AP News in Brief at 6:04 a.m. EDT

Xi welcomed Putin with a ceremony at the Great Hall of the People only days after meeting with U.S. President Donald Trump. The quick succession of Trump’s and Putin’s visits highlighted Beijing’s growing role as an international superpower, experts say.

Putin greeted Xi warmly as they met for bilateral talks at the Great Hall of the People.

“My dear friend,” Putin said. “We are truly delighted to see you. We keep in constant touch, both personally and through our aides in the government.”

Xi also stressed the “political mutual trust and strategic cooperation” between the countries, according to Chinese state media. The two leaders have praised each other profusely in the past, with Xi at one point describing Putin as his “best and most intimate friend.”

Takeaways from Tuesday's primaries: Massie's loss leaves no doubt about Trump's power over the GOP

NEW YORK (AP) — President Donald Trump scored another win Tuesday against a Republican rival, dislodging Rep. Thomas Massie in Kentucky’s primary and knocking out one of his most outspoken critics on Capitol Hill.

Massie has been a particularly difficult thorn in Trump’s side. He pushed for the release of the Jeffrey Epstein files, opposed the war with Iran and voted against Trump’s signature tax legislation last year. He lost to Trump-backed challenger Ed Gallrein following the most expensive U.S. House primary in history.

While Trump has racked up several wins this primary season, this one perhaps sends an even more forceful message to the president's Republican critics. Massie was entrenched in his deep-red Kentucky district before his feud with Trump exploded, cutting short a congressional career that began in 2012.

Still, Massie will remain in Congress until his term ends in January, and without a Republican primary on the horizon, he now has a freer hand than ever to antagonize Trump.

Massie’s defeat is another sign that Republicans give their politicians vanishingly little leeway to cross Trump, who is bent on retribution and has persuaded his voters to defeat his adversaries again and again.

Where Trump falters with Republicans — and where he holds steady, according to a new AP-NORC poll

WASHINGTON (AP) — Republicans are unhappier with President Donald Trump's handling of the economy than they were a few months ago, but they're largely continuing to stand behind him as the war with Iran continues, a new AP-NORC poll finds.

About 6 in 10 Republicans approve of how Trump is handling the economy, according to the poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. That's down from about 8 in 10 in February, before the war began.

The poll comes as the war with Iran fuels higher gasoline prices, while the U.S. and Iran struggle to move toward a permanent ceasefire. Trump’s hold on the GOP remains strong, as he demonstrated on Tuesday when his handpicked candidate defeated Rep. Thomas Massie, a Trump critic, in a primary election challenge. The findings highlight Trump's continued strength within the Republican Party, even as economic frustration grows.

Ariel Gutierrez, a 55-year-old Republican in Wisconsin, usually requires his teenage children to pay for their own gas. But with spiking gas costs, he’s helping out his 15-year-old, who’s just learning how to drive.

“The whole Iran issue has just exacerbated it,” he said. “Maybe we were seeing it in groceries before, but now — with this push on gas and travel and all that — that is how people want to live the leisure part of their lives ... and it is directly impacting us there now. And yes, that is, I believe from Trump’s policies, not from his predecessors.”

Residents of Lithuania's capital told to shelter as drone alarm underlines NATO's eastern jitters

VILNIUS, Lithuania (AP) — Residents of Vilnius were told to take shelter and Lithuania's president and prime minister were taken to safe locations on Wednesday because of an alarm over drone activity near the border with Belarus, underlining jitters on NATO's eastern fringe over incursions related to Russia's war with Ukraine.

An emergency announcement from the military told people in the Vilnius region to “immediately head to a shelter or a safe place.”

The alert, which lasted for about an hour, also led to the closure of the airspace over Vilnius Airport. President Gitanas Nauseda and Prime Minister Inga Ruginiene were taken to shelters, and there was also an evacuation order at Lithuania's parliament, the Seimas, the BNS news agency reported.

It was the first major alert that sent residents and political leaders in a European Union and NATO capital rushing to shelters since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

Lithuania, a member of NATO and the European Union, borders Russia-allied Belarus to the east and Russia's Kaliningrad exclave to the west. Wednesday's alert came after the military said it detected drone activity in Belarus, but no drones were sighted over Lithuania.

Ukraine ally Britain eases sanctions on Russian oil as fuel prices surge over Iran conflict

LONDON (AP) — The U.K. government has quietly watered down sanctions on Russian oil in an effort to shelter Britons from the cost-of-living squeeze triggered by the closure of the Strait of Hormuz.

A trade license that came into effect Wednesday permits the import of Russian oil that has ben refined into jet fuel and diesel in third countries, such as India and Turkey.

The U.S.-Israeli war on Iran and Iran's closure of the strait, through which about a fifth of the world's oil usually passes, has sent fuel prices soaring around the world and sparked concerns about a shortage of jet fuel.

U.K. Treasury minister Dan Tomlinson said the changes are “for a time limited period and on a very specific issue.”

Britain has been one of Ukraine's strongest allies since Russia's full-scale invasion in 2022, and the government insist its sanctions against Russia remain among the toughest in the world.

Israeli minister orders West Bank hamlet evicted after hearing he may face arrest warrant overseas

JERUSALEM (AP) — Israel's finance minister has ordered the eviction of a Palestinian village in the Israeli-occupied West Bank that has long been a target of Israeli authorities, saying the measure is a response to reports that he may be a target of international war crimes prosecutors.

It was not clear whether the International Criminal Court is mulling an arrest warrant for the minister, Bezalel Smotrich. The Hague court said it keeps requests and plans for warrants confidential.

But the ICC already has issued arrest warrants for other Israeli figures, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, to face war crimes charges connected to Israel’s war in the Gaza Strip. Israel does not recognize the court's jurisdiction but the warrants could make international travel difficult.

Smotrich, who heads a far-right religious party and has led an aggressive expansion of Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank, did not say whether he had been formally informed by the court of the warrant or whether he was merely responding to media reports. Nevertheless, he said attempts to arrest him marked a “declaration of war."

"From today, any economic or other target that I have the power to harm within the framework of my powers as Minister of Finance and as a minister in the Ministry Defense will be attacked," he said.

Board of Peace will ask the UN Security Council to press Hamas to disarm

GENEVA (AP) — The body overseeing the U.S.-brokered ceasefire in Gaza will ask the United Nations Security Council to press the Hamas militant group to disarm, according to a report seen by The Associated Press on Tuesday.

The report by the Board of Peace, an international body set up by U.S. President Donald Trump and tasked with overseeing the fragile ceasefire between Hamas and Israel, is expected to be discussed by the Security Council on Thursday when it meets on the situation in the Middle East.

“At this stage, the principal obstacle to full implementation (of the ceasefire) remains Hamas’ refusal to accept verified decommissioning, relinquish coercive control, and permit a genuine civilian transition in Gaza,” the report said.

Hamas in a statement rejected the report and said it contains “fallacies.”

A diplomat familiar with the report confirmed its authenticity, speaking on condition of anonymity because it has not been made public.

Kentucky Rep. Thomas Massie charted his own way, until toppled by Trump

There aren’t many lawmakers like Thomas Massie left in Congress.

The renegade Republican who rose to prominence as an idiosyncratic and stubborn outlier in his party, popular in the Kentucky district that repeatedly sent him to the House, lost his primary bid for reelection Tuesday after a vicious and costly attack by President Donald Trump.

The stunning outcome caps a career like few others and shows the extent of the president’s ability to badger, badmouth and eventually boot out his political adversaries — and that no lawmaker is apparently safe. Massie's defeat comes after the Trump-led ouster of Sen. Bill Cassidy in Louisiana over the weekend and the president's endorsement Tuesday of Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton in his challenge to Sen. John Cornyn, which sent chills through the Senate.

Trump had reserved his fiercest attacks for Massie, a quirky conservative who had become among the most powerful rank-and-file Republicans in the House because of his willingness to vote as he pleased, rather than as the party demanded. And now he's been toppled like so many other Republicans who crossed the president.

Massie was undaunted after losing to Ed Gallrein, a former Navy SEAL handpicked by Trump.

US government agrees to drop tax claims against Trump in broadening of IRS lawsuit settlement

WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. government will permanently drop tax claims against President Donald Trump, according to a settlement document made public Tuesday, in an extraordinary use of executive power that could effectively help shield the president from further examination of his finances and legal conduct.

As part of the settlement deal meant to resolve Trump’s $10 billion lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service over the leak of his tax returns, the U.S. is “forever barred and precluded” from examining or prosecuting Trump, his sons and the Trump organization’s current tax examinations, according to a one-page document posted to the Justice Department's website.

The government is also barred from looking into Trump's family, affiliates and others, according to the document, which is signed by acting Attorney General Todd Blanche. That document is a separate addendum from the original settlement announced Monday, and was quietly added to the Justice Department website on Tuesday.

The White House referred Associated Press inquiries to the Justice Department, and the U.S. Treasury did not respond to Associated Press requests for comment.

The settlement refers only to existing audits, not future examinations, the Justice Department said in response to a request for comment on the expanded settlement.

WHO says risk of global spread of Ebola outbreak is low, but high at national, regional levels

GENEVA (AP) — The head of the World Health Organization said on Wednesday the risk of global spread of the Ebola outbreak in Congo and Uganda is high at national, regional levels but low at the global level.

WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said so far 51 cases have been confirmed in Congo in the northern provinces of Ituri and North Kivu provinces in Congo, “although we know the scale of the epidemic is much larger.”

He said Uganda has also told the U.N. health agency of two confirmed cases in Uganda’s capital, Kampala. “Beyond the confirmed cases, there are almost 600 suspected cases and 139 suspected,” he said. “We expect those numbers to keep increasing.”