On the surface, Chinese leader Xi Jinping's back-to-back summits with U.S. President Donald Trump and Russia's Vladimir Putin looked pretty similar, with formal handshakes in Beijing's Tiananmen Square, enthusiastic greetings from flower-waving children, and marching columns of soldiers with gleaming bayonets. But the visits also revealed how different China's relationship is with the two countries.

During Trump's visit, China sought to stabilize ties with the United States, while Putin's trip served to deepen its strategic partnership with Russia.

The day arrived when the Senate just said, No.

President Donald Trump's political revenge tour met its potential match this week as angry, upset Republican senators, pushed to a breaking point by his seemingly insatiable and outlandish demands — particularly a $1.776 billion fund for Jan. 6 rioters and others he believes were wrongly prosecuted — did the unthinkable.

The final draft of a possible agreement between the United States and Iran, mediated by Pakistan, is expected to be announced within hours, Al-Arabiya quoted sources as saying on Friday.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio is on his latest mission to assuage nervous U.S. allies in Europe about the Trump administration's intentions with NATO or at least put a friendlier face on whipsawing changes and uncertainty about American troop reductions.

Rubio will attend a NATO foreign ministers' meeting in Sweden on Friday — the same day senior Pentagon officials are expected to brief the 32-nation alliance on plans for the U.S. military's commitment to European defense at the alliance's headquarters in Brussels.

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio voiced hope on Thursday of progress on ending the war with Iran, with mediator Pakistan's army chief due to arrive in the Islamic republic for talks.

The expected visit by Field Marshal Asim Munir, a powerful figure with a growing role in Pakistan's foreign relations, comes a day after U.S. President Donald Trump warned that negotiations to end the war were on the "borderline" between a deal and renewed strikes.

Trucks carrying intercontinental ballistic missiles rumbled over forest roads, atomic-powered submarines set sail from Arctic and Pacific ports, and crews scrambled into warplanes as Russia and neighboring Belarus held the final stage of their joint nuclear drills Thursday.

Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko inspected Russian short-range nuclear-capable Iskander ballistic missiles at a military unit involved in the drills, declaring: "I dreamed about this machine a long time ago."

Ukrainian drones smashed into another Russian refinery overnight, starting a fire that produced huge clouds of black smoke, President Volodymyr Zelensky said Thursday, in what appeared to be the latest long-range attack on Moscow's vital oil industry.

The drones targeted the Syzran oil refinery, located more than 800 kilometers (500 miles) inside Russia, Zelensky said on social media, where he posted a video of the aftermath.

Over the past months, Ukrainian drones have crashed into the chimney of a power plant in Estonia, hit empty fuel tanks in Latvia and been shot down by Romanian fighter jets stationed in Lithuania.

For the first time in a NATO and European Union capital, Lithuanians were pictured sheltering in underground car parks in Vilnius on Wednesday, as authorities warned of unidentified drone activity in neighboring Belarus.

U.S. President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu discussed a new effort to reach a deal with Iran in a difficult call on Tuesday, three sources told U.S. news portal Axios, with one source saying Netanyahu's "hair was on fire" after the call.

A final agreement between the U.S. and Iran may be announced within hours, unnamed sources told Al-Arabiya television on Wednesday.