Protesters, including retired soldiers, rallied Thursday at Riad al-Solh's square, facing the Grand Serail, to demand better pay as public sector employees start this month withdrawing their salaries at the LL90,000 Sayrafa rate.

The protesters tried again to break through the fence leading to the Grand Serail.

The heads of parliamentary blocs and political forces have been told by Western diplomats to “move to a new phase of presidential nominations,” a media report said.

EU Commissioner for Crisis Management Janez Lenarčič is visiting Lebanon on Thursday and Friday, to reaffirm the EU’s solidarity with the most vulnerable people in the country and to express the EU’s readiness to assist with the future stabilization of Lebanon, the Delegation of the European Union to Lebanon said.

He will meet with Lebanese officials, including Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri and Caretaker Minister of Social Affairs Hector Hajjar, international organizations, civil society organizations and beneficiaries of EU funded programs in various regions of Lebanon.

Kataeb party leader Sami Gemayel said Wednesday that Hezbollah will not be able to impose a president on the Lebanese and that such a president would be the president of "Hezbollah's republic" and not of all the Lebanese.

In a press conference, Gemayel said that the elected president should have the ability and willingness to negotiate in order to restore sovereignty and solve the problem of Hezbollah's weapons.

The Observatoire Européen pour l’Integrité du Liban said Wednesday that it has informed the Garda National Economic Crime Bureau of Ireland of the case related to the construction of a new terminal in the Beirut airport.

"We’ll make sure that the case will be followed closely," OEIL said.

Saudi Ambassador to Lebanon Walid Bukhari on Wednesday met with caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati at the Grand Serail.

MP Ghassan Hasbani of the Lebanese Forces has said that the verbal clashes in Tuesday’s Joint Parliamentary Committees session were aimed at “deviating attention from the actual need for holding municipal elections, which some are seeking to postpone.”

The Assad regime is using profits from the captagon trade to continue its “campaign of terror on the Syrian people,” UK Minister of State for the Middle East Lord (Tariq) Ahmad of Wimbledon said, after the UK and US imposed sanctions on Syrian and Lebanese individuals allegedly responsible for the illicit captagon trade.

“The UK and U.S. will continue to hold the regime to account for brutally repressing the Syrian people and fueling instability across the Middle East,” the Minister added.

An Israeli drone threw a smoke bomb overnight toward a café near the southern village of al-Khiam, the National News Agency said.

The bomb targeted a group of Lebanese men gathered in a café at the Khiyam-Kfarkela roundabout, facing the occupied Metula town.

Change MPs Halima Kaakour and Ibrahim Mneimneh accused Tuesday Lebanese Forces leader Samir Geagea of being part of the sectarian and traditional system, after he attacked them in a press interview.

Geagea had said that Kaakour and Mneimneh are "on another planet" as he accused them of living in the past by refusing to coordinate with the opposition.