Hizbullah chief Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah on Friday reassured supporters that he is not infected with Covid-19, noting during a live televised address that his ongoing cough is from a trachea infection and that he has no other symptoms.

Prime Minister-designate Saad Hariri met the visiting French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian at the Pine Residence in Beirut on Thursday evening, Hariri’s press office announced in a statement.

There were no clear reports whether Le Drian, who met President Michel Aoun and Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri earlier in the day, intended to meet Hariri.

Fifty-nine containers of highly dangerous substances were cleared Wednesday from the disaster-hit Beirut port, nine months after the explosion of hundreds of tons of poorly stored ammonium nitrate at the facility caused a deadly and unprecedented peacetime catastrophe in Lebanon.

“Following a strenuous follow-up by caretaker Prime Minister Hassan Diab for more than eight months, fifty-nine containers of highly dangerous substances found at Beirut port and other places after the Aug. 4 blast disaster were exported today,” the Premiership said in a statement.

Israel's president on Wednesday signaled he would move quickly to task a new candidate with forming a government after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu failed to do so ahead of a midnight deadline.

President Reuven Rivlin will meet with the two main candidates for forming a government — opposition leader Yair Lapid and Naftali Bennett, a former Netanyahu ally — on Wednesday morning. He asked parties to make their positions known before 2 p.m. (1100 GMT).

India released $6.7 billion in cheap financing for vaccine makers, hospitals and other health firms on Wednesday, to counter the devastating coronavirus surge gripping the country.

The international community has condemned security forces' violent repression of protests in Colombia after numerous deaths, while urging calm ahead of large anti-government rallies planned for Wednesday.

President Michel Aoun held a meeting Tuesday evening with the members of the Lebanese delegation to the sea border talks with Israel, following the fifth round of negotiations in Ras al-Naqoura.

“The delegation’s members briefed President Aoun on the deliberations of the meeting, which was held with the participation of the U.S. delegation, whose head demanded that the negotiation be limited to the Israeli and Lebanese lines submitted to the U.N., or within the 860-square-kiolmeter area, contrary to the Lebanese stance and to the principle of negotiations without preconditions,” the Presidency said in a statement.

After a nearly six-month pause, Lebanon and Israel on Tuesday resumed indirect talks with U.S. mediation over their disputed maritime border.

The five-hour negotiations round was held "amid total secrecy and away from the media spotlight," Lebanon's National News Agency said.

The lead investigator into Beirut’s port blast, Judge Tarek Bitar, requested the satellite images of the port as part of his investigations into last year’s massive explosion.

A flurry of diplomatic contacts and reports of major progress suggest that indirect talks between the U.S. and Iran may be nearing an agreement. That's despite efforts by U.S. officials to play down chances of an imminent deal that would bring Washington and Tehran back into compliance with the 2015 nuclear deal.

With the negotiations in Vienna on hiatus, the U.S. and Britain denied Iranian reports that any agreement was at hand with Iran for a swap of American and British prisoners. Such an exchange could be a confidence-building measure to revive the nuclear deal.