United States President Donald Trump plans to dramatically ramp up weapons sales to India this year, including supersonic F-35 fighter jets, following a meeting with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Modi met with Trump in Washington on Thursday where the pair discussed everything from trade to immigration, and security was high on the agenda.
“Starting this year, we’ll be increasing military sales to India by many billions of dollars,” Trump told a joint news conference with Modi.
“We’re also paving the way to ultimately provide India with the F-35 stealth fighters,” he said.
The US president said the two countries would work together on security issues, including “the threat of radical Islamic terrorism”, and a trade deal that will see India import more US oil and gas to shrink the US trade deficit with India.
Modi is only the fourth world leader to visit Trump since his inauguration, but the pair had developed a close relationship during Trump’s first term in office. Those ties may have helped the leaders strike the large defence deal.
India’s Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri later said the F-35 stealth fighter deal was a proposal at this point, with no formal process under way.
The White House did not respond to a request for comment by the Reuters news agency on the deal. Lockheed Martin, which makes the F-35 jet, also did not immediately comment on Trump’s ambitions to sell the jets to India.
US foreign military sales like those of the F-35 are considered government-to-government deals where the Pentagon acts as an intermediary between the defence contractor and a foreign government.
India has agreed to buy more than $20bn of US defence products since 2008.
Last year, India agreed to buy 31 MQ-9B SeaGuardian and SkyGuardian drones after deliberations that lasted more than six years.
According to the US Congressional Research Service, New Delhi is expected to spend more than $200bn over the next decade to modernise its military.
A US Air Force F-35 Lightning II aircraft receives fuel over Poland, on February 24, 2022 [Handout/US Air Force via Reuters]
‘Much tougher negotiator’
Following his meeting with Modi, Trump praised the Indian prime minister, who he described as a “much tougher negotiator” than himself.
Modi, in turn, described Trump as a “friend” and said he would adopt his own version of the president’s famous “Make America Great Again” tagline in India.
Beyond their “special bond” – as described by Trump – the two leaders also have strategic reasons to remain close.
The US sees India as a foil to China’s rising power, and both countries are members of the Quad security agreement alongside Japan and Australia.
India and China share a restive 3,488-kilometre (2,167-mile) border, where tensions bubbled over into a violent skirmish in 2020, resulting in the deaths of more than 20 soldiers.
New Delhi also needs US weapons to complete its ambitious and costly plan to modernise its military over the next decade.
While India is a longstanding customer of the US defence industry, its top supplier has historically been Russia.
United States President Donald Trump’s administration has again blocked The Associated Press from attending a White House event amid a dispute over the renaming of the Gulf of Mexico, the news organisation has said.
The AP said on Thursday that the White House prevented one of its reporters from attending Trump’s news conference with visiting Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
The AP said the incident came after its journalists were barred from an executive order signing ceremony and the swearing-in of Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard on Tuesday and Wednesday, respectively.
AP Executive Editor Julie Pace described the move as a “deeply troubling escalation” in the Trump administration’s efforts to punish the news organisation for its editorial decisions.
“It is a plain violation of the First Amendment, and we urge the Trump administration in the strongest terms to stop this practice,” Pace said in a statement.
“This is now the third day AP reporters have been barred from covering the president – first as a member of the pool, and now from a formal press conference – an incredible disservice to the billions of people who rely on The Associated Press for nonpartisan news.”
The Trump administration and the AP have been at loggerheads over the news organisation’s decision to continue using the “Gulf of Mexico” despite the US president issuing an executive order last month to change the body of water’s name to the “Gulf of America”.
The AP has argued that retaining the original name is appropriate as Trump’s order only carries authority in the US and the gulf partly resides within the territory of Mexico and Cuba.
On Wednesday, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said that the Trump administration would hold media outlets accountable for spreading “lies.”
“It is a fact that the body of water off the coast of Louisiana is called the Gulf of America. And I am not sure why news outlets don’t want to call it that,” Leavitt said, adding that the name had been updated in the official Geographic Names Server and recognised by private companies such as Apple and Google.
Eugene Daniels, president of the White House Correspondents’ Association, on Thursday condemned the Trump administration’s latest decision to deny the AP access as “outrageous”.
“The attempted government censorship of a free press risks a chilling effect on journalists doing their job without fear or favor on behalf of the American people,” Daniels said in a statement.
“This is a textbook violation of not only the First Amendment, but the president’s own executive order on freedom of speech and ending federal censorship. We again call on the White House to immediately reverse course and restore access to AP journalists.”
Russia’s Defence Ministry announced that its forces have captured Ukraine’s Vodyane Druhe settlement in the Donetsk region.
Moscow claimed it launched a coordinated overnight attack on Ukraine’s military airfields, ports and workshops for drone production, as well as fuel and lubricant storage sites.
Ukraine launched a huge wave of drones as well as missiles, Russia said, with 202 unmanned aerial vehicles shot down, along with three French-made Hammer guided bombs and United States-made HIMARS rockets.
Ukraine’s Security Service said the attack targeted Russia’s Andreapol oil pumping station, causing an oil leak and subsequent fire, the Reuters news agency reports.
Russia launched 140 drones in an overnight attack, the DPA news agency reports, with Ukrainian forces reportedly destroying 85 and more than 50 being lost before reaching a target. Damage and injuries were reported in Ukraine’s Kharkiv and Odesa regions.
Resident Natalia collects her granddaughter’s toys that were scattered around her home after it was hit by a Russian air strike in the town of Kostiantynivka, Donetsk region, Ukraine, on February 9, 2025 [Anatolii Stepanov/Reuters]
Ukrainian military commander Oleksandr Syrskii said his troops hold about 500 square kilometres (193 square miles) of Russia’s western Kursk region. The figure is about 800sq km (309sq miles) less than what Kyiv’s forces controlled in September.
A Russian attack on the town of Kramatorsk in eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk region killed a 46-year-old man and wounded five others, including a 16-year-old girl. A separate attack in the southern region of Kherson reportedly killed two more, aged 58 and 62.
Politics & Diplomacy
Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told reporters that a meeting between US President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin needed to be organised “promptly”.
Peskov said Moscow wants to discuss European security with the US president.
Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha told the Le Monde newspaper that Kyiv and Europe should not be excluded from future talks between Trump and Putin on ending the war in Ukraine.
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Kyiv would not accept any agreements on his country’s fate decided on by Washington and Moscow if Ukraine and Europe were not involved. He also called for a plan to “stop Putin” before any peace talks happen.
Zelenskyy warned global leaders against trusting Putin’s claim of willingness to end Russia’s war on Ukraine.
The European Union’s foreign affairs chief Kaja Kallas warned that any deal on the war in Ukraine made behind Europe’s back would fail.
Moldova’s Foreign Ministry “urgently” summoned Russia’s ambassador after two Russian drones exploded in Moldovan territory.
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said the number of documented missing people due to the Russian war on Ukraine more than doubled to 50,000 in the past year. The ICRC said about 90 percent of those missing are men and women in the military.
NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte said the military alliance had to make sure Putin never attacks Ukraine again but clarified that Ukraine was never promised NATO membership as part of a peace deal.
Reuters reported that the United Arab Emirates has offered to host peace talks between Russia and Ukraine.
Two of Silicon Valley’s most prominent tech titans, Elon Musk and his former protégé Sam Altman, are in the middle of a very public feud over the future of OpenAI, the company behind the groundbreaking ChatGPT.
Musk – the world’s richest man and CEO of Tesla and SpaceX – has filed multiple lawsuits over the past year to stop Altman from restructuring OpenAI from a hybridised nonprofit into a for-profit company.
Earlier this week, Musk raised the stakes by offering to buy the nonprofit for $97.4bn to preserve the original mission of the AI research lab – ensuring that “artificial general intelligence benefits all of humanity”.
Musk’s proposal was quickly rebuffed by Altman.
In the latest development, Musk said through his lawyers on Wednesday that he would drop his offer if OpenAI remains a nonprofit, which would prevent the company from accessing potentially billions of dollars in funding.
Amid their legal stoush, the two men have publicly traded barbs attacking each other’s character.
So how did things turn so acrimonious between two of Silicon Valley’s most famous CEOs?
What is the origin of the feud according to OpenAI?
Musk, 53, and Altman, 39, were once colleagues.
The two co-founded OpenAI in 2015 alongside several other prominent figures in artificial intelligence research. Musk and Altman served as the company’s first co-chairs.
At the time, Musk, as the founder of Tesla and SpaceX, was a much more well-known figure in Silicon Valley.
OpenAI began as a nonprofit, with a stated mission focusing on research and safety, rather than making money.
According to OpenAI’s account, problems began to emerge in 2017 when it became apparent that it would need much more computing power and hundreds of millions of dollars in funding if it hoped to create artificial general intelligence.
According to internal emails shared by OpenAI on its website, Musk allegedly wanted to switch to a for-profit entity with himself serving as CEO. As disagreement over the future of the company escalated, Musk is said to have withheld funding in retaliation.
Musk left the company in 2018, according to OpenAI, but was initially still supportive of its work. He went on to acquire Twitter in 2022 and founded his own AI company, xAI, in 2023.
In the years since Musk’s departure, OpenAI underwent major changes. In 2019, OpenAI created a for-profit subsidiary to help raise funds, turning the company into a sort of nonprofit-corporate hybrid.
Three years later, in 2022, the company became a household name, along with Altman, following the release of the groundbreaking ChatGPT.
What is the origin of the feud according to Musk?
Tensions between Musk and Altman began to escalate again in 2023 when Microsoft agreed to invest $10bn in OpenAI, on top of $3bn in earlier investments.
Musk did not respond to Al Jazeera’s request for comment, but his views on OpenAI have been shared in legal filings.
Musk alleged in a lawsuit last year that OpenAI had become a de facto subsidiary of Microsoft, calling the deal a deceit of “Shakespearean proportions” and a bid by Altman to “cash in” on generative AI.
Some of Musk’s concerns were, notably, shared by the United States and European regulators, who also launched antitrust investigations into the deal.
Musk expanded his lawsuit in November, arguing the two companies were monopolising the market in generative AI.
He alleged that Altman told investors not to back Musk’s xAI and other rivals during OpenAI’s latest round of fundraising and said that Microsoft and OpenAI’s relationship needed to be unwound to “preserve what is left of OpenAI’s nonprofit character, free from self-dealing”.
What have Musk and Altman said about each other?
The two CEOs have pulled punches online, in the media and in court filings. Earlier this week, the pair clashed publicly on X following Musk’s offer to buy the company.
“No thank you but we will buy twitter for $9.74 billion if you want,” Altman wrote, using the X’s former name.
“Swindler,” Musk wrote in response.
Going on the offence in the media, Altman said in an interview on Tuesday that his former mentor was motivated by his own demons – rather than concern for the future of Open AI – and operated “from a position of insecurity”.
“I feel bad for the guy,” Altman told Bloomberg TV at the Paris AI Action Summit.
“I think it’s to slow down a competitor and catch up with his thing, but I don’t really know … to the degree anybody does,” he said of Musk and his rival company, xAI.
Musk, for his part, has portrayed Altman as a greedy and “unscrupulous” con man in his lawsuits against OpenAI.
In court filings in August, Musk’s lawyers referred to Altman’s management of Open AI as a “hot-air philanthropy … long-con” and a “textbook tale of altruism versus greed”.
Musk’s lawyers also alleged that Altman and other members of OpenAI “intentionally courted and deceived Musk, preying on Musk’s humanitarian concern about the existential dangers posed by artificial intelligence”.
Why does OpenAI want to go private?
Altman and OpenAI’s board argue that the company needs to be restructured to acquire its next round of funding from Softbank, a Japanese multinational, which recently valued the company at $260bn.
While it is not unheard of for a company to switch from a nonprofit to a for-profit company – particularly in the healthcare sector – the scale of OpenAI’s endeavour stands out, said Rose Chan Loui, the founding executive director for the Lowell Milken Center on Philanthropy and Nonprofits.
Under OpenAI’s proposed restructuring, the for-profit subsidiary would compensate the nonprofit entity for its assets, creating a new for-profit company – but Musk’s offer of $97.4bn has complicated the deal, she said.
“If a conversion is going to go through, the next challenge is determining what amount of compensation the nonprofit should receive. This should be fair market value. Previously, OpenAI reportedly was contemplating something in the range of $30-40bn,” Chan Loui told Al Jazeera.
“Elon Musk’s offer challenges the adequacy of that number. The nonprofit board will need to ‘consider’ the offer, and OpenAI will need to explain – to the nonprofit board, as well as to the attorneys general of Delaware and California – why Musk’s offer is not better for the nonprofit than what OpenAI is willing to offer,” she said.
What does OpenAI say about Musk’s offer?
Besides Altman exchanging barbs with Musk online and in the media, OpenAI has filed a motion to dismiss Musk’s lawsuit.
In court, it has denied allegations that it tried to block funding to other start-ups and questioned Musk’s intentions.
In legal filings shared with Al Jazeera, Altman’s lawyer Jordan Eth said that Musk’s “concerns” about the OpenAI’s future “do not apply, so long as Musk and his allies are the buyers”.
A United States federal judge has temporarily blocked an executive order from President Donald Trump that curtailed access to gender transition care for people younger than 19.
Thursday’s ruling by District Judge Brendan Hurson stems from a lawsuit brought by the families of transgender teenagers and watchdog groups, such as the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).
In his decision, Hurson said that the executive order, which refers to gender-affirming healthcare as “chemical and surgical mutilation of children”, seems to “deny that this population even exists, or deserves to exist”.
The ruling represents the latest blow to Trump’s agenda in the courts, where the legality of many of his measures has been met with scepticism.
Trump’s order, issued on January 27, pledged to rigorously enforce laws to “prohibit or limit” what were termed as “destructive and life-altering procedures”, including the use of puberty blockers, hormones and surgeries for those transitioning.
It also called on the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to halt federal funds that may go to covering gender-affirming care or related research.
The ACLU and Lambda Legal, an LGBTQ civil rights group, represented the families involved in the ongoing lawsuit. They said their clients saw hospital services stop as a result of Trump’s order.
“Good and decent parents of transgender kids should never be in the frightening position of having their child’s prescribed, medically necessary care canceled at the whim and threat of a politician,” Brian K Bond, the chief executive officer of the LGBTQ advocacy group PFLAG, said in a news release.
A coalition of 13 state attorneys general, including New York’s Letitia James, also called on healthcare providers to continue providing necessary services to transgender youth, calling Trump’s order discriminatory.
“The Trump administration’s recent Executive Order is wrong on the science and the law,” a statement from the attorneys general said.
While transitioning is a lengthy and deliberate process that requires input and evaluation by professionals, Trump’s order characterised such steps as “maiming and sterilizing a growing number of impressionable children under the radical and false claim that adults can change a child’s sex”.
Republican politicians have heightened their attacks on transgender rights and services in recent years, often employing rhetoric that questions the legitimacy of transgender identity in general.
Trump himself signed a separate executive order on the first day of his second term saying his government would only “recognize two sexes, male and female” – and denying the concept of a “gender identity”.
He has also proceeded to threaten to withhold funds from schools that would allow transgender women and girls to participate in female sporting events.
Such restrictions are not limited to transgender youth, either. In another executive order taking aim at transgender members of the military, Trump said that “a man’s assertion that he is a woman, and his requirement that others honor this falsehood, is not consistent with the humility and selflessness required of a service member”.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has returned to the White House for his first visit of Donald Trump’s second term as United States president.
Trump and Modi’s relationship has been dubbed a “bromance” in some media outlets – and that affinity continued to simmer strongly during Thursday’s meeting.
The two leaders heaped praise on one another, while publicly sidestepping more prickly points of discussion.
Chief among them was the question of Trump’s newly announced “reciprocal tariffs”, in which he proposes to answer foreign import taxes on US goods with rates equal to what each country imposes.
Trump has long criticised India for its high tariff rate on foreign goods, even reportedly calling Modi the “king of tariffs”.
But at Thursday’s meeting, the two leaders announced they would pursue a “framework” for greater cooperation.
“ Prime Minister Modi and I have agreed that we will be in negotiations to address the long-running disparities,” Trump said, referring to the US-India trade relationship.
“But really, we want a certain level of playing field, which we really think we’re entitled to.”
But their newly announced framework went beyond import taxes, to include collaborations on space travel, international security and the energy trade.
Here are four takeaways from their meeting.
President Donald Trump shakes hands with India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi in the Oval Office [Alex Brandon/AP Photo]
Modi embraces Trump’s MAGA movement
Both right-wing leaders, Modi and Trump have both faced accusations of democratic backsliding in their countries.
The two leaders also recently won re-election in their respective countries: Modi in June, and Trump last November.
Much of their public appearances on Thursday was dedicated to affirming their commitment to one another, with Trump applauding Modi as a “great leader” and Modi calling Trump a “friend”.
Amid the back-slapping, Modi appealed to Trump’s pride in his slogan, “Make America Great Again”, offering an Indian twist on the motto.
“The people of America are aware of President Trump’s motto, ‘Make America Great Again’ or MAGA,” Modi said through a translator.
“Borrowing an expression from the US, our vision for a developed India is to ‘Make India Great Again’, or MIGA. When America and India work together, when it’s MAGA plus MIGA, it becomes mega – a mega partnership for prosperity.”
A member of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Modi also compared his Hindu nationalist platform to Trump’s “America First” agenda, saying that he too puts his country’s priorities first.
“One thing that I deeply appreciate and I learned from President Trump is that he keeps the national interest supreme,” Modi said through a translator. “And like him, I also keep the national interest of India at the top of everything else.”
Elon Musk listens as President Donald Trump meets with India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the White House [Alex Brandon/AP Photo]
India’s concessions on trade
Faced with the prospect of economy-buckling tariffs, world leaders have appealed to Trump with various concessions.
Mexico, for instance, has sent national guard troops to its southern border with the US. Canada set up a joint task force to combat fentanyl trafficking and organised crime.
And on Thursday, Modi arrived with his own offers, designed to blunt any economic measures Trump may take against India.
The two leaders emerged from their closed-door meeting with an agreement to increase trade between their countries, including through partnerships on space travel, artificial intelligence and energy production. Modi pledged a “ new scale and scope” to their shared objectives.
“We have also set ourselves the target of more than doubling our bilateral trade to attain $500bn by 2030,” Modi said.
As of 2024, total trade between the two countries amounted to an estimated $129.2bn, according to US government statistics.
The US has currently a $45.7bn trade deficit with India, with the South Asian country exporting $87.4bn of goods to the US. Trump, however, has publicly expressed his displeasure with such deficits, promising to narrow them and increase US exports.
He has blamed foreign tariffs on US goods, in part, for the disparity.
“Prime Minister Modi recently announced the reductions to India’s unfair, very strong tariffs that limit US access into the Indian market very strongly. And really it’s a big problem, I must say,” Trump repeated on Thursday.
But he flashed signs of optimism, saying that the US bond with India is “the strongest, I believe, it’s ever been”. He also implicated that India would increase its purchase of US energy products, helping to reduce the deficit.
“The prime minister and I also reached an important agreement on energy that will restore the United States as a leading supplier of oil and gas to India. It will be, hopefully, their number-one supplier,” Trump said.
The US president also teased an international infrastructure similar to China’s Belt and Road Initiative, linking allies across the world.
“We agreed to work together to help build one of the greatest trade routes in all of history. It will run from India to Israel to Italy and onward to the United States, connecting our partners by ports, railways and undersea cables – many, many undersea cables,” Trump explained.
He added that it would allow the US to “stay the leader” – a likely reference to continued economic competition with China.
Officials at the White House, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio, gather for the Trump-Modi meeting [Alex Brandon/AP Photo]
An emphasis on fighting ‘terrorism’
While the meeting was expected to centre on countering China’s international influence, another security matter emerged between the two allies: the spectre of “terrorism”.
Much of the focus was on Trump’s pledge to extradite Chicago businessman Tahawwur Rana. In 2013, a US federal court sentenced Rana, a Pakistani Canadian citizen, to 14 years in prison for “conspiracy to provide material support to a terrorist plot” against a news outlet in Denmark.
He was also convicted of providing material support for the 2008 Mumbai attacks, which killed 175 people.
Rana has appealed his impending extradition to India, where he is likely to face the death penalty. Last month, the US Supreme Court refused to block the extradition proceedings, and with Trump’s go-ahead on Thursday, it is all but certain to happen.
Modi praised Trump for his decision at Thursday’s news conference, comparing the Mumbai attacks to a “genocide”. He pledged “appropriate action” would be taken against Rana in India’s courts.
“ India and US will stand strongly together in the fight against terrorism,” Modi said.
“We agree that in order to eliminate cross-border terrorism, we need concrete actions. And I’m very grateful to President Trump that, in 2008, somebody who carried out genocide in India – that criminal is now going to be handed over to India.”
Trump, for his part, said the US would increase military sales to India “by many billions of dollars”.
“In addition, the United States and India will be working together like never before to confront the threat of radical Islamic terrorism – a threat all over the world, actually.”
Modi, however, has been accused of turning a blind eye to anti-Muslim violence and spreading anti-Muslim hate speech.
President Donald Trump and India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi shake hands during a news conference [Alex Brandon/AP Photo]
Trump faces questions about Ukraine peace deal
One topic, however, that continued to crop up had little to do with US-India relations.
Instead, Trump repeatedly fielded questions from reporters about his discussions with Russian President Vladimir Putin over the war in Ukraine.
The conflict started three years ago in February 2022, when Russia launched a full-scale invasion of the country. But on Wednesday, a flurry of high-profile calls raised hopes of a possible peace deal.
Trump had announced that morning that he had conducted a “lengthy and highly productive phone call” with Putin. He followed up with a second call to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
But while Trump and Putin exchanged agreements to visit each other’s countries, Ukraine and its European allies expressed increasing scepticism about the supposed negotiations.
Zelenskyy urged international leaders not to take Putin’s assurances at face value – and told news outlets that a peace negotiated without Ukraine’s consent was no peace at all.
Trump, meanwhile, appeared to echo Russian talking points at his news conference with Modi. Russia has long maintained that Ukraine’s desire to enter the NATO alliance was part of its motivations for war.
“Russia has gotten themselves into something that I think they wish they didn’t. If I were president, it would not have happened,” Trump said.
“Now, Russia’s taken over a pretty big chunk of territory. And they also have said from day one, long before President Putin, they’ve said they cannot have Ukraine be in NATO. They said that very strongly. I actually think that that was the thing that caused the start of the war.”
Russia has argued that the US assured the former Soviet Union in 1990 that NATO would expand “not one inch eastward” – though no formal agreement on the matter was ever struck.
Trump previously said it was “unlikely” that Ukraine would gain back the territory Russia started to take with the annexation of Crimea in 2014.
But when asked on Thursday if Russia would give up anything in the peace negotiations, Trump dodged the question.
