Lebanon’s gasoline crisis has ended and the problem of bank credits is being resolved, a representative of the country’s fuel distributors said on Tuesday.

“Ships have started unloading their cargo,” Fadi Abu Shaqra said in a phone interview with the National News Agency.

Caretaker Health Minister Hamad Hassan announced Tuesday that authorities will not shut down Beirut’s airport or lock down the country after the holidays despite an expected spike in coronavirus cases.

“As for the debate over the issue of shutting down the country and the airport after the holidays, we say that as a result of the previous experiences, we have reached a conclusion that it is necessary to rein in pandemic outbreaks in areas where there exist specific numbers of infections,” Hassan said after talks with caretaker PM Hassan Diab.

Scuffles erupted Tuesday between student protesters and security forces outside the American University of Beirut on Bliss Street.

The National News Agency said security forces “pushed the protesters away from the university’s buildings after they tried to storm it.”

Caretaker Prime Minister Hassan Diab on Tuesday said he was the first to open doors for investigation into the Beirut port blast, noting his “constant” calls during his time in office to fight corruption.

Head of the Lebanese Forces chief Samir Geagea on Tuesday met with U.S. ambassador to Lebanon, Dorothy Shea at his residence in Maarab and discussed the political developments in Lebanon and the region.

Head of the Rafik Hariri University Hospital Firass Abiad on Tuesday warned of rising virus rates after the holidays after the first case of new COVID-19 strain was detected.

U.N. Coordinator for Lebanon Jan Kubis on Monday admonished Lebanon’s political leaders over the ongoing delay in the cabinet formation process despite the country’s multiple and unprecedented crises.

“The economy and financial, banking system is in shambles, social peace starts to crumble down, security incidents on the rise, the edifice of #Lebanon is shaking in its fundaments. And political leaders seem to wait for Biden. But this is Lebanon, not the USA,” Kubis said in a tweet.

President Michel Aoun met Monday in Baabda with caretaker Health Minister Hamad Hassan, who thanked the president for “authorizing him to negotiate with the Pfizer company on providing its anti-coronavirus vaccine,” the National News Agency said.

Aoun gave Hassan the necessary instructions for “finalizing the agreement with the aforementioned company to achieve this purpose,” NNA added.

Progressive Socialist Party leader Walid Jumblat has blamed the ongoing delay in the formation of the new government on President Michel Aoun, PM-designate Saad Hariri, Hizbullah and the Free Patriotic Movement.

“So far I’m still positive, because there is still hope that France might be able to open the doors for negotiations with the World Bank and the international institutions should an acceptable government be formed,” Jumblat said in an interview with his party’s electronic newspaper al-Anbaa.

The man suspected of setting off a bomb in Nashville that ripped through the southern U.S. city's downtown on Christmas morning has been named by authorities as they confirmed he died in the blast.

"We've come to the conclusion that an individual named Anthony Warner is the bomber, he was present when the bomb went off, and that he perished in the bombing," federal prosecutor Don Cochran told a press conference.