Caretaker Prime Minister Hassan Diab's office said Thursday that the outgoing premier's conscience was clear after he was charged in the Beirut port blast probe.
"He is confident that his hands are clean and that he has handled the Beirut Port blast file in a responsible and transparent manner," it said in a statement.

The lead investigator into a catastrophic August 4 explosion at Beirut port charged outgoing premier Hassan Diab and three ex-ministers with negligence Thursday, a judicial source said.

Progressive Socialist Party leader ex-MP Walid Jumblat on Thursday raised doubts a government would be soon formed, despite a format presented by the PM-designate Saad Hariri a day earlier to the president.

Criticisms arose after the presidency’s announcement that a complete government proposal was submitted by the President to the PM-designate during the latter’s visit to Baabda to submit his cabinet line-up, media reports said Thursday.

Ghassan Hasrouty spent most of his life working at the silos in Beirut's port, unloading grain shipments to feed the country even as fighting raged around him during the 1975-90 civil war.
Decades later, he perished under the same silos, their towering cement structure gutted by the force of the Aug. 4 explosion at the port, when 2,750 tons of improperly stored ammonium nitrates ignited in what became one of the largest non-nuclear explosions in history.

President Michel Aoun on Wednesday received a "full cabinet line-up" from PM-designate Saad Hariri during their meeting in Baabda, the Presidency said.

The Lebanese Foreign Ministry on Wednesday announced that Lebanon's Ambassador to the UAE Fouad Dandan has informed it that Emirati authorities have not issued an official resolution banning tourist visas for Lebanese and citizens of other nationalities, contrary to a flurry of media reports in this regard.

Lebanese Democratic Party leader MP Talal Arslan on Wednesday slammed a cabinet line-up submitted by PM-designate Saad Hariri to President Michel Aoun as unfair for the Druze community.

Prime Minister-designate Saad Hariri on Wednesday met with President Michel Aoun and submitted to him a draft cabinet line-up.

Hizbullah is suing the estranged brother of the country's Prime Minister-designate Saad Hariri after he accused the group of being responsible for the massive explosion at Beirut's port earlier this year, a TV station reported Wednesday.
Hizbullah's Al-Manar TV gave no further details about the case filed against Bahaa Hariri, the son of late Prime Minister Rafik Hariri and estranged brother of Saad Hariri.
