In the southern Lebanese town of Haris, a newlywed couple is living in one of Safy Faqeeh's apartments for free. He's never met them before, and they aren't on a honeymoon. Their apartment in Beirut was wrecked when last week's massive explosion wreaked destruction across the capital.

Faqeeh is one of hundreds of Lebanese who have opened their homes to survivors of the Aug. 4 blast.

Brazil's government sent a humanitarian mission to Lebanon on Wednesday in the wake of the Aug. 4 explosion in Beirut that injured thousands.

Former President Michel Temer, whose parents were Lebanese, was leading a group of 13 people that includes politicians, military personnel and businessmen in delivering the aid to the Middle Eastern nation.

French President Emmanuel Macron spoke Wednesday to the leaders of Russia and Iran and urged them to cooperate with the rest of the international community to restore stability in Lebanon.

While Iran and Russia are important power players in the region and have offered Lebanon aid since last week's devastating explosion, neither participated in an international donors' conference Sunday organized by France and the U.N. to help rebuild Beirut.

For nearly a week, Mona Zahran had to sleep on a couch pulled across her apartment's front door. Beirut's massive explosion knocked her doors off their hinges and shattered her windows, and she feared looters would take advantage of the chaos that has hit the Lebanese capital since.

It was the latest and probably most humiliating blow in the turbulent life of the 50-year-old.

Germany stands ready to help Lebanon with reconstruction and further investment after last week's massive explosion, but any support will be linked to economic reforms and an end to pervasive corruption in Lebanon, Germany's foreign minister said Wednesday.

Heiko Maas spoke after a tour of Beirut's devastated port, where thousands of tons of ammonium nitrate exploded Aug. 4, obliterating the facility, killing at least 171 people and wounding thousands in the capital city.

The U.N. Security Council remains at odds over the way the U.N. peacekeeping mission in southern Lebanon operates on the ground, with the United States backing Israel's demands for major changes.

At a closed council meeting Tuesday on the mission known as UNIFIL, whose mandate is up for renewal at the end of the month, U.S. Ambassador Kelly Craft stressed the need for a new mandate.

About four years before the Beirut port explosion that killed dozens of people and injured thousands, a U.S. government contractor expressed concern to a Lebanese port official about unsafe storage there of the volatile chemicals that fueled last week's devastating blast, American officials said Tuesday.

There is no indication the contractor communicated his concerns to anyone in the U.S. government.

The shattered city of Beirut on Tuesday marked a week since the catastrophic explosion that killed at least 171 people, injured thousands and plunged Lebanon into a deeper political crisis.

Thousands of people marched near the devastated port, remembering those who died in the worst single blast to hit the country.

Chemical experts and firefighters are working to secure at least 20 potentially dangerous chemical containers at the explosion-shattered port of Beirut, after finding one that was leaking, according to a member of a French cleanup team.

Some of the containers were punctured when last week's deadly blast ripped through the port and the Lebanese capital, said Lt. Anthony, a French chemical expert at the site who was not authorized to be identified by his full name according to government policy.

A natural gas explosion destroyed three row houses in Baltimore on Monday, killing a woman and trapping other people in the wreckage. At least four people were hospitalized with serious injuries as firefighters searched for more survivors.

Dozens of firefighters converged on the piles of rubble. A fourth house in the row was ripped open, and windows were shattered in nearby homes, leaving the neighborhood strewn with debris and glass.