Pep Guardiola insisted Erling Haaland is the "best striker in the world" despite refusing to confirm if the misfiring Manchester City star will start Sunday's crucial clash with Liverpool.

Haaland has scored just twice in his last 12 appearances, and Guardiola elected to drop him to the bench for City's 3-1 win over Newcastle in the League Cup semi-final second leg on Wednesday.

A record number of 5,973 international transfers were recorded in the January trading window for men's soccer, according to a FIFA report released Thursday.

That marks a 3% increase from the previous year in cross-border deals between clubs in different countries, where the transactions are processed by FIFA.

The White House on Friday rejected what it called "fake outrage" after US President Donald Trump posted an election conspiracy video that depicted former president Barack Obama and his wife Michelle as monkeys.

"This is from an internet meme video depicting President Trump as the King of the Jungle and Democrats as characters from the Lion King. Please stop the fake outrage and report on something today that actually matters to the American public," Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement to AFP.

Organizers of an international flotilla of boats carrying humanitarian aid to Gaza announced plans for another mission with more than 100 boats in March.

Campaigners, who organized a similar aid flotilla last year, described the upcoming mission as the biggest civilian-led mobilization against Israel's actions in Gaza. They called on the international community to prevent Israeli forces from intercepting the operation.

Basic services at a camp in northeast Syria holding thousands of women and children linked to the Islamic State group are returning to normal after government forces captured the facility from Kurdish fighters, a United Nations official said on Thursday.

Forces of Syria's central government captured al-Hol camp on Jan. 21 during a weekslong offensive against the Kurdish-led and U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces, or SDF, that had been running the camp near the border with Iraq for a decade. A ceasefire deal has since ended the fighting.

China and South Africa signed a framework agreement for a new trade deal on Friday as Africa's leading economy looks to other options following the high import tariffs imposed on it by the U.S. and its diplomatic fallout with the Trump administration.

South Africa's Ministry of Trade and Industry said the agreement would start negotiations over a deal that would give some South African goods, such as fruit, duty-free access to the Chinese market. The ministry said it expected the trade deal to be finalized by the end of March.

A burst of color lit up Lahore's night sky overnight as Pakistan's cultural capital relaunched the Basant kite-flying festival after nearly two decades.

Authorities said Friday that the celebration has been allowed only under strict safety regulations, warning that the use of hazardous kite strings that endanger lives could lead to arrests.

The European Union on Friday accused TikTok of breaching the bloc's digital rules with "addictive design" features that lead to compulsive use by children, in preliminary charges that strike at the heart of the popular video sharing app's operating model.

EU regulators said their two-year investigation found that TikTok hasn't done enough to assess how features such as autoplay and infinite scroll could harm the physical and mental health of users, including minors and "vulnerable adults."

A suicide bomber targeted a Shiite mosque on the outskirts of Islamabad during Friday prayers, killing 31 people and wounding at least 169 others, officials said, a rare bombing in Pakistan's capital as its Western-allied government struggles to rein in a surge in militant attacks across the country.

Television footage and social media images showed police and residents transporting the wounded to nearby hospitals. Some of the wounded in the attack on the sprawling mosque of Khadija Al-Kubra were reported to be in critical condition.

Wall Street was poised to open with gains early Friday as the technology sector clawed back a small portion of this week's losses and bitcoin's slide appeared to stabilize.

Futures for the S&P 500 and Dow Jones Industrial Average each rose 0.5% before markets opened. Nasdaq futures climbed 0.6%.