President Michel Aoun discussed Lebanon’s bilateral relations with the United Kingdom with visiting UK Chief of Defence Staff’s Senior Advisor to the Middle East and North Africa (DSAME), Air Marshal Martin Sampson, the National News Agency reported on Wednesday.

MP Michel Moussa of Amal Movement's Development and Liberation bloc on Wednesday assured that Speaker Nabih Berri’s initiative to ease the government formation deadlock “is still on the table.”

The UK Chief of Defence Staff’s Senior Advisor to the Middle East and North Africa (DSAME), Air Marshal Martin Sampson, begins his visit to Lebanon with meeting President Michel Aoun on Wednesday in a show of Britain’s “continued support” for the crisis-hit nation, al-Joumhouria daily reported on Wednesday.

Eight months after a massive blast ripped through Beirut port and nearby districts of the Lebanese capital, a host of foreign companies with different national interests are competing to rebuild it.

One person was killed and two people were wounded in a clash Tuesday in the northern city of Tripoli.

The National News Agency said the clash, in Tripoli’s al-Khnaq area, erupted between a number of young men over “the distribution of food rations in the area.”

The Free Patriotic Movement-led Strong Lebanon bloc on Tuesday accused PM-designate Saad Hariri of thwarting “every positive idea” regarding the cabinet formation crisis.

“The PM-designate is still standing idly by, seeing as whenever a positive idea is proposed he thwarts it, the last of which was the 24-minister format, which did not include any one-third-plus-one share for any party,” the bloc said in a statement issued after its weekly e-meeting.

Israel has entered into a state of maximum alert to confront Iranian threats amid tensions linked to a suspected Israeli attack on an Iranian nuclear facility and a suspected Iranian attack on an Israeli commercial ship, Al-Arabiya TV reported on Tuesday.

“Israeli media circles have said that the ship attack is the beginning of a series of Iranian attacks,” Al-Arabiya’s correspondent in Israel said.

An Israeli-owned commercial ship was attacked with a missile Tuesday near UAE’s Fujairah, Arab and Israeli media reports said.

Lebanon-based Al-Mayadeen television channel, which is close to Iran, identified the ship as the Bahamas-flagged Hyperion Ray, which is operated by Israeli firm Ray Shipping.

The efforts of Speaker Nabih Berri towards all parties are aimed at “reaching a government of independent, nonpartisan specialists according to the French initiative,” a pro-Berri MP has said.

The lawmaker, Ali Bazzi, added in an interview on al-Hurra TV that the so-called one-third-plus-one obstacle is still preventing a “breakthrough” in the crisis.

President Michel Aoun on Tuesday put on hold a decree expanding the sea area disputed with Israel, citing the need for a Cabinet meeting.

The decree was signed Monday by caretaker PM Hassan Diab and the caretaker ministers of public works and defense before being sent to the Presidency for an “extraordinary approval.”