Free Patriotic Movement chief Jebran Bassil has expressed relief over his “firm relation” with Qatar, its support for him and its efforts to lift the U.S. sanctions off him, a media report said on Thursday.

There is an “intersection” between the Shiite Duo and the West – represented in the French who are coordinating with the U.S. – over the election of Suleiman Franjieh as president, seeing as he does not represent any provocation to the international community, a media report said on Thursday.

French President Emmanuel Macron will visit Lebanon in late December, a media report said on Thursday.

Reports about caretaker PM Najib Mikati’s inclination to call for a caretaker cabinet session have reignited his standoff with the Free Patriotic Movement, which refuses that any session be held amid the ongoing presidential vacuum.

In a statement issued overnight, the FPM had warned that such a session would “violate the constitution,” stressing that it will not “bow to any blackmail.”

French President Emmanuel Macron who is currently visiting Washington will try to convince U.S. President Joe Biden to separate the Lebanese presidential elections from the Iranian nuclear deal, a diplomatic source in Paris said.

The source told Nidaa al-Watan newspaper, in remarks published Thursday, that Macron will discuss with Biden the urgent need to prioritize the presidential election file, suggesting three presidential choices.

Parliament is "not shouldering its responsibilities", charged lawmaker Antoine Habchi of the Lebanese Forces, before an eighth session that failed to elect a new president.

Habchi slammed the MPs leaving the session before the second round of voting, saying that "obstruction is not an acquired right."

Parliament convened on Thursday and failed for the eighth attempt to elect a president who will succeed former President Michel Aoun.

Fifty two blank votes were cast and MP Michel Mouawad garnered 37 votes, a few votes less than the past sessions.

The capital control draft law that is being discussed by the joint parliamentary committees is on the “right track,” Deputy Speaker Elias Bou Saab said on Wednesday.

“We have discussed the draft clause by clause and it needs drastic amendments in many points,” Bou Saab said after a committees session.

Two containers went up in flames on Wednesday at the blast-hit Port of Beirut.

State-run National News Agency said the containers had car parts and furniture in them.

More than 50 countries, including Lebanon, and the U.N. agreed urgent action to end sexual violence in conflict at the UK-hosted PSVI Conference this week, signing up to a new declaration, the British embassy in Lebanon said.