Russia says it is open for economic cooperation with the United States, including on energy and mining rare earth minerals.

Moscow’s comments came after US President Donald Trump said Monday he was in “serious discussions” with Russia about ending its war with Ukraine and was “trying to do some economic development deals” with Moscow, noting its “massive rare earth” deposits.

The comments also follow discussions between the US and Ukraine, in which Trump has demanded access to nearly half of Ukraine’s mineral resources in exchange for military aid.

“I want to stress that we certainly have much more of such resources than Ukraine,” Putin said of Russia’s rare earth deposits in an interview with state media correspondent Pavel Zarubin.

“Russia is one of the leading countries when it comes to rare metal reserves. By the way, as for new territories, we are also ready to attract foreign partners – there are certain reserves there too,” Putin said, in an apparent reference to Russian-occupied areas of Ukraine.

He added that Russia would be willing to sell “about 2 million tons” of aluminum to the US market if the US lifted sanctions restricting the import of Russian metals.

Putin also said Trump’s approach to Russia and Ukraine has been “based not so much on emotions as on cold calculation, on a rational approach to the current situation.”

The statements by Putin and his special envoy came the same day as Trump boasted about his ability to make a deal that could end the war between Russia and Ukraine during a joint press conference with the visiting French President Emmanuel Macron.

“I’ve spoken to President Putin, and my people are dealing with him constantly, and his people in particular, and they want to do something,” Trump said during the conference at the White House.

“I mean, that’s what I do. I do deals. My whole life is deals. That’s all I know, is deals. And I know when somebody wants to make it and when somebody doesn’t,” Trump added.

Ukraine has said previously that it wants security guarantees from the US as part of any deal – something the US president has so far refused to be drawn on.

Later, when asked what makes him think he can trust Putin, Trump responded: “I think it’s to the very much benefit of Russia to make a deal and to go on with – go on with leading Russia in a very positive way. That’s what you have to do.

“I really believe that he wants to make a deal,” Trump said of Putin. “Maybe I’m wrong, but I believe he wants to make a deal.

South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol faces a string of legal battles as the suspended leader fights to save his political career – and avoid prison – following his brief imposition of martial law last year.

Yoon’s December 3 decree threw South Korea into turmoil when he banned political activity and sent troops to the heart of the nation’s democracy – only to reverse the move within six hours after lawmakers forced their way into parliament and voted unanimously to block it.

The decree was swiftly met by widespread public anger, reviving painful memories of strongmen leaders who curtailed rights and freedoms in the country after the Korean War until its transition to democracy in the late 1980s.

Even several members of Yoon’s own conservative ruling party turned on him. On December 14, parliament voted to impeach him, suspending his presidential powers.

But a defiant Yoon has vowed to “fight to the end,” as the country’s top court reviews his impeachment and as he also appears in a separate criminal trial for insurrection.

Here’s what we know.

What’s happening in Yoon’s impeachment trial?

South Korea’s Constitutional Court will decide whether to remove Yoon from office permanently or reinstate him. It is now reviewing his impeachment by parliament after hearing weeks of testimony by high-ranking current and former officials.

Lawyers for parliament have argued that if Yoon is reinstated, he could try to impose martial law again or undermine constitutional institutions.

Yoon has argued that he had a right as president to issue his martial law decree. The former prosecutor-turned-politician said his move was justified by political deadlock and threats from “anti-state forces” sympathetic to North Korea.

Lawyers for Yoon have also argued that he never actually intended to stop parliament from operating, even though the order was publicly declared, and troops and police were deployed to the legislature.

Yoon also sent troops to the National Election Commission and later said the decree was necessary, in part, because the body had been unwilling to address concerns over election hacking, a claim rejected by election officials.

A ruling in the impeachment case is expected in March.

If the Constitutional Court upholds Yoon’s impeachment, he would become the shortest-serving president in South Korea’s democratic history, having taken office in May 2022. The country must then hold new presidential elections within 60 days.

If Yoon’s impeachment is upheld, it would also remove his immunity from most criminal charges.

What other charges does he face?

Prosecutors indicted Yoon on separate criminal charges related to his martial law decree of leading an insurrection. He was arrested in January after a weeks-long standoff between investigators and his presidential security team. He has since been held in solitary confinement at a detention center near Seoul.

Insurrection is one of the few criminal charges from which a South Korean president does not have immunity. It is punishable by life imprisonment or death, although South Korea has not executed anyone in decades.

The indictment alleges that Yoon’s imposition of martial law was an illegal attempt to shut down the National Assembly and arrest politicians and election authorities. Yoon has said his decree was intended as a temporary warning to the liberal opposition and that he always planned to respect lawmakers’ will if they voted to lift the measure.

Yoon’s lawyers have also repeatedly argued that his arrest was politically motivated and that the warrant was invalid because of flaws in the way the investigation was conducted.

The next preliminary hearing for the criminal proceedings is set for the end of March.

Yoon’s insurrection trial is expected to take months. A verdict could be reached by late 2025 or early 2026, according to legal analysts.

Meanwhile, the court is reviewing a request by Yoon’s lawyers to revoke his arrest order and release him from custody, though such challenges are rarely successful.

What important details did we learn from Yoon’s trial?

The impeachment proceedings offered dramatic details illustrating how Yoon and the military enacted the ultimately short-lived martial law order.

South Korea’s former Defense Minister Kim Yong-hyun said it was he, not the president, who first proposed the ill-fated brief period of military rule.

Kim said he wrote the controversial decree himself, which included a sweeping ban of political activity across South Korea.

“All political activities, including the activities of the National Assembly, local councils, and political parties, political associations, rallies and demonstrations, are prohibited,” the martial law decree said.

Both Yoon and Kim strongly denied ordering military commanders to “drag out” lawmakers inside the National Assembly. However, former Army Commander Kwak Jong-geun consistently testified he received direct orders from Yoon himself to forcibly remove assembly members.

Kim and lawyers for Yoon maintained the order was misheard – arguing the Korean word for lawmakers was confused with the similar sounding word for agents or soldiers.

Former first deputy director of the National Intelligence Service (NIS) Hong Jang-won also repeatedly testified Yoon told him to take advantage of martial law. He said Yoon described it as an opportunity to “arrest” a list of 14 political and legal adversaries and to “clean everything up” – which Yoon denies.

Is that all of Yoon’s legal troubles?

Possibly not: Yoon also faces the prospect of another legal battle.

Police have been investigating Yoon on suspicion of the special obstruction of public duty since around January 3, a police spokesperson told Reuters on February 22.

The crime is punishable by up to five years in jail.

A South Korean court issued an arrest warrant for Yoon on December 31 in the criminal investigation over his martial law decree. The warrant, however, was not executed until January 15 after Yoon did not comply, remaining holed up in his heavily fortified presidential compound as the Presidential Security Service blocked investigators for days.

In the months since Yoon’s martial law declaration, South Korea has been in political disarray with parliament also voting to impeach its prime minister and acting president Han Duck-soo. Finance minister Choi Sang-mok is now acting president.

Additional reporting by Reuters and the Associated Press.

A US teenager has been arrested in Paris after her newborn baby was allegedly thrown out of a hotel window and died, multiple French media outlets reported, citing a statement from prosecutors.

The teenager, who was not named, was taken to hospital to undergo an operation after giving birth and was subsequently placed under police custody, prosecutors said.

Her newborn baby “was apparently thrown out of the second-floor window of a hotel” in the 20^th arrondissement of Paris on Monday, prosecutors said. “The newborn was taken to emergency care but did not survive.”

Prosecutors said the young woman was part of a “group of young adults traveling in Europe.” An investigation into the homicide of a minor has since been opened, they added.

The case was first reported by Paris Match. AFP news agency and Le Parisien gave the woman’s age as 18.

This is a developing story and will be updated.

Australia learned about Chinese live-fire naval drills off the country’s coast that forced dozens of flights to be diverted via an alert from a commercial pilot, authorities said on Monday.

The People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Navy’s unprecedented show of firepower in waters between Australia and New Zealand has raised alarm in both countries in recent days as a clearer picture emerges of how much warning Beijing gave about the exercises.

The first notice of the Chinese drills in the Tasman Sea came in a radio transmission on an emergency frequency monitored by a Virgin Australia passenger jet on Friday, according to Australian officials.

The Virgin pilot relayed the information to Australian aviation authorities, who then issued a “hazard alert” via air traffic control, Airservices Australia CEO Rob Sharp told a parliamentary hearing.

Airservices Australia Deputy CEO Peter Curran told the hearing that at least 49 aircraft diverted their flight paths on Friday to avoid the flotilla of three Chinese warships conducting the exercise.

The New Zealand and Australian governments said China did not issue a Notice to Airmen (NOTAM) about the drills, which they said took place in two rounds in the Tasman Sea on Friday and Saturday.

A NOTAM tells aviators about airspace changes and can be issued up to seven days before events like the live-fire drills, according to US authorities.

China’s Ministry of Defense said Sunday that the exercises conducted in international waters complied with international law and did not affect aviation safety. It also slammed Australia for “hyping up” the drills and making “unreasonable accusations.”

Though the drills were held in international waters, Beijing could have given Australia and New Zealand a heads-up much sooner in the interests of safety, naval experts said.

Defense analyst Jennifer Parker, a former Australian naval officer, wrote in a blog post Sunday that the Chinese ships did not violate international law and were well within their rights to conduct the live fire drills where they did, in the open ocean.

“It’s not aggressive, it’s just what warships do on the high seas,” Parker wrote. “There is no legal obligation for foreign warships to notify coastal nations over 300 nautical miles away about live firing activities on the high seas.”

But Parker said the Chinese ships may not have followed best practices, under which live-fire drills should maintain a safe distance from commercial flight routes.

“Indications from flight diversions suggest that the Chinese warships may have been too close to civilian air transit routes. If this is the case, it represents poor practice that warrants diplomatic discussion,” she wrote.

Analyst Carl Schuster, a former US Navy captain, was blunter.

“Forcing aircraft to divert from their internationally recognized routes is considered unsafe and irresponsible,” Schuster said.

Australia’s Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said on Saturday that while China’s drills complied with international law, Beijing “could have given more notice.”

Judith Collins, the defense minister of New Zealand, said China’s warning should have come hours earlier.

“There was a warning to civil aviation flights, that was basically a very short amount of notice, a couple of hours, as opposed to what we would consider best practice, which is 12-24 hours’ notice, so that aircraft are not having to be diverted when they’re on the wing,” she told public broadcaster Radio New Zealand (RNZ).

‘Standard procedure’

By Tuesday, the Chinese ships had moved to about 160 miles east of Hobart on the southern island of Tasmania, and Australian and New Zealand defense forces were monitoring their movements, the Australian Defense Ministry said.

Australian officials said Monday that flight diversions continued throughout the weekend but did not cause any major disruptions to air traffic.

In such circumstances it’s best to exercise caution, analysts said.

“Airliners listen out on the standby radio to the 121.5 international distress frequency. The naval group will contact the aircraft on 121.5 before it reaches a ’threat’ range and demand it alter course to avoid overflight,” said Byron Bailey, a former Emirates airline senior captain.

“It is standard procedure not to overfly a naval battle group,” he said.

Bailey recounted how, when flying a 777 airliner over the Persian Gulf, a US Navy aircraft carrier strike group once ordered him to alter his course to avoid going over the US flotilla.

The PLA Navy ships – a frigate, a Type 055 destroyer and a replenishment vessel – had been sailing down the coast of Australia since mid-February, according to the Australian Defence Force.

Collins, the New Zealand defense minister, said the Chinese naval exercises were unprecedented in those waters.

“We’ve certainly never seen a task force or task group of this capability undertaking that sort of work,” Collins told RNZ.

While the exercises may be a first for China in the southern waters, such maneuvers are standard practice around the world, including by Australia and its allies in the South China Sea.

“Australia does this on our deployments, and we should avoid overreacting,” said Parker, the Australian analyst.

That fact was noted by Chinese netizens on social media, where the PLA Navy deployment has received significant attention.

“Our 055 went to Australia for live-fire exercises, and they conducted them twice,” one person wrote on X-like platform Weibo, referring to the powerful Chinese surface vessel in a post that hinted at tensions around the South China Sea’s contested Paracel Islands, which Beijing calls the Xisha Islands.

“We should have used this way to communicate long ago. I think the Australian side will understand! If you intrude my Xisha Islands, I will come to your doorstep.”

But Bailey, the former Emirates senior captain and a former Australian air force fighter pilot, said it was China that was being provocative.

The PLA Navy drills were “unprofessional and deliberately disrespectful,” he said. “The PLAN was just ‘giving the finger’ to Australia and New Zealand.”

Broadcaster YTN aired dashcam footage showing the towering deck of the overpass suddenly collapsing and slamming onto the road below.

The massive road network is still being built and no passenger cars were around the construction site.

Acting Interior and Safety Minister Koh Ki-dong urgently ordered relevant agencies, including the fire and police departments, to “mobilize all available equipment and personnel for rescue efforts, while ensuring the safety of firefighters,” according to the ministry’s press release.