Hezbollah and the Amal Movement are willing to push for Suleiman Franjieh’s election as president with 65 votes even if he does not win the support of any of the two main Christian blocs – the Free Patriotic Movement and the Lebanese Forces, MP Ali Hassan Khalil said overnight.

“If Suleiman Franjieh gathers 65 votes without the two Christian blocs, we will push for his election, seeing as our priority is consensus, but when the battle becomes a battle of numbers, each side would do what its interest dictates,” Khalil said in an interview with MTV.

Although the meeting between a Hezbollah delegation and Free Patriotic Movement chief Jebran Bassil has broken the ice between the two parties, it has failed to bring the relation back to what it was, a local media report said.

Al-Akhbar newspaper reported Wednesday that the talks have failed to reach a solution, as Bassil insisted on refusing to elect Hezbollah's presidential candidate Suleiman Franjieh, blaming Hezbollah for attending two cabinet sessions boycotted by the FPM. Bassil added that Hezbollah's participation in any upcoming session would exacerbate the problem between the two parties, the daily said.

The arm-wrestling between Prosecutor General Ghassan Oueidat and judge Tarek Bitar, who is investigating the deadly 2020 Beirut port blast, is the latest of crisis-torn Lebanon's mounting woes, as the value of the national currency hit a new record low against the U.S. dollar on Wednesday.

Dozens protested in front of the Central Bank in Beirut, denouncing the slide of the Lebanese pound, which began in 2019.

On the outskirts of a southern Lebanese village, workers in a pickup truck parked at a nature reserve named after a fallen fighter of the militant Hezbollah group. They took two large eucalyptus tree seedlings out of the truck and planted them.

The men are from Green Without Borders, a non-governmental organization that says it aims to protect Lebanon's green areas and plant trees.

The U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) on Tuesday designated several individuals and associated entities accused of “facilitating financial activities for Hezbollah.”

By daring to charge powerful figures in the case of the devastating 2020 Beirut port blast this week, Lebanese judge Tarek Bitar has crossed all red lines and openly challenged an entrenched ruling elite.

Beirut port blast investigator Judge Tarek Bitar, who resumed his probe Monday in a surprise move after a 13-month suspension, has said that he did what his “conscience dictated” on him after “having reached a dead end.”

A U.S. State Department spokesperson said in a tweet Tuesday that "we support and urge Lebanese authorities to complete a swift and transparent investigation into the horrific explosion at the Port of Beirut".

The lead investigator into the blast, Judge Tarek Bitar, had decided Monday, to widespread surprise, to resume his probe into the disaster, despite the strong political pressure against him.

MP Ghazi Zoaiter angrily stormed out Tuesday of a session for the Administration and Justice Parliamentary Committee during the discussion of a law on the independence of the judiciary.

Judge Tarek Bitar has charged Prosecutor-General Ghassan Oueidat and judges Ghassan Khoury, Carla Shawwah and Jad Maalouf, a first in the country's history, a judicial official told AFP on Tuesday. 

The prosecution service, however, quickly pushed back, rejecting the resumption of the probe.