Hopes for Ukraine-Russia peace talks crumble as Vladimir Putin turns down a face-to-face meeting with Volodymyr Zelensky.
Plus,
the Supreme Court prepares to hear its first oral arguments over President Trump's second-term agenda.
and Trans-Pacific trade roars back to life.
After the onset of the trade war,
trade between the U.S. and China started in some ways to grind to a halt.
But the thaw in recent days has pretty swiftly fed through into a resumption in activity.
It's Thursday, May 15th.
I'm Luke Vargas for The Wall Street Journal, and here is the AM edition of What's News,
the top headlines and business stories moving your world today.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is unlikely to get the face-to-face meeting in Turkey with Vladimir Putin that he'd been calling for this week,
with the Russian president instead sending a junior team of officials to Istanbul,
further diminishing prospects for direct negotiations, let alone an agreement to end the war.
James Marson is the journal's Ukraine bureau chief.
James, what can we read into this move by Putin?
We had played a clip of President Zelensky earlier in the week in which he seemed to be pressing Putin into attending,
basically saying that's what President Trump wanted to see happen.
And yet, evidently, Putin didn't feel pressure here.
Well, Putin had actually proposed these talks himself.
Both sides are trying to demonstrate, I think,