Maronite Patriarch Beshara al-Rahi has called on those casting blank votes in the presidential election sessions to declare the name of their candidate.

Hezbollah deputy chief Sheikh Naim Qassem on Friday stressed that the country’s next president must have two main concerns: “rescuing the country economically and cooperation with all parties.”

Lebanese Forces leader Samir Geagea has called Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri to ask the blocs who are hindering the presidential election to stop the obstruction, before Thursday's session.

"From now on we cannot tolerate any more delays," Geagea said.

The European Council has adopted an assistance measure worth €6 million to the benefit of the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF).

Reports about caretaker PM Najib Mikati’s inclination to call for a caretaker cabinet session have reignited his standoff with the Free Patriotic Movement, which refuses that any session be held amid the ongoing presidential vacuum.

In a statement issued overnight, the FPM had warned that such a session would “violate the constitution,” stressing that it will not “bow to any blackmail.”

Parliament is "not shouldering its responsibilities", charged lawmaker Antoine Habchi of the Lebanese Forces, before an eighth session that failed to elect a new president.

Habchi slammed the MPs leaving the session before the second round of voting, saying that "obstruction is not an acquired right."

Parliament convened on Thursday and failed for the eighth attempt to elect a president who will succeed former President Michel Aoun.

Fifty two blank votes were cast and MP Michel Mouawad garnered 37 votes, a few votes less than the past sessions.

The capital control draft law that is being discussed by the joint parliamentary committees is on the “right track,” Deputy Speaker Elias Bou Saab said on Wednesday.

“We have discussed the draft clause by clause and it needs drastic amendments in many points,” Bou Saab said after a committees session.

Two containers went up in flames on Wednesday at the blast-hit Port of Beirut.

State-run National News Agency said the containers had car parts and furniture in them.

More than 50 countries, including Lebanon, and the U.N. agreed urgent action to end sexual violence in conflict at the UK-hosted PSVI Conference this week, signing up to a new declaration, the British embassy in Lebanon said.