Libanon

Diab warns pandemic could trigger global food security emergency that would put vulnerable countries like Lebanon at particular risk, calls for US and EU to set up emergency fund.

An unprecedented economic crisis, nationwide protests and coronavirus restrictions are posing the biggest threat to stability since the end of the civil war in 1990.

Hundreds of protesters have clashed with troops in Tripoli for a second day. The anti-government sentiment, fueled by an ongoing financial collapse, drove people to the streets despite a coronavirus lockdown.

An Israeli drone targeted a car of the Lebanese Hezbollah movement just inside Syria near the border with Lebanon on Wednesday, without casualties, a source from the Shiite armed group said.

Hundreds of Lebanese marched on Saturday through the streets of the capital and the main northern city to reject a new government named to deal with an economic crisis, which they say lacks a popular mandate.

More than a month after he was designated with backing from the powerful Shiite movement Hezbollah and nearly three after his predecessor Saad Hariri resigned under pressure from the street, Prime Minister Hassan Diab's cabinet of 20 ministers was announced. … The new cabinet is made up of little-known figures, many of them academics and former advisers, but protesters were quick to argue that the absence of the biggest names in Lebanon's widely reviled hereditary political elite was but a smokescreen.

Protesters in Lebanon have again taken to the streets amid an economy in tatters and political disagreements over the creation of a new government.

Lebanon's caretaker Prime Minister Saad Hariri has announced he would not seek the top post again, on the eve of twice-delayed talks to name a new prime minister that were expected to lead to his selection.

Lebanon's leading Sunni Muslim politician, Saad Hariri, has re-emerged as a candidate for prime minister as businessman Samir Khatib withdrew his candidacy to lead a government that must tackle an acute economic crisis.

[…] He said on Tuesday that he hoped his decision would prompt parliamentary blocs to quickly agree a replacement.