A group of U.S. congressmen held meetings Saturday with Lebanon's top leaders during a fact-finding mission to a country roiled by an unprecedented economic crisis.

The delegation is to report to President Joe Biden and the Congress and propose ways to help the Lebanese. Lebanon's new government, in place since September, has struggled to kick off reforms and negotiations with the International Monetary Fund.

Police opened fire on protesters and seven people were injured in rioting that erupted in downtown Rotterdam around a demonstration against COVID-19 restrictions. The Dutch city's mayor called it "an orgy of violence."

Mayor Ahmed Aboutaleb told reporters in the early hours of Saturday morning that "on a number of occasions the police felt it necessary to draw their weapons to defend themselves" as rioters ran rampage through the port city's central shopping district, setting fires and throwing rocks and fireworks at officers.

America's top defense official vowed Saturday to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon and to counter its "dangerous use" of suicide drones in the wider Mideast, a pledge coming as negotiations remain stalled over Tehran's tattered atomic deal with world powers.

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin's comments in Bahrain at the annual Manama Dialogue appeared aimed at reassuring America's Gulf Arab allies as the Biden administration tries to revive the nuclear deal, which limited Iran's enrichment of uranium in exchange for the lifting of economic sanctions.

The buildup of Russian troops near Ukraine has left U.S. officials perplexed, muddying the Biden administration's response.

Some Republican lawmakers have been pressing the U.S. to step up military support for Ukraine. But that risks turning what may be mere muscle-flexing by Russian President Vladimir Putin into a full-blown confrontation that only adds to the peril for Ukraine and could trigger an energy crisis in Europe.

Chelsea's striker crisis is starting to ease.

Romelu Lukaku and Timo Werner are back in training and expected to return soon, though the English Premier League game at Leicester on Saturday is too soon.

Kevin De Bruyne contracted the coronavirus while on international duty with Belgium and is isolating, Manchester City manager Pep Guardiola said Friday.

Guardiola said De Bruyne found out on Wednesday that he had tested positive. He is back in England and is vaccinated.

Bayern Munich midfielder Joshua Kimmich is in quarantine again.

The German club said Friday that the unvaccinated Kimmich would miss the team's game at Augsburg. Although Bayern didn't give any more details, the 26-year-old Kimmich is also a doubt for the team's Champions League game at Dynamo Kyiv on Tuesday.

Stocks wobbled in morning trading on Wall Street Friday and major indexes were on track for a mixed finish to a choppy week.

The S&P 500 fell less than 0.1% as of 10:16 a.m. Eastern. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 247 points, or 0.7%, to 35,630 and the Nasdaq rose 0.5%.

Vandals slashed the tires on nearly a dozen Palestinian-owned vehicles overnight in a tense Jerusalem neighborhood where Jewish settlers have been waging a decades-long legal battle to evict Palestinians, residents said Friday.

CCTV footage shows three hooded men entering a fenced-off area of Sheikh Jarrah before stabbing the tires of parked cars. It was unclear who was responsible, but recent weeks have seen an escalation in settler violence toward Palestinians in the occupied West Bank.

A group of 39 Palestinians carrying Lebanese passports were waiting in a restricted area of the Barcelona airport for a fifth day Friday after they refused to board their flight during a stopover because they wanted to request asylum in Spain, the country's authorities said.

Their flight on Monday departed from Cairo and had the Ecuadorean capital, Quito, as its final destination, with scheduled stopovers in Spain's second-largest city and Bogotá, in Colombia, a spokeswoman with the Spanish government's delegation in the northeastern Catalonia region said. Barcelona is the regional capital of Catalonia.