French President Emmanuel Macron announced Wednesday that he will visit Lebanon for a third time this year in order to “pressure the political class.”

“I'll return to Lebanon this month to pressure the political class and politicians must form a government to conduct reforms or else there will not be international aid,” Macron said at the start of an international videoconference on humanitarian aid for Lebanon.

United States envoy Ambassador John Desrocher visited Lebanon Wednesday for talks with officials, as part his ongoing mediation efforts on the Lebanon-Israel maritime boundary, the U.S. embassy said. 

Lebanon's president said Wednesday he wants maritime border talks with Israel to succeed and that disagreements during the last round of negotiations can be resolved based on international law.

President Michel Aoun spoke during a meeting with John Desrocher, the U.S. mediator for the negotiations, who was in Beirut for discussions with Lebanese leaders.

Head of the Health Parliamentary Committee MP Assem Araji said Wednesday that a meeting with the World Bank is expected later this week to discuss the risks of stopping subsidies on medicines in Lebanon, in light of a mounting shortage of drugs.

France is hosting an international video conference on humanitarian aid for Lebanon Wednesday, amid political deadlock in Beirut that has blocked billions of dollars in assistance for the cash-strapped country hit by multiple crises.

The meeting, organized by France and the United Nations, is the second since the disastrous Aug. 4 explosion that destroyed Beirut's port and wrecked large parts of the capital. The blast, which also killed over 200 people and wounded thousands, was caused by the detonation of nearly 3,000 tons of ammonium nitrates that had been stored unsafely at a port warehouse for years.

Pfizer and BioNTech say they've won permission Wednesday for emergency use of their COVID-19 vaccine in Britain, the world's first coronavirus shot that's backed by rigorous science -- and a major step toward eventually ending the pandemic.

A top Iranian security official on Monday accused Israel of using "electronic devices" to remotely kill a scientist who founded the Islamic Republic's military nuclear program in the 2000s.

Ali Shamkhani, the secretary of the country's Supreme National Security Council, made the comment at the funeral for Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, where Iran's defense minister separately vowed to continue the man's work "with more speed and more power."

French activists fear that a proposed new security law will deprive them of a potent weapon against abuse — cellphone videos of police activity — threatening their efforts to document possible cases of police brutality, especially in impoverished immigrant neighborhoods.

French President Emmanuel Macron's government is pushing a new security bill that makes it illegal to publish images of police officers with intent to cause them harm, amid other measures. Critics fear the new law could hurt press freedoms and make it more difficult for all citizens to report on police brutality.

About 1,000 protesters gathered outside Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's official residence in Jerusalem on Saturday night, pressing ahead with their months-long campaign demanding his resignation.

A mix of grassroots groups have held the weekly protests, saying Netanyahu should step down while he is on trial for corruption and because of his handling of the coronavirus in Israel. After two lockdowns this year, the nation's economy is struggling, and hundreds of thousands of Israelis remain out of work. Many protesters are Israelis who have lost their jobs.

An opinion piece published by a hard-line Iranian newspaper on Sunday suggested Iran should attack the Israeli port city of Haifa if Israel carried out the killing of a scientist linked to its disbanded military nuclear program.

Though the hard-line Kayhan newspaper has long argued for aggressive retaliation for operations targeting Iran, Sunday's opinion piece went further, suggesting any assault be carried out in a way that destroys facilities and "also causes heavy human casualties."