Senior American and Russian officials met in Saudi Arabia on Tuesday for the most extensive negotiations between the two countries in at least three years, as President Trump pushes to end the war in Ukraine and the Kremlin seeks warmer ties with Washington.

Ahead of the talks in Riyadh, the Saudi capital, Russian officials said they would pursue “normalization” with the United States, even holding out the possibility that major American oil companies could return to Russia.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio plans to meet Russian officials in Saudi Arabia in the coming days for talks aimed at ending the war in Ukraine, US officials say.

America's top diplomat will be joined by national security adviser Mike Waltz and the US special envoy to the Middle East, Steve Witkoff, the officials told the BBC's US partner CBS News.

US special envoy to Ukraine Keith Kellogg said Washington, Moscow and Kyiv would be involved in talks, but Europe was not invited.

A car-ramming attack on a Christmas market in the German city of Magdeburg — which left six people dead shortly before Christmas — will not be investigated as a terrorist attack, the country's Federal Prosecutor General Jens Rommel told regional channel SWR.

Rommel said the perpetrator of the attack, a Saudi-born doctor who described himself as an ex-Muslim, likely carried out the rampage "out of personal frustration" and didn't target state institutions.

The Saudi authorities, I am told, are currently working flat out to collate everything they have on the Magdeburg market suspect, Taleb al-Abdulmohsen, and to share it with Germany's ongoing investigation "in every way possible".

Inside the imposing sand coloured and fortress-like walls of the Saudi Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Riyadh there is a perhaps justifiable sense of pique.

Its glühwein stalls, festooned with Christmas lights and tinsel, stand emptied and shuttered.

On the cordoned off market street, in the center of Magdeburg, German police stand guard as, one officer told CNN, forensic teams carefully examine the crime scene before scrubbing the blood stains from the road.

The horrific car-ramming attack on this Christmas market on Friday night left at least five people dead, including a 9-year-old boy, plunging this provincial German city into shock.

Saudi Arabia privately hinted earlier this year it might sell some European debt holdings if the Group of Seven decided to seize almost $300 billion of Russia’s frozen assets, people familiar with the matter said.

The kingdom’s finance ministry told some G-7 counterparts of its opposition to the idea, which was meant to support Ukraine, with one person describing it as a veiled threat. The Saudis specifically mentioned debt issued by the French treasury, two of the people said.

The petrodollar died this month -- or so I learnt via the financial blogosphere. In the past fortnight, Google searches for “petrodollar” have spiked to a record, and viral posts about Saudi Arabia ditching the greenback have ricocheted throughout commodity and currency trading rooms. Apparently, a cataclysmic event has ended American economic hegemony.

Epochal stuff — and completely false. Nonsense on stilts.

An estimated 1,301 people have died during this year’s Islamic pilgrimage to Mecca, known as Hajj, due to sweltering temperatures at the Saudi Arabia holy site, CNN reported Sunday, citing Saudi officials.

Hundreds of people are thought to have died during the Hajj pilgrimage in Saudi Arabia - most of them due to extreme heat as temperatures soared past 51C (123F).

AFP news agency quoted an Arab diplomat as saying 658 Egyptians had died. Indonesia said that more than 200 of its nationals had died. India said 98 people were known to have died.

There were not enough medics or basic facilities to protect Hajj pilgrims from the effects of the sweltering heat in Saudi Arabia last week, two pilgrims recently returned from Hajj told CNN, as the official death toll from this year’s Hajj pilgrimage soared to almost 500.

Witnesses said worshipers losing consciousness and walking past bodies covered in white cloth became a norm during the mass religious event.