Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he had an "excellent" meeting with President Donald Trump at the White House on Tuesday, their first sit-down since launching a joint war against Iran and it offered Netanyahu a chance to smooth out strains in their relationship.

The closed-door meeting lasted nearly an hour and a half and was "positive and productive," White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said. Trump, in a social media posting several hours after the talks, called it a "very good meeting" where "many important subjects were discussed" but offered no further details.

Jordan's air defenses intercepted five missiles launched from Iran early Wednesday, the country's military said, hours after the U.S. military said it had knocked down an Iranian missile barrage launched against American forces in the Middle East, shattering a brief pause in fighting.

In a statement, the Jordanian military said the missiles had been "intercepted and destroyed." Earlier, U.S. Central Command said they "remain vigilant and at a high state of readiness," and that it worked with Saudi Arabia's forces to strike sites in Iraq that Tehran-backed militias have used to launch attacks in recent days.

China pushed back Tuesday against claims of overcapacity in the world's second largest economy, ahead of the release of results of a U.S. probe on the matter that could result in new tariffs.

Massive capacity in a slew of Chinese industries, from automaking to solar panels, cement and steel manufacturing, among many others, has drawn increasing attention from Beijing's trading partners in recent years. Although China's own leaders have made rebalancing the economy a priority, slowing domestic demand has prompted companies to expand into markets overseas. Surging exports pushed China's trade surplus to a record of nearly $1.2 trillion last year.

Spanish firefighter Javier García has never faced anything like the record blaze raging near Madrid in his two decades protecting woodlands and rural communities.

"This doesn't have a precedent," García told The Associated Press by phone before another long day ahead.

Iraq's new prime minister, Ali al-Zaidi, arrived in Turkey on Tuesday for talks that are expected to include the construction of a pipeline to Turkey aimed at reducing the exposure of Iraq's oil exports to tensions in the Gulf region. It is al-Zaidi's third visit abroad since taking office.

Zaidi's meetings with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and other officials will also focus on security, trade, energy, transportation and water management, Turkish officials said.

The Trump administration is preparing to ramp up funding by hundreds of millions of dollars for programs designed to counter China's growing influence around the world, after it had put a halt to many of those initiatives last year during a flurry of budget and personnel cuts.

The administration notified Congress late last week that it intends to spend $175.8 million to replace outdated and aging undersea telecommunications cables in the Caribbean and Central America to prevent China from moving in. The Associated Press obtained a copy of the notification on Monday.

Since Russia's full invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the war has repeatedly spilled across Romania's border as drones violate the airspace of the neighboring European Union and NATO member.

Now Romania is trying something new to stop the incursions: shooting down the drones.

French authorities ordered nearly 4,000 people evacuated Tuesday from tourist sites on the Atlantic coast as returning heat threatened firefighters' fragile hold on a vast wildfire west of Bordeaux.

The new evacuations deepened a wildfire emergency of exceptional scale across southwestern Europe. Fires in France and Spain have forced roughly 330,000 people to evacuate, while Spain entered its fourth heat wave of the summer with several blazes still out of control, including its largest on record.

For Ali Darwich, the deadly attack on the Berlin Pride Festival was an attack on the city of Berlin and everything it stands for: its diversity, its tolerance and its belief in freedom.

On a personal level, it also was an attack on everything the Berliner embodies.

Haidar Darwish, a Syrian belly dancer and artist, took the stage at Berlin's Museum Island wearing a flamboyant hoop skirt and red fez. He asked the audience for a moment of silence and then said the show must go on — despite a fatal attack on the city's Pride celebrations that has plunged the LGBTQ+ community into mourning.

"Yesterday there was an attack and a hate crime on our community in Berlin during the Pride Parade," he told the crowd Sunday night, struggling to keep his emotions in check.