France is hosting an international video conference on humanitarian aid for Lebanon Wednesday, amid political deadlock in Beirut that has blocked billions of dollars in assistance for the cash-strapped country hit by multiple crises.
The meeting, organized by France and the United Nations, is the second since the disastrous Aug. 4 explosion that destroyed Beirut's port and wrecked large parts of the capital. The blast, which also killed over 200 people and wounded thousands, was caused by the detonation of nearly 3,000 tons of ammonium nitrates that had been stored unsafely at a port warehouse for years.

The killer of former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri will be sentenced on December 11, the Netherlands-based tribunal that convicted him said, with prosecutors asking for a life sentence.

The Lebanese Forces will not coordinate with the Free Patriotic Movement on any file because it believes that the FPM “is an inseparable part of the current parliamentary majority,” LF chief Samir Geagea said Tuesday.
“It accordingly bears major responsibility for the current situation,” Geagea added at a press conference, while stressing that “there is no understanding at all with President Michel Aoun.”

The United States has welcomed the Latvian government’s recent announcement that it considers Hizbullah in its entirety as a “terrorist organization.”
“Latvia supports U.S. implementation of sanctions related to Hizbullah and has expressed a readiness to place national travel bans on individuals associated with Hizbullah,” Cale Brown, the U.S. State Dept.’s principal deputy spokesperson, said.

President Michel Aoun on Tuesday told a delegation from the U.N., the EU and the World Bank that the planned forensic audit of the public sector will “prove the state’s credibility towards the international community, especially donor countries.”
“This audit will make it possible to know how every dollar was or will be spent in Lebanon,” Aoun told EU Ambassador to Lebanon Ralph Tarraf, U.N. Deputy Special Coordinator for Lebanon Najat Rochdi and World Bank regional director Saroj Kumar Jha.

Progressive Socialist Party leader Walid Jumblat has lamented that some parties are seeking to fabricate a “Druze obstacle” in the cabinet formation process.
“It seems that they are seeking to create a nonexistent Druze obstacle,” Jumblat told An-Nahar daily in remarks published Tuesday.

The foreign indications do not suggest that the new Lebanese government will be formed soon, General Security chief Maj. Gen. Abbas Ibrahim has said.
Asked why he is not playing a mediator role in the stalled cabinet formation process, Ibrahim said in an interview with ad-Diyar newspaper that “the circumstances are not appropriate” for such a role.

A draft cabinet line-up that PM-designate Saad Hariri is supposed to present to President Michel Aoun has emerged.
Hariri wants “a specialist, non-political and nonpartisan government that Lebanon needs in this period,” sources close to him told al-Joumhouria newspaper in remarks published Tuesday.

Lebanon's economy is sinking into a "deliberate depression", the World Bank said Tuesday in a damning report stressing the authorities' failure to tackle the crisis.
The fall 2020 edition of the Lebanon Economic Monitor predicted the economy will have contracted by 19.2 percent this year and projected a debt-to-GDP ratio of 194 percent next year.

The new chief of Iran's Quds Force, General Esmail Ghaani, asked Hizbullah during a recent secret visit to Lebanon to “avoid provoking Israel,” a media report said on Monday.
“Ghaani, who succeeded General Qasem Soleimani as the head of the Quds Force, the elite unit of Iranian Revolutionary Guards in charge of foreign operations, has paid a secret visit to the southern suburbs of Beirut in recent days and has spoken with (Hizbullah chief Sayyed) Hassan Nasrallah and other political and military officials of the party,” Lebanon’s French-language daily L'Orient-Le Jour reported.
