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High-level talks in Vienna aimed at bringing the United States back into the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran are moving ahead with experts working on drafting proposals this week, but a solution remains “far away,” Russia's delegate said Monday.

The European Union's foreign policy chief said Monday that in the face of the big military buildup of Russian troops near Ukraine's borders, it will only take “a spark” to set off a confrontation.

Security forces in Myanmar used violence on Monday against demonstrators who sought to celebrate last week’s formation of a shadow government to serve as an alternative to the military junta that has held power since a February coup.

NASA’s experimental helicopter Ingenuity rose into the thin air above the dusty red surface of Mars on Monday, achieving the first powered flight by an aircraft on another planet.

An American astronaut and two Russians have returned to Earth after six months aboard the International Space Station.

NASA chose SpaceX on Friday to build the lunar lander that will eventually put the first woman and person of color on the moon.

The Biden administration is privately weighing how to handle the upcoming verdict in the trial of former Minneapolis Police Officer Derek Chauvin, including considering whether President Joe Biden should address the nation and dispatching specially trained community facilitators from the Justice Department, aides and officials told The Associated Press. Closing arguments began Monday in Chauvin’s trial with a prosecutor telling jurors that the officer “had to know” he was squeezing the life out of George Floyd as he cried over and over that he couldn’t breathe and finally fell silent. Chauvin faces murder and manslaughter charges.

Former Vice President Walter F. Mondale, a liberal icon who lost one of the most lopsided presidential elections after bluntly telling voters to expect a tax increase if he won, died Monday. He was 93. The death of the former senator, ambassador and Minnesota attorney general was announced in a statement from his family. No cause was cited.

Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick, who was injured while confronting rioters during the Jan. 6 insurrection, suffered a stroke and died from natural causes, the Washington, D.C., medical examiner's office ruled Monday, a finding that lessens the chances that anyone will be charged in his death. Investigators initially believed the officer was hit in the head with a fire extinguisher, based on statements collected early in the investigation, according to two people familiar with the case. And they later thought the 42-year-old Sicknick may have ingested a chemical substance — possibly bear spray — that may have contributed to his death.

Firefighters in Cape Town finally brought a wildfire under control Monday after it swept across the slopes of the city's famed Table Mountain, burning the university's historic library and forcing the evacuation of some neighborhoods. The smoldering fire is being watched for flareups amid high winds and hot, dry conditions.

A Chinese painting from 1924 is expected to fetch at least $45 million in an auction in Hong Kong, as collectors' appetite for art continues to rise even amid economic uncertainty brought about by the coronavirus pandemic. The painting by influential Chinese modern artist Xu Beihong depicts a slave hiding in a cave and a lion. It is based thematically from ancient Roman mythology and Aesop's Fables, according to Christie's auction house, which unveiled the painting Monday.

Elation marked the opening Monday of a long-anticipated travel bubble between Australia and New Zealand. The start of quarantine-free travel was a relief for families who have been separated by the coronavirus pandemic as well as to struggling tourist operators. It marked the first, tentative steps toward what both countries hope will become a gradual reopening to the rest of the world.

The jury deliberating in the trial of Derek Chauvin, a former Minneapolis police officer charged in George Floyd 's death, is a racially diverse group that pledged before testimony began that they could set aside any preconceptions and decide the case based on the evidence.

The murder case against former Officer Derek Chauvin in the death of George Floyd went to the jury Monday in a city on edge against another round of unrest like the one that erupted last year over the harrowing video of Chauvin with his knee on the Black man's neck.

A former Texas sheriff's deputy was booked on a capital murder charge Monday after police say he shot and killed his ex-wife, teenage stepdaughter and another man during a weekend shooting that shut down a busy Austin shopping area and set off an overnight manhunt.

New York’s attorney general is investigating whether Gov. Andrew Cuomo broke the law by having members of his staff help write and promote his pandemic leadership book.

Prosecutors overseeing a grand jury investigation into the death of Daniel Prude last year in Rochester, New York, undercut the case for criminal charges with testimony from a medical expert who said three police officers who held Prude to the ground until he stopped breathing didn’t do anything wrong.

New York’s governor gained national attention last spring, and won an International Emmy, for daily, televised news briefings at which he answered barrages of questions from journalists about the COVID-19 pandemic. But lately, Gov. Andrew Cuomo has shied away from coming face to face with reporters as sexual harassment allegations against him have mounted.

There will be no hands to shake or backs to slap, no way to look a foreign leader in the eye. The small human moments that define statecraft will be reduced to images on a screen. President Joe Biden, a most hands-on politician, this week will host a major climate summit with dozens of world leaders — all of them stuck on Zoom.

The nation's largest coal miners' union said Monday it would accept President Joe Biden's plan to move away from coal and other fossil fuels in exchange for a “true energy transition" that includes thousands of jobs in renewable energy and spending on technology to make coal cleaner. Cecil Roberts, president of the United Mine Workers of America, said ensuring jobs for displaced miners — including 7,000 coal workers who lost their jobs last year — is crucial to any infrastructure bill taken up by Congress.

As President Joe Biden convenes a virtual climate summit on Thursday with 40 world leaders, he faces a vexing task: how to put forward a nonbinding but symbolic goal to reduce greenhouse gas emissions that will have a tangible impact on climate change efforts not only in the U.S. but throughout the world. The emissions target, eagerly awaited by all sides of the climate debate, will signal how aggressively Biden wants to move on climate change, a divisive and expensive issue that has riled Republicans to complain about job-killing government overreach even as some on the left worry Biden has not gone far enough to address a profound threat to the planet.