L'Orient-Le Jour has managed to obtain a non-final list of potential consensual candidates whose names have been discussed between the Christian leaders and Maronite Arbishop of Antelias Antoine Bou Najem.

Here is the list of the candidates who have either announced they were running for president or emerged as potential candidates.

The “rift is increasing” among the Christian forces that are opposed to Suleiman Franjieh’s election as president and “their disagreement on the alternative allows the advocates of the ‘third choice’ to work separately from these forces’ agenda,” a media report said.

“It also allows foreign forces to have the upper hand and this is what the contacts of the past hours have showed,” al-Akhbar newspaper reported on Friday.

Kataeb Party chief MP Sami Gemayel who had already vowed to block a presidential vote that would elect Hezbollah's candidate, has said that coordination with the Free Patriotic Movement is possible, on condition that it stops supporting Hezbollah.

FPM MP Alain Aoun had also said Thursday that the FPM might agree with the opposition MPs on a presidential candidate.

Hezbollah chief Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah on Thursday lashed out at the United States and called on the Lebanese to “seek solutions instead of bowing to international conditions.”

It seems that a long-awaited inter-Christian meeting will be held soon in Bkirki, after the stances of all parties were “taken into consideration, especially that of the Lebanese Forces,” a media report said on Thursday.

Since the collapse of Lebanon's state power grid, many middle and working class families have been forced to spend most of their monthly income to pay shady neighborhood businessmen running private generators.

Still, they go without electricity for nearly half the day, according to a report by Human Rights Watch released Thursday. The situation threatens to deepen the poverty of this tiny country embroiled in a devastating economic meltdown.

The Association of Banks in Lebanon announced Thursday that the country’s banks will resume their open-ended strike on Tuesday, March 14, decrying recent judicial rulings.

Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri's open nomination to Marada leader Suleiman Franjieh is not a challenge, Berri said, but is supposed to break the presidential deadlock.

In remarks published Thursday in al-Joumhouria, Berri said that his nomination to Franjieh is supposed to urge the other parties to announce their candidates, in order to seriously elect a president.

The presidential file was recently on the verge of a consensual settlement involving an agreement on both the presidency and the PM post, but the efforts failed in their last stages, a media report said on Thursday.

“Paris played a key role in formulating this settlement, which was based on the Franjieh-Salam equation, or the election of (ex-)minister Suleiman Franjieh as president and the designation of (ex-)ambassador Nawaf Salam as premier,” al-Joumhouria newspaper quoted “credible” sources as saying.

Caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati met Thursday with United Nations Special Coordinator for Lebanon Joanna Wronecka at the Grand Serail.

Wronecka stressed the need for Lebanon to commit to implementing basic reforms and completing constitutional junctures on time, especially the presidential and municipal polls.