The man who opened fire at the U.S. embassy in Awkar following a dispute with a guard had also shot at a compound containing foreign embassies in Beirut, the Internal Security Forces said on Thursday.

“Following further interrogation, he also confessed to shooting at the embassies compound in the Zokak al-Blat area on the night of August 25, 2023, justifying what he did by saying that he had a verbal clash with a convoy that was passing several days earlier on the Ring highway after which the convoy continued its journey and entered the aforementioned compound,” an ISF statement said.

French presidential envoy Jean-Yves Le Drian would only return to Lebanon if Lebanese parties agree to discuss a third option, political sources said.

The sources revealed to al-Liwaa newspaper, in remarks published Thursday, that Le Drian wants the political parties to waive their conditions and counter-conditions, in order to break the presidential impasse.

The role of sectarian divisions in fueling conflicts in Lebanon is one reason Talar Demirdjian distanced herself from religion.

"People either go very into their religion or their sects, or the other side." A Lebanese Armenian of Christian heritage, Demirdjian said about religion, "I don't even think about it enough to tick a label."

The Lebanese opposition has prepared a plan for resolving the Syrian refugee crisis that is based on two steps: distributing the refugees on Arab countries and halting the work of UNHCR (U.N. refugee agency) in Lebanon, media reports said.

UNHCR is “not only spending money to consolidate the presence of 850,000 refugees registered on its lists, but also on 900,000 unregistered (Syrian) migrants,” the Nidaa al-Watan newspaper reported on Thursday, quoting opposition sources.

The 28th edition of the European Film Festival in Lebanon has closed at Galaxy Grand Cinemas with the short film competition award ceremony, followed by the Avant-premiere of Lebanese feature film “Riverbed”.

Ambassador of the European Union to Lebanon, Sandra De Waele, awarded the Best Short Film Prize equally to three short films selected by an international jury, in the presence of Ambassador of Poland, Przemysław Niesiołowski, Director of Goethe- Institut Libanon, Anne Eberhard, and Cinema project manager at Institut français du Liban, Leïlah Gruas-Girling:

Lebanon's LGBTQ community has been reeling from months of snowballing hostility, as activists in one of the Middle East's more liberal countries worry about deteriorating personal and political freedoms.

Rights advocates and LGBTQ community members told AFP they have been harassed and even received death threats in recent months as controversy has raged over everything from rainbow imagery to family values and the "Barbie" movie.

A senior Arab League official has arrived in the French capital Paris to discuss the Lebanese file, diplomatic sources in Paris said.

The Arab official “might meet over the coming hours with French and Saudi officials involved in the Lebanese file in an attempt to remove the obstacles that are still preventing Lebanese consensus over a presidential candidate,” Asharq newspaper quoted the sources as saying.

Qatari envoy Jassem Bin Fahad Al-Thani, who has been in Lebanon since weeks to help the crisis-hit country break its presidential impasse, is meeting with Lebanese leaders away from the spotlight.

Al-Thani has met with Marada leader and Hezbollah's presidential candidate Suleiman Franjieh, Lebanese Forces leader Samir Geagea, Free Patriotic Movement leader Jebran Bassil, and former Progressive Socialist Party leader Walid Jumblat, media reports said.

Caretaker Interior Minister Bassam Mawlawi on Wednesday warned that the Syrian presence in Lebanon has become a “security threat,” warning municipalities and mayors against being lax in reining in violations committed by Syrians.

“The issue of the heavy Syrian presence in Lebanon exceeds the infrastructure’s capacity and the state and citizens cannot tolerate this presence,” Mawlawi said at a press conference.

The presidential juncture seems to have reached a dead-end. This is what Lebanese Forces leader Samir Geagea told L'Orient-Le Jour, in remarks published Wednesday.

This is also what Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah hinted at on Monday, when he said that "there is nothing clear or new in the near future" regarding the presidential file.