A new buyer is being sought for the first grain shipment to leave Ukraine under a hard-won deal with Russia after the original Lebanese buyer cancelled its order, the Ukrainian embassy said.

The Sierra Leone-flagged vessel Razoni left the Ukrainian port of Odessa on August 1 carrying 26,000 tons of maize and had been expected to dock in the Lebanese port of Tripoli at the weekend.

Progressive Socialist Party leader Walid Jumblat will meet with Hezbollah coordination official Wafiq Safa by the end of the week, MTV said Wednesday.

It quoted a source close to the PSP as saying that "Jumblat has read the situation well and has chosen to be with the winning team."

Maronite Patriarch Beshara al-Rahi has started thinking of potential candidates for the presidential election, Kuwait’s al-Rai newspaper reported on Tuesday.

Lebanon has not been informed through a brotherly or friendly country that Israel wants to delay settling the sea border demarcation file until after its early legislative elections in the end of the next fall, a highly informed Lebanese source has said.

The United States has pressed Israel on the issue of sea border negotiations with Lebanon, asking it not to make the file a part of the domestic "electoral bazar" in Israel, which is readying for a new round of early legislative elections.

Progressive Socialist Party leader Walid Jumblat has lashed out at President Michel Aoun’s presidential term, describing his tenure as “failed,” “spiteful” and “disastrous.”

Hezbollah chief Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah on Tuesday warned Israel against “making a mistake towards the resistance in Lebanon” or over “the issue of oil and gas and the issue of the maritime border.”

A Palestinian official has been shot dead Monday in Lebanon's largest Palestinian refugee camp of Ain Al-Helweh, near the coastal southern city of Sidon, a Fatah official said.

Saeed Alaeddine was an officer in Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas's Fatah movement, in charge of liaising between the group and Lebanese security.

Shiite Lebanese marked Tuesday the holy day of Ashoura, one of the most emotional occasions in their religious calendar, commemorating the 7th century martyrdom of the Prophet Muhammad's grandson Imam Hussein.

With power split in Lebanon among the country's religious sects, Ashoura presents an opportunity for Lebanon's Shiites to show force.

Tarek Younes was once solidly middle class and felt he helped contribute to society as an inspector in the Lebanese government's consumer protection agency. But the country's economic free-fall has eroded his income and civic pride.

In his desperation, Younes has joined tens of thousands of public sector employees across the country in an open-ended strike that has already lasted for six weeks.