Former minister Jihad Azour has met Maronite Patriarch Beshara al-Rahi and Amal MP Ali Hassan Khalil, on a four-day visit to Lebanon, MTV said Tuesday.

Azour also met former Democratic Gathering bloc MP Nehme Tohme, the media outlet reported.

Caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati and Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri arrived Tuesday at Beirut's airport to take a helicopter that will transport them to the drilling rig in Block 9.

Mikati, Berri, caretaker Energy Minister Walid Fayyad and caretaker Minister of Public Works and Transport Ali Hamiyeh visited the Transocean Barents drilling rig which will start within a few days searching for gas in Block 9 offshore Lebanon.

Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi’s upcoming visit to Saudi Arabia will tackle the Lebanese presidential file, media reports said.

Talks between the Free Patriotic Movement and Hezbollah are progressing calmly and rationally, a former FPM MP said.

Ex-lawmaker Amal Abou Zeid told Kuwaiti newspaper al-Anbaa, in remarks published Monday, that FPM chief Jebran Bassil and Hezbollah coordination and liaison official Wafiq Safa are calmly negotiating to find effective solutions not only to the presidential crisis, but also to a number of political, economic and security crises. The talks include the Trust Fund and the broad administrative and financial decentralization.

The French President’s Special Envoy to Lebanon Jean-Yves Le Drian might postpone his upcoming visit to Lebanon from the first week of September to the third week of September, the Progressive Socialist Party’s al-Anbaa news portal reported on Monday.

Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri has criticized those rejecting a Lebanese dialogue proposed by France, his circles told An-Nahar newspaper, in remarks published Monday.

The sources quoted Berri as saying that it would have been better for the opposition MPs to respond to French envoy Jean Yves Le Drian's call for a dialogue, instead of "betting on other options."

Maronite Patriarch Beshara al-Rahi on Sunday slammed those who “have been blocking the election of a president for the past 11 months, accusing them of “violating the constitution, destroying the republic, impeding economic and financial life, fragmenting authorities and impoverishing and forcing the people to emigrate.”

UNRWA says it has received reports that another school compound has now been taken over by armed groups in the Ain el-Helweh Palestinian refugee camp near Sidon.

“This brings the total number of schools taken over by armed groups in the camp to eight, risking the start of the school year in time for 5,900 children,” UNRWA warned.

A new study reveals that 25 countries, home to a quarter of the world's population, are facing extremely high water stress. Most are located in the Middle East, South Asia and Africa.

Repeated droughts around the world are depleting water tables and leading to water stress, in other words, demand for water is outstripping available resources. And the situation is not about to improve. By 2050, almost 60% of the world's population could be facing extremely high water stress for at least one month of the year. Such are the alarming findings of the World Resources Institute (WRI), which recently published data from its Aqueduct Water Risk Atlas, detailing the countries most at risk of water shortages. It names the five most water-stressed countries as Bahrain, Cyprus, Kuwait, Lebanon and Oman. "The water stress in these countries is mostly driven by low supply, paired with demand from domestic, agricultural and industrial use," the WRI notes.

A man suspected of involvement in an attack last month on a Shiite shrine in Syria died following a Hezbollah pursuit late Friday in the Beirut southern suburb of Hay al-Sellom, the party said.

Wissam Dalla, a Syrian in his early twenties, "threw himself from the seventh floor" of a building where he had been staying with relatives "after learning his location had been discovered," Hezbollah said in a statement.