U.S. mediator Amos Hochstein is continuing efforts aimed at reaching an agreement over the demarcation of the maritime border between Lebanon and Israel, an official at the U.S. Embassy in Beirut said on Monday.

In remarks to al-Jadeed TV, the unnamed official said the U.S. administration is continuing to narrow the gaps between all parties and that it believes that a sustainable settlement is possible.

The new government will be formed this week or in the beginning of next week at the latest, informed sources said.

“What’s important is that the concerned officials have taken a political decision to form the government, and accordingly any pending details will be resolved,” the sources told al-Joumhouria newspaper in remarks published Monday.

A ship carrying thousands of tons of corn and vegetable oil from war-ravaged Ukraine docked in northern Lebanon on Monday, the first such vessel since Russia's invasion of its neighbor started seven months ago.

AK Ambition, registered in Panama and loaded with 7,000 tons of corn and 20 tons of vegetable oil, arrived in the northern city of Tripoli, Lebanon's second-largest, with Ukraine Embassy officials waiting at the port.

Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri has lauded the latest speech of Grand Mufti Sheikh Abdul Latif Daryan, saying it was “more than good and unifying.”

“What concerns us is holding the presidential vote within the constitutional timeframe,” Berri said in an interview with Asharq al-Awsat newspaper.

President Michel Aoun held talks Monday in Baabda with Deputy Speaker Elias Bou Saab, who briefed him on the outcome of the visit he made to New York last week.

Bou Saab also briefed Aoun on the meetings he held there with U.S. mediator Amos Hochstein regarding the sea border negotiations with Israel.

Hundreds of retired Lebanese army soldiers briefly broke through a police cordon near Parliament in downtown Beirut as the legislature was in session, discussing the 2022 budget.

The protesters demanded an increase in their monthly retirement pay, decimated during the economic meltdown.

Depositors scuffled and long lines formed at Lebanese banks Monday as they partially re-opened after a week-long closure following a slew of heists by customers desperate to access their money.

Banks in crisis-hit Lebanon partially reopened Monday following a weeklong closure amid a wave of heists in which assailants stormed at least seven bank branches earlier this month, demanding to withdraw their trapped savings.

The Association of Banks in Lebanon said last Monday it was going on strike amid bank holdups by depositors and activists — a sign of growing chaos in the tiny Mideast nation.

The Association of Banks in Lebanon announced Sunday that the country’s banks will resume operations as of Monday, following a one-week closure prompted by a wave of bank “heists” that were carried out by depositors demanding their savings.

In a statement, ABL said it held a meeting in which it discussed “the need to secure the continuity of services for clients while taking into consideration the difficult security situations and the need to preserve the safety of clients and employees alike, in the absence of sufficient protection from the state.”

Thousands of Palestinians held prayers on a small soccer field in a refugee camp in northern Lebanon on Saturday, to mourn one of the scores of migrants who died after their boat sank off Syria's coast this week, even as others vowed to undertake the same perilous voyage.

Abdul-Al Abdul-Al, 24, kissed his father goodbye Tuesday before boarding a crowded boat leaving from a nearby town seeking a better life in Europe. It was his 14th attempt to flee the crisis-hit Mediterranean country, this time ending with the return of his dead body. He was to be buried in the camp where he was born, his father, Omar, told The Associated Press during the funeral procession.