its own employees.”

Meta AI chatbots, Steyer added, “are not safe for anyone under 18.”

Common Sense Media does not recommend minors use AI chatbots of any kind.

‘No Kings’ protests against Trump bring a street party vibe to cities nationwide

‘No Kings’ protests against Trump bring a street party vibe to cities nationwide

By MIKE PESOLI, MATT BROWN and GARY FIELDS Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — Large crowds of protesters marched and rallied in cities across the U.S. Saturday for “ No Kings ” demonstrations decrying what participants see as the government’s swift drift into authoritarianism under President Donald Trump.

People carrying signs with slogans such as “Nothing is more patriotic than protesting” or “Resist Fascism” packed into New York City’s Times Square and rallied by the thousands in parks in Boston, Atlanta and Chicago. Demonstrators marched through Washington and downtown Los Angeles and picketed outside capitols in several Republican-led states, a courthouse in Billings, Montana, and at hundreds of smaller public spaces.

Trump’s Republican Party disparaged the demonstrations as “Hate America” rallies, but in many places the events looked more like a street party. There were marching bands, huge banners with the U.S. Constitution’s “We The People” preamble that people could sign, and demonstrators wearing inflatable costumes, particularly frogs, which have emerged as a sign of resistance in Portland, Oregon.

It was the third mass mobilization since Trump’s return to the White House and came against the backdrop of a government shutdown that not only has closed federal programs and services but is testing the core balance of power, as an aggressive executive confronts Congress and the courts in ways that protest organizers warn are a slide toward authoritarianism.

In Washington, Iraq War Marine veteran Shawn Howard said he had never participated in a protest before but was motivated to show up because of what he sees as the Trump administration’s “disregard for the law.” He said immigration detentions without due process and deployments of troops in U.S. cities are “un-American” and alarming signs of eroding democracy.

“I fought for freedom and against this kind of extremism abroad,” said Howard, who added that he also worked at the CIA for 20 years on counter-extremism operations. “And now I see a moment in America where we have extremists everywhere who are, in my opinion, pushing us to some kind of civil conflict.”

Trump, meanwhile, was spending the weekend at his Mar-a-Lago home in Florida.

“They say they’re referring to me as a king. I’m not a king,” the president said in a Fox News interview that aired early Friday, before he departed for a $1 million-per-plate MAGA Inc. fundraiser at his club.

A Trump campaign social media account mocked the protests by posting a computer-generated video of the president clothed like a monarch, wearing a crown and waving from a balcony.

Nationwide demonstrations

In San Francisco hundreds of people spelled out “No King!” and other phrases with their bodies on Ocean Beach. Hayley Wingard, who was dressed as the Statue of Liberty, said she too had never been to a protest before. Only recently she began to view Trump as a “dictator.”

“I was actually OK with everything until I found that the military invasion in Los Angeles and Chicago and Portland — Portland bothered me the most, because I’m from Portland, and I don’t want the military in my cities. That’s scary,” Wingard said.

Tens of thousands of people gathered in Portland for a peaceful demonstration downtown. Later in the day, tensions grew as a few hundred protesters and counterprotesters showed up at a U.S. Immigration and Customs enforcement building, with federal agents at times firing tear gas to disperse the crowd and city police threatening to make arrests if demonstrators blocked streets.

The building has been the site of mostly small nightly protests since June — the reason the Trump administration has cited for trying to deploy National Guard troops in Portland, which a federal judge has at least temporarily blocked.

About 3,500 people gathered in Salt Lake City outside the Utah State Capitol to share messages of hope and healing after a protester was fatally shot during the city’s first “No Kings” march in June.

And more than 1,500 people gathered in Birmingham, Alabama, evoking and the city’s history of protests and the critical role it played in the Civil Rights Movement two generations ago.

“It just feels like we’re living in an America that I don’t recognize,” said Jessica Yother, a mother of four. She and other protesters said they felt camaraderie by gathering in a state where Trump won nearly 65% of the vote last November.

“It was so encouraging,” Yother said. “I walked in and thought, ‘Here are my people.’”

Organizers hope to build opposition movement

“Big rallies like this give confidence to people who have been sitting on the sidelines but are ready to speak up,” Democratic U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy said in an interview with The Associated Press.

While protests earlier this year — against Elon Musk’s cuts and Trump’s military parade — drew crowds, organizers say this one is uniting the opposition. Top Democrats such as Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and Independent Sen. Bernie Sanders are joining what organizers view as an antidote to Trump’s actions, from the administration’s clampdown on free speech to its military-style immigration raids.

More than 2,600 rallies were planned Saturday, organizers said. The national march against Trump and Musk this spring had 1,300 registered locations, while the first “No Kings” day in June registered 2,100.

“We’re here because we love America,” Sanders said, addressing the crowd from a stage in Washington. He said the American experiment is “in danger” under Trump but insisted, “We the people will rule.”

Republican critics denounce the demonstrations

Republicans sought to portray protesters as far outside the mainstream and a prime reason for the government shutdown, now in its 18th day.

From the White House to Capitol Hill, GOP leaders called them “communists” and “Marxists.” They said Democratic leaders including Schumer are beholden to the far-left flank and willing to keep the government shut to appease those liberal forces.

“I encourage you to watch — we call it the Hate America rally — that will happen Saturday,” said House Speaker Mike Johnson of Louisiana.

“Let’s see who shows up for that,” Johnson said, listing groups including “antifa types,” people who “hate capitalism” and “Marxists in full display.”

Many demonstrators, in response, said they were meeting such hyperbole with humor, noting that Trump often leans heavily on theatrics such as claiming that cities he sends troops to are war zones.

“So much of what we’ve seen from this administration has been so unserious and silly that we have to respond with the same energy,” said Glen Kalbaugh, a Washington protester who wore a wizard hat and held a sign with a frog on it.

New York police reported no arrests during the protests.

Democrats try to regain their footing amid shutdown

Democrats have refused to vote on legislation that would reopen the government as they demand funding for health care. Republicans say they are willing to discuss the issue later, only after the government reopens.

The situation is a potential turnaround from just six months ago, when Democrats and their allies were divided and despondent. Schumer in particular was berated by his party for allowing an earlier government funding bill to sail through the Senate without using it to challenge Trump.

“What we are seeing from the Democrats is some spine,” said Ezra Levin, a co-founder of Indivisible, a key organizing group. “The worst thing the Democrats could do right now is surrender.”

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Associated Press journalists Lisa Mascaro and Kevin Freking in Washington, Jill Colvin and Joseph Frederick in New York, Jeffrey Collins in Columbia, South Carolina, Hannah Schoenbaum in Salt Lake City, Terry Chea in San Francisco, Chris Megerian in West Palm Beach, Florida, and Bill Barrow in Birmingham, Alabama, contributed.

Jason Momoa worked with a coach to speak Hawaiian authentically in ‘Chief of War’

Jason Momoa worked with a coach to speak Hawaiian authentically in ‘Chief of War’

By JENNIFER SINCO KELLEHER Associated Press

HONOLULU (AP) — Jason Momoa drove a vintage pickup along a winding country road in Hawaii, a tattooed arm dangling out the window and Metallica blasting.

“POO’-ah-LEE’,” he said.

His passenger corrected him, again, modeling the subtle emphasis on the “u” sound: “Puali.”

Momoa was preparing for his role in “Chief of War,” the first major TV series featuring the language and culture of Hawaii’s Indigenous people. His passenger, Kahoʻokahi Kanuha, connected with Momoa years ago while they were both protesting against a giant telescope on a mountain summit held sacred by some Native Hawaiians. He wound up living with the Hawaiian Hollywood superstar for nearly a year as his personal language coach.

The word they kept working on during the drive can mean “warrior” or “army.” It was one of many to get right.

Like many Native Hawaiians in Hawaii and elsewhere, Momoa didn’t grow up speaking Hawaiian. Most of the other actors in the series also aren’t fluent. They worked with coaches like Kanuha to pronounce the vowel-laden sounds. Kanuha was at Momoa’s side 24/7, with a binder in hand of the actor’s lines to practice any chance they had — while driving, eating, working out.

“My objective was to be able to get him to say his lines, deliver his lines in a way that wasn’t distracting to the viewer,” Kanuha said.

The final product of the Apple TV series that premiered in August isn’t perfect, Kanuha and other Hawaiian language experts say, but it’s a successful global-scale contribution to revitalizing and normalizing a language that has endured erasure attempts amid colonization. They say it’s too early to quantify but that it can only help spark interest, especially among young Hawaiians who now have a mainstream representation of their language and culture.

While the first two episodes are mostly in Hawaiian, the language is spoken less as the series progresses from 18th-century Hawaiian society before contact with Europeans to Momoa’s character traveling beyond Hawaii.

Punished for speaking Hawaiian

“This is a moment where we’re showcasing our people, our language on a scale that says, we’re here … we are amazing and our language is beautiful and thriving,” said Moses Goods, an actor in the series who said he “grew up largely without the language.” Hawaiian was his mother’s first language, but her parents forbade her from speaking it as a child, he said.

An 1896 law, a few years after the overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom by American business owners, dictated English as the medium of education, said Kaʻiuokalani Damas, an assistant professor in Hawaiian language at the University of Hawaii at Hilo.

That resulted in a systemic devaluing of Hawaiian and forbidding children from speaking it, Damas said.

“We have lots of stories of students being beaten or made to haul boulders and rocks from one side of the school to the other,” he said. “Writing on the blackboard 500 times, ‘I will not speak Hawaiian.’ ”

By 1940, native speakers were rare. Revitalization efforts in the 1960s and 1970s to restore Hawaiian as the medium of education resulted in immersion schools. It’s difficult to count how many are fluent today, Damas said, noting that recent Census data showing more than 30,000 speakers includes a wide range of proficiency.

Hawaiian bubble

Momoa’s language coach started learning Hawaiian as a second language in 1994 at an immersion preschool.

“It’s not a language that my parents or my family spoke,” Kanuha said. “And so I learned as a kid that going through these programs … can sometimes be a very lonely journey.”

Now 36, Hawaiian is his primary language and the first language of his two young sons.

As a family, it can feel like they live in a Hawaiian bubble until they leave home and everything is mostly in English, he said. With the show, his children can enjoy entertainment in Hawaiian — when they’re not closing their eyes during violent battle scenes.

“How ironic that being Hawaiian — in Hawaii — speaking Hawaiian makes you feel lonely,” Kanuha said. “I think this helps to kind of start to reverse that a little bit.”

Other actors share their experiences

Before acting in the show, New Zealand-born actor Luciane Buchanan said she had barely heard Hawaiian spoken. Her mother is from the Polynesian country Tonga and her father is of Scottish descent.

“I’m not going to lie, it freaked me out because I wanted to do it, but I only speak English,” she said. “I’m Tongan, but don’t speak Tongan, so I understand that kind of language trauma that I can empathize with the (Hawaiians) that have that disconnect.”

She recalled having to also learn other characters’ lines with her coaches so she could react appropriately — “so it’s not like we’re giving blank faces.”

Actor Cliff Curtis drew on his identity being Maori from New Zealand as a way to make connections with Hawaiian language, but said there were also challenging differences.

“There’s a fluidity to the way that it flows in Hawaiian,” he said. “There is a different cadence.”

Apprehension about the outcome

Puakea Nogelmeier, a former professor of Hawaiian language at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, helped translate the script. He said he was nervous about the show’s outcome knowing how few of the cast were fluent in Hawaiian.

Nogelmeier isn’t Hawaiian, and he learned the language after moving from Minnesota to Hawaii in 1972. He said the show helps prove it’s a “functional, viable world language.”

“I was pleasantly surprised,” he said of the actors’ performances. “I’m afraid that even Apple doesn’t know how well they did.”

When Momoa first shared the idea of the show with Kanuha, he doubted it would ever happen. Before “Chief of War,” it was normal not to have any mainstream entertainment in Hawaiian, Kanuha said.

Now he can’t imagine a world without it.

“Not only to hear their language, but just to see our world,” he said. “To be able to see the world that we talk about, that we’re trying to preserve, to be able to visually see it and to hear it.”

He and others eagerly await news on whether there will be a second season.

___

AP journalist Leslie Ambriz in Los Angeles contributed to this report.

October 19th 2025

October 19th 2025

Thought of the Day

Photo by Getty Image

A man who cannot tolerate small misfortunes can never accomplish great things.

Brent Austin’s goal-line heroics secure California’s 21-18 win over Belichick and North Carolina

Brent Austin’s goal-line heroics secure California’s 21-18 win over Belichick and North Carolina

By JOSH DUBOW AP Sports Writer

BERKELEY, Calif. (AP) — Brent Austin forced a fumble at the goal line and recovered it in the end zone to preserve the lead in the fourth quarter, giving California a 21-18 victory over Bill Belichick and North Carolina on Friday night.

“Just came up a little bit short today, a couple inches I guess on the touchdown on the fumble,” Belichick said.

Belichick looked poised for his first win in four games against a power conference opponent since taking over the Tar Heels (2-4, 0-2 Atlantic Coast Conference) when North Carolina was driving for the go-ahead score.

Gio Lopez hit Nathan Leacock on a short pass and Leacock was running toward the end zone when Austin knocked the ball out just before he crossed the goal line. Austin then dove on the loose ball in the end zone to give the Golden Bears (5-2, 2-1) the ball back with 3:48 to play.

“That’s as good of an individual play as we’ve had this year,” Cal coach Justin Wilcox said.

Jaron-Keawe Sagapolutele then completed two key passes for first downs on the ensuing drive and Cal burned all but fives seconds off to get the win. Sagapolutele also threw a TD pass and ran for another score for the Bears.

Belichick arrived at North Carolina with plenty of fanfare after winning six Super Bowls as a head coach in the NFL. But the results have been underwhelming as the Tar Heels have lost all four games against power conference opponents,

After getting outscored by 87 points in the first three losses, the Tar Heels were far more competitive against Cal even if the end result was the same.

“We’ve been improving every week,” Belichick said. “I’m not going to back off. I think that’s true. But you can’t turn the ball over and win. It’s just too hard. We’ve got to eliminate some of those kind of mistakes.”

The game started like the season has gone for North Carolina with Shanard Clower losing a fumble on the first play from scrimmage and Cal turning it into a touchdown when Sagapolutele scored four plays later.

But the Tar Heels tied it on Benjamin Hall’s 18-yard run and trailed only 14-10 at the half for their closest first half in four games against power teams this season.

Cal took the second-half kickoff and drive down for a touchdown to take a 21-10 lead on Kendrick Raphael’s 2-yard run but couldn’t pull away as North Carolina cut it to 21-18 on Davion Gause’s TD run early in the fourth quarter.

The takeaway

North Carolina: The Tar Heels came into the game ranked in the bottom three among power conference teams in scoring and yards per play and didn’t do much to change that. They had no first downs on their first three drives and averaged 4.7 yards per play for the game.

California: The Bears bounced back from a lopsided home loss against Duke but weren’t sharp at all on offense. Sagapolutele completed just 21 of 39 passes and the team struggled to move the ball consistently.

Up next

North Carolina: Hosts No. 18 Virginia on Oct. 25.

California: At Virginia Tech on Friday night.

October 18th 2025

October 18th 2025

Thought of the Day

Photo by Getty Image

Only when all contribute their firewood can they build up a strong fire.

Wall Street rises to finish its best week in 2 months after bank stocks stabilize

Wall Street rises to finish its best week in 2 months after bank stocks stabilize

By STAN CHOE AP Business Writer

NEW YORK (AP) — Wall Street cruised to the finish of a winning week on Friday after banks recovered some of their sharp losses from the day before.

The S&P 500 rose 0.5%. The Dow Jones Industrial Average added 238 points, or 0.5%, and the Nasdaq composite climbed 0.5%.

The gains capped the best week for the S&P 500 since early August, but it was a roller-coaster ride. Indexes careened through several jarring swings as worries built about the financial health of small and midsized banks, as well as the souring trade relationship between the United States and China.

Some of the nervousness around U.S.-China trade tensions eased on Friday after President Donald Trump said that very high tariffs he threatened to put on Chinese imports are not sustainable.

Trump also told Fox News Channel’s “Sunday Morning Futures” that he would meet with China’s leader, Xi Jinping, at an upcoming conference in South Korea. That’s counter to an earlier, angry posting he made on social media, where he said there seemed to be “no reason” for such a meeting.

Bank stocks, meanwhile, stabilized on Friday after several reported stronger profit for the latest quarter than analysts expected, including Truist Financial, Fifth Third Bancorp and Huntington Bancshares. That helped steady the group, a day after tumbling on worries about potentially bad loans.

The two banks at the center of Thursday’s action also rose to trim some of their sharp losses.

Zions Bancorp., which is charging off $50 million of loans where it found “apparent misrepresentations and contractual defaults” by the borrowers, climbed 5.8% following its 13.1% loss.

Western Alliance Bancorp, which is suing a borrower due to allegations of fraud, rose 3.1% after its 10.8% fall on Thursday.

Scrutiny is rising on the quality of loans that banks and other lenders have broadly made following last month’s Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection filing of First Brands Group, a supplier of aftermarket auto parts.

One of the financial firms that could feel pain because of First Brands’ bankruptcy, Jefferies Financial Group, rose 5.9% Friday. It had come into the day with a loss of roughly 30% since mid-September.

The question is whether the lenders’ problems are just a collection of one-offs or a signal of something larger threatening the industry. Uncertainty is high following a long stretch where many borrowers were able to stay in business, even with the weight of higher interest rates. And with prices soaring to records for all kinds of investments, the appetite for risk may have gotten too high.

JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon addressed the issue on an earnings conference call with analysts earlier this week.

“When you see one cockroach, there are probably more,” Dimon said. “Everyone should be forewarned on this one.”

“But banks make loan loss provisions and typically have plenty of capital to keep the cockroaches from causing structural damage,” said Brian Jacobsen, chief economist at Annex Wealth Management. “Based on earnings and data so far, it looks like this isn’t an infestation” and that the potential canary in the coal mine “is probably passed out and not dead.”

All told, the S&P 500 rose 34.94 points to 6,664.01. The Dow Jones Industrial Average climbed 238.37 to 46,190.61, and the Nasdaq composite gained 117.44 to 22,679.97.

In the bond market, Treasury yields steadied following their sharp slides from Thursday, which came as investors rushed into investments seen as safer.

The yield on the 10-year Treasury edged up to 4.00% from 3.99% late Thursday.

Gold also pulled back from its latest record as more calm seeped through the market.

The price for an ounce fell 2.1% to $4,213.30, but it’s still up roughly 60% for the year so far. Besides worries about tariffs, gold’s price has also surged on expectations for coming cuts to interest rates by the Federal Reserve and concerns about the massive amounts of debt that the U.S. and other governments worldwide are building.

In stock markets abroad, indexes dropped across much of Europe and Asia after Wall Street’s weakness from Thursday moved westward.

Germany’s DAX lost 1.8%, and Hong Kong’s Hang Seng sank 2.5% for two of the world’s bigger moves.

___

AP Writers Teresa Cerojano and Matt Ott contributed.

Trump tells Zelenskyy he’s reluctant to sell Ukraine Tomahawk missiles after warning Russia he might

Trump tells Zelenskyy he’s reluctant to sell Ukraine Tomahawk missiles after warning Russia he might

By AAMER MADHANI and SEUNG MIN KIM Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump signaled to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Friday that he’s leaning against selling long-range Tomahawk missiles to Kyiv, while offering optimism that the war is moving toward an end that would mitigate a need for the powerful weapon.

Zelenskyy at the start of the White House talks said he had a “proposition” in which Ukraine could provide the United States with its advanced drones, while Washington would sell Kyiv the long-range Tomahawk cruise missiles that Ukrainian officials say they desperately need to motivate Russian President Vladmir Putin to get serious about peace talks.

But Trump said he was hesitant to tap into the U.S. Tomahawk supply, a turnabout after days of suggesting he was seriously weighing sending the missiles to help Ukraine beat back Russia’s invasion.

“I have an obligation also to make sure that we’re completely stocked up as a country, because you never know what’s going to happen in war and peace,” Trump said. He added, “We’d much rather have them not need Tomahawks. We’d much rather have the war be over to be honest.”

Zelenskyy and his top aides huddled with Trump and his team over lunch, a day after the U.S. president and Putin held a lengthy phone call to discuss the conflict.

Zelenskyy congratulated Trump over landing last week’s ceasefire and hostage deal in Gaza and said Trump now has “momentum” to stop the Russia-Ukraine conflict.

“President Trump now has a big chance to finish this war,” Zelenskyy added.

Trump’s shifting rhetoric on Tomahawks is certainly disappointing to the Ukrainians. In recent days, Trump had shown an openness to selling Ukraine the Tomahawks, even as Putin warned that such a move would further strain the U.S.-Russian relationship.

But following Thursday’s call with Putin, Trump began downplaying the prospects of Ukraine getting the missiles, which have a range of about 995 miles (1,600 kilometers.)

Zelenskyy had been seeking the Tomahawks, which would allow Ukrainian forces to strike deep into Russian territory and target key military sites, energy facilities and critical infrastructure. Zelenskyy has argued that the potential for such strikes would help compel Putin to take Trump’s calls for direct negotiations to end the war more seriously.

Putin warned Trump during the call that supplying Kyiv with the Tomahawks “won’t change the situation on the battlefield, but would cause substantial damage to the relationship between our countries,” according to Yuri Ushakov, Putin’s foreign policy adviser.

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha said that talk of providing Tomahawks had already served a purpose by pushing Putin into talks. “The conclusion is that we need to continue with strong steps. Strength can truly create momentum for peace,” Sybiha said on the social platform X late Thursday.

Zelenskyy also was using Friday’s meeting to discuss the possibility of energy deals with the U.S.

He was expected to offer to store American liquefied natural gas in Ukraine’s gas storage facilities, which would allow for an American presence in the European energy market.

Zelenskyy previewed the strategy on Thursday in meetings with Energy Secretary Chris Wright and the heads of American energy companies, leading him to post on X that it is important to restore Ukraine’s energy infrastructure after Russian attacks and expand “the presence of American businesses in Ukraine.”

It is the fourth face-to-face meeting for Trump and Zelenskyy since the Republican returned to office in January, and their second in less than a month.

Trump announced on Thursday following his call with Putin that he would soon meet with him in Budapest, Hungary, to discuss ways to end the war. The two also agreed that their senior aides, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio, would meet next week at an unspecified location.

The president said Friday it was “to be determined” if Zelenskyy would be involved in the talks in Hungary — suggesting a “double meeting” with the warring countries’ leaders was likely the most workable option for productive negotiations.

“These two leaders do not like each other, and we want to make it comfortable for everybody,” Trump added.

Before his call with Putin, Trump had shown signs of increased frustration with the Russian leader.

Last month, Trump announced that he believed Ukraine could win back all territory lost to Russia, a dramatic shift from his repeated calls for Kyiv to make concessions to end the war.

Trump, going back to his 2024 campaign, insisted he would quickly end the war, but his peace efforts appeared to stall following a diplomatic blitz in August, when he held a summit with Putin in Alaska and a White House meeting with Zelenskyy and European allies.

Trump emerged from those meetings certain he was on track to arranging direct talks between Zelenskyy and Putin. But the Russian leader hasn’t shown any interest in meeting with Zelenskyy and Moscow has only intensified its bombardment of Ukraine.

Asked Friday if he was concerned that Putin was stringing him along, Trump acknowledged it was a possibility but said he was confident he could handle the Russian leader.

“I’ve been played all my life by the best of them, and I came out pretty well,” Trump said. He added, “I think I’m pretty good at this stuff.”

___

AP writer Michelle L. Price contributed reporting.

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