The judge leading the investigation into Beirut's deadly 2020 port blast will not step down from the probe, he told AFP Wednesday, rejecting charges brought against him by Lebanon's prosecutor general.

"I am still the investigative judge and I will not step down from this case," Tarek Bitar said, adding that prosecutor general Ghassan Oueidat "has no authority to charge me".

State Prosecutor Judge Ghassan Oueidat on Wednesday charged Beirut port blast investigator Judge Tarek Bitar for "rebelling against the judiciary" and slapped him with a travel ban, a judicial official told AFP.

Oueidat said that he charged Bitar in order to "prevent sedition."

“Very important decisions” will be taken in the Beirut port blast file within 24 hours, a pro-Hezbollah journalist said on Wednesday.

“All eyes on the Justice Palace.. Very important decisions will be taken in the port file within 24 hours,” the journalist Salem Zahran tweeted.

Protesters on Wednesday blocked roads and burnt tires near the central bank in Beirut as the weakened local currency plummeted to a new low against the dollar.

Alaa Kharchib of the Depositors' Outcry Association that had organised the demonstration warned of an impending "social explosion".

The United States is rerouting $72 million of America's assistance to Lebanon to help the country's cash-strapped government boost wages of its soldiers and police officers, the U.S. ambassador said Wednesday.

Washington is a key donor of the Lebanese Army and its 80,000 members, providing over $3 billion in military aid since 2006. The announcement Wednesday is the first time the U.S. is allocating funds for wages of security personnel in Lebanon.

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.”