French President Francois Hollande and Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius decided to appoint one of the Elysee Palace advisers as ambassador to Beirut, pan-Arab daily al-Hayat reported on Wednesday.

Informed sources told al-Hayat that the diplomat is Emmanuel Bonne, Hollande's adviser for North Africa, the Middle East and the United Nations.

Lebanese Forces chief Samir Geagea described the presidential deadlock as a “misery,” laying blame on Hizbullah-backer Iran and saying no solution was currently lying on the horizon .

“More than any other time Iran does not want a president for Lebanon unless he belonged to its camp,” Geagea told journalists who visited him in Maarab on Tuesday.

Syrian refugee Yasmine Khalaf lies next to her day-old daughter Israa in a Lebanese hospital, worrying that her tiny newborn risks life without a legal identity.

Israa, sleeping swaddled in a fluffy pink blanket, is one of tens of thousands of Syrian refugees born in Lebanon who are threatened with statelessness because of the hurdles to registering their births.

A U.S. Marine who vanished a decade ago in Iraq was sentenced Monday to two years in prison for leaving his post there and then fleeing to Lebanon after a brief return to the U.S.

The judge at Camp Lejeune in North Carolina, Marine Maj. Nicholas Martz, ruled that Cpl. Wassef Hassoun was guilty of deserting when he disappeared in 2004 and 2005. Hassoun was also convicted of causing the loss of his service pistol.

The entrance of a daycare building in Hadath in Beirut's southern suburbs collapsed on Tuesday due to digging work in a construction site adjoining it, the state-run National News Agency reported.

Civil defense teams evacuated the horrified children and employees from the three-storey building, which is located near the Philippines embassy.

Head of the Mustaqbal Movement MP Saad Hariri who had arrived in Lebanon overnight on Friday is expected to remain in the country until the middle of next week, reported the Kuwaiti daily al-Anba on Sunday.

It did not specify which day he is set to depart Beirut.

Grand Mufti Sheikh Abdul Latif Daryan visited on Friday the grave of ex-PM Rafik Hariri in downtown Beirut from where he urged the Lebanese to hold onto the state and coexistence.

The 10th anniversary of Hariri's assassination comes in the absence of a president, Daryan said in a statement he read to reporters near al-Amin Mosque.

Terrorist groups belonging to the al-Qaida-linked Abdullah Azzam Brigades are plotting to carry out bombings in a Lebanese city and its neighboring areas, As Safir daily reported on Friday.

The newspaper said that security forces and the military informed several officials to limit their movements and take utmost precautions after learning that the militants were planning to carry out bombings and launch rockets on the city, which it did not identify, and on a main highway that links a Lebanese region with Beirut.

Interior Minister Nouhad al-Mashnouq has said that a much-anticipated security plan for the eastern Bekaa Valley will be implemented in the coming days.

The plan for Bekaa's North will most likely be implemented over the weekend, al-Mashnouq told pan-Arab daily al-Hayat published on Tuesday.

The fish market in Beirut's Karantina area will be closed down for a week in order to introduce improvements at the facility.

Fish Market director general Yasser Zebian announced during a press conference that it will be shut starting 3:00 pm on Saturday.