"It's a complete deadlock," change lawmaker Mark Daou told AFP, after parliament failed Thursday to elect a president for the sixth time. "We will not have a president before next year."

Lawmaker Michel Mouawad, who is seen as close to the United States, won the support of 43 of parliament's 128 MPs. But his tally was outnumbered by the 45 blank ballots cast by pro-Hezbollah lawmakers and fell well short of the margin needed for victory.

Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri will call for a legislative session whenever the need arises, he told al-Joumhouria newspaper, in remarks published Thursday.

Many MPs including al-Kataeb and Change MPS, Michel Mouawad and other independent lawmakers had criticized a parliamentary session that discussed a letter by ex-President Michel Aoun. They walked out after voicing their objection.

Parliament convened Thursday for the sixth time and failed again to elect a president, with the post vacant since the mandate of Michel Aoun expired last month.

Parliament is split between supporters of Hezbollah and its opponents, neither having a clear majority.

Lebanese Forces chief Samir Geagea on Wednesday said he rejects the “equation” of electing a president who is “close to Hezbollah” and designating “a PM who is close to the other camp.”

“The Hezbollah camp and our camp represent two parallel lines that will not meet until further notice. I hope Hezbollah will tomorrow change its political project and give up its ideology, which would allow us to meet within five minutes, but as things are now, there are totally opposite political projects,” Geagea said in an interview with the Akhbar al-Yawm news agency.

Thirteen MPs have filed a partial appeal before the Constitutional Council against the new banking secrecy law.

Médecins Sans Frontières /Doctors Without Borders (MSF) is contributing to the national vaccination campaign against cholera launched by the Lebanese Ministry of Public Health’s by vaccinating people in Arsal, Akkar, Tripoli and Baalbek-Hermel in the north and northeast of Lebanon where most cholera cases are registered in the country, a statement said.

“600,000 cholera vaccines received by Lebanon, as first phase procurement, are to be administered in coordination with various international and local actors,” MSF said in a statement.

Nineteen MPs representing 32 Kataeb Party, independent and change lawmakers on Tuesday met in parliament and stressed that the “ultimate priority” is for the “immediate” election of a new president.

A statement said the legislators discussed “the mechanism of exiting the intractable political crisis which has plunged the country into the inferno of presidential vacuum, amid a dire economic and social situation accompanied by a total paralysis of the various state institutions and administrations in this critical period of Lebanon’s history.”

"What happened today is a farce," Free Patriotic Movement Jebran Bassil said Tuesday about a joint parliamentary session that discussed a capital control law.

"The session showed that there is no will to pass the law," Bassil went on to say.

The American University of Beirut was ranked 1st in the MENA region in sustainability and tied with Princeton University at the 140th place globally in the QS World University Rankings (WUR): Sustainability 2023, the university said in a statement Tuesday.

In its first edition, the QS Sustainability Rankings were announced by the Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) university ranking agency. The rankings looked at 700 of the world’s top universities that were deemed eligible and compared them against environmental and social sustainability metrics, to see which universities are doing the most to tackle major environmental, social, and governance (ESG) challenges. "The American University of Beirut was the only university in Lebanon to be ranked and number one in the MENA Region," the statement said.

Parliament will fail again to elect a president on Thursday, al-Akhbar newspaper said Tuesday.

The daily reported that unless Hezbollah succeeds in convincing the Free Patriotic Movement to back the group's candidate Suleiman Franjieh, the election sessions will lead to the same results and Hezbollah will not vote for Franjieh.