Manchester City star Rodri still is not fully comfortable on his return from a serious knee injury and might not be risked against Arsenal in the Premier League on Sunday at the end of an intense week of games, Pep Guardiola said.

Rodri, the reigning Ballon d'Or winner, was out for eight months last season with an ACL injury and is still recovering his full fitness after a setback during the summer at the Club World Cup.

South African trade officials have held talks with their U.S. counterparts in Washington, reports said Friday as Africa's largest economy looks to repair strained relations and negotiate the lifting of heavy tariffs imposed by the United States.

South Africa's department of trade, industry and competition said the country's Trade Minister Parks Tau and U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer held "cordial and constructive" talks following three days of intense discussions by senior officials from both countries.

France's president on Friday welcomed the arrest this week in the occupied West Bank of a key Palestinian suspect in a 1982 terror attack in Paris, calling it the result of "excellent cooperation" with the Palestinian Authority.

Russia and Vietnam have developed a back-door method of concealing arms deal payments to avoid American and other Western sanctions, using the profits from joint oil and gas ventures to pay off defense contracts without any open transfers of cash through the global banking system, according to internal Vietnamese documents obtained by The Associated Press.

U.S. President Donald Trump is talking with Chinese leader Xi Jinping on Friday in a push to finalize a deal to allow the popular social media app TikTok to keep operating in the United States.

The call between the two leaders began around 8 a.m. Washington time, according to a White House official and China's Xinhua News Agency.

A moment of truth: that's how French President Emmanuel Macron sees the recognition of a Palestinian state by France and other Western nations, with the hope to make it a landmark step in his push for peace in the Middle East as the devastating war in Gaza continues.

Weakened and unpopular at home, Macron is more than ever taking center stage in international talks. He is to formally declare France's recognition of a Palestinian state on Monday in New York at a United Nations conference co-chaired with Saudi Arabia, as the U.N. General Assembly starts.

The Taliban released on Friday a British couple held in Afghanistan for more than seven months on undisclosed charges, an official said, likely part of a wider effort to get their government recognized internationally years after taking power.

The official who steered the U.N.'s diplomacy in Syria for nearly seven turbulent years is resigning, expressing hope that the country's new leaders can turn the page on a long period of war and strife.

Geir Pedersen, who has held diplomatic posts for decades for the world body and his native Norway, told the U.N. Security Council on Thursday that he would leave his position in the "near future" but did not say when.

The United States once again vetoed a U.N. Security Council resolution Thursday that had demanded an immediate and permanent ceasefire in Gaza and the release of hostages, saying that the effort did not go far enough in condemning Hamas.

The 14 other members of the United Nations' most powerful body voted in favor of the resolution, which described the humanitarian situation in Gaza as "catastrophic" and called on Israel to lift all restrictions on the delivery of aid to the 2.1 million Palestinians in the territory.

Iran decided at the last minute Thursday to withdraw a resolution prohibiting attacks on nuclear facilities that it had put forward along with China, Russia and other countries for a vote before an annual gathering of the U.N. nuclear watchdog's member nations.

Western diplomats, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations, said the U.S. has been heavily lobbying behind the scenes to prevent the resolution from being adopted. The U.S. has raised the possibility of reducing funding to the International Atomic Energy Agency if the resolution was adopted and if the body moved to curtail Israel's rights within the agency, the diplomats said.