Free Patriotic Movement chief Jebran Bassil on Thursday accused political rivals of giving up Christian rights and said they “lost their mind” when he visited Maronite Patriarch Beshara al-Rahi to seek “consensus” over the next president.

“Without making a concession over representation, we have said that we might cede it to a person on whom we can agree to prevent (presidential) vacuum,” Bassil said in a video he posted on Twitter.

The Finance and Budget Committee, headed by MP Ibrahim Kanaan, convened Thursday to discuss the 2022 state budget law.

Kanaan asked the government to give realistic numbers for the so-called customs dollar that will determine the LBP to USD exchange rate to be used to calculate customs on imports.

U.S. energy mediator Amos Hochstein in present in Greece and is expected to visit Lebanon in late August to continue the negotiations with the Lebanese officials who are awaiting the Israeli response to the Lebanese sea border demarcation proposal, media reports said on Thursday.

“The resistance will soon send a military message to the Israeli enemy, in response to the policy of procrastination and maneuvering that it is showing,” informed sources told the al-Binaa newspaper.

Prime Minister-designate Najib Mikati told ministers in Tuesday’s meeting that he is “keen” on the formation of a new government, caretaker Health Minister Firass Abiad said on Thursday.

Progressive Socialist Party leader Walid Jumblat has slammed Free Patriotic chief Jebran Bassil, accusing him, along with President Michel Aoun, of obstructing reforms, especially in the energy sector.

Jumblat also criticized Lebanese Forces leader Samir Geagea and considered that Geagea has made it possible for Aoun to become President.

The stabbing of author Salman Rushdie has laid bare divisions in Lebanon's Shiite Muslim community, pitting a few denouncing the violence against fervent followers of Hezbollah who have praised the attack.

The attack struck close to home among Lebanon's Shiites. The assailant, 24-year-old Hadi Matar, is a dual Lebanese-U.S. citizen, and his father lives in a village in Hezbollah-dominated southern Lebanon. Matar's mother has said she believes her son's visit to the village of Yaroun in 2018 turned him into a religious zealot.

Relatives of Lebanese American Amer Fakhoury said they are happy to proceed with their lawsuit alleging that Lebanon's security agency kidnapped and tortured him before he died in the U.S., now that a judge has rejected the agency's attempt to strike the allegations.

Fakhoury died in the United States in August 2020 at age 57 from stage 4 lymphoma. His family says in the lawsuit, filed in Washington last year against Iran, he developed the illness and other serious medical issues while imprisoned during a visit to Lebanon over decades-old murder and torture charges that he denied.

Syria is not safe yet for millions of refugees to start going back home, a Canadian minister has cautioned during a visit to Lebanon. He spoke days after Lebanese officials announced a plan to start returning 15,000 Syrian refugees to their war-shattered country every month.

The remarks by Harjit Sajjan, Canada's minister of international development, followed his tour of the region that also took him to Jordan, where he visited Syrian refugees living in tent settlements.

The man charged with stabbing Salman Rushdie on a lecture stage in western New York said in an interview that he was surprised to learn the accomplished author had survived the attack.

Speaking to the New York Post from jail, Hadi Matar said he decided to see Rushdie at the Chautauqua Institution after he saw a tweet last winter about the writer's planned appearance.

President Michel Aoun warned Wednesday that “the effort of some countries to integrate the displaced Syrians present in Lebanon into the Lebanese society is a crime that Lebanon will not accept no matter what happens.”

Aoun voiced his remarks in a Baabda meeting with Canadian International Development Minister Harjit S. Sajjan.