Speaker Nabih Berri reportedly plans to make a new move and launch an initiative that could ease the government deadlock, amid months of wrangling between political leaders to form a cabinet, al-Anbaa electronic daily reported on Friday.

Prime Minister-designate Saad Hariri visited Bkirki on Thursday evening and discussed the controversial government formation with Patriarch Beshara el-Rahi.

PM-designate Saad Hariri met the US Ambassador to Lebanon Dorothy Shea at the Center House on Thursday where discussions highlighted the latest political developments and the general situation in Lebanon and the region, his press office said.

The meeting was held in the presence of Hariri adviser, ex-minister Ghattas Khoury.

Israel has expressed its willingness to provide hospitals in Lebanon with ventilators to treat Coronavirus patients, according to German News Agency on Thursday.

According to Israeli media, the offer came from the Director-general of the Israeli Health Ministry Hezi Levi "due to the severe shortage of such devices in Lebanon,” he said.

The US embassy in Beirut published the remarks of the US Ambassador to Lebanon Dorothy Shea at Baabda Palace during her meeting with President Michel Aoun.

After talks on a cabinet formation broke down in Lebanon, diplomatic mobility between the Saudi, French and US ambassadors expanded in a bid to “control indolence in Lebanon,” media reports said on Thursday.

Director of the Rafik Hariri University Hospital, Doctor Firas Abiad said on Thursday that the Covid and non-Covid Emergency Departments at the hospital are severely congested because patients delay visiting their doctors for financial reasons, thus exacerbating health situation to the need for hospitalization.

The first shipment of AstraZeneca vaccines arrived in Beirut on Wednesday.

The government had said it would delay administering them until the vaccine was cleared for use by international health regulators following concerns about possible blood clotting.

Lead investigative judge into the Beirut port blast, Tarek al-Bitar, on Wednesday interrogated four detained port officials.

Caretaker Prime Minister Hassan Diab said Wednesday that parliament needs to find a “constitutional interpretation” that defines the limit of Cabinet's caretaker jurisdiction and role, days after Hizbullah chief Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah called for reactivating the resigned government.