The optimism on an imminent formation of the new government has declined and an agreement on the ministers who will be changed is yet to be found, al-Akhbar newspaper reported on Saturday.

Quoting sources close to PM-designate Najib Mikati, the daily said “the stances have not changed and the discussions over changing Minister of the Displaced Issam Sharafeddine and Economy Minister Amin Salam have not reached an agreement.”

Free Patriotic Movement chief Jebran Bassil has noted that he is not a presidential candidate as he reassured that a new government will be formed.

“I won’t become a candidate except after I declare my candidacy, which I haven’t done until now,” Bassil said, in a video interview with Annahar newspaper.

Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri on Friday met with the ambassadors of the EU and its member states resident in Beirut.

During the meeting, Berri thoroughly explained “the roadmap to rescue the situation in Lebanon, topped by the agreement with the International Monetary Fund and finalizing the reformist laws such as the state budget, the capital control law, the banking secrecy law and the economic recovery plan that have recently reached parliament.”

Lebanese Forces leader Samir Geagea on Friday reiterated his call for electing a “salvation president” who can rescue Lebanon, in comments related to the new boat tragedy in Tripoli.

“Today there is a new death ferry from Tripoli, dozens of victims and continued tears and pain, and yesterday there had been storming operations against a host of banks that led to a general strike of banks and additional suffering for the Lebanese citizens,” Geagea said.

President Michel Aoun on Friday expressed his relief over “the tripartite statement that was issued yesterday by France, the U.S. and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia regarding the situation in Lebanon.”

He also stressed “the need to elect a new president within the constitutional timeframe in addition to forming a new government that would win parliament’s confidence prior to the expiry of the presidential term on October 31.”

Mustafa Misto embarked on a sea voyage from crisis-hit Lebanon seeking a better life for his family, but he drowned in a shipwreck alongside his children and dozens of others, relatives said Friday.

Prime Minister-designate Najib Mikati has expressed hope to finalize the cabinet formation file in the meetings that he will hold with President Michel Aoun next week, adding that the issue “does not need a lot of discussions.”

Speaking to MTV from New York, where he took part in the works of the U.N. General Assembly and met with several leaders, Mikati said the issues of the presidential vote, the aspired agreement with the International Monetary Fund and sea border demarcation with Israel were the focus of his talks there.

Marada Movement chief Suleiman Franjieh has confirmed that his nomination is on the table in the presidential race, as he voiced optimism over his chances.

“We are monitoring things… and I’m more optimistic than last time,” Franjieh said in an interview on MTV.

At least 77 migrants drowned when a boat they boarded in Lebanon sank off Syria's coast, Syria's health minister said Friday, in one of the deadliest such shipwrecks in the eastern Mediterranean.

Lebanon, which since 2019 has been mired in a financial crisis branded by the World Bank as one of the worst in modern times, has become a launchpad for illegal migration, with its own citizens joining Syrian and Palestinian refugees clamoring to leave their homeland.

Lebanon's banks will remain closed indefinitely after rejecting a proposed government security plan, a senior official with the country's commercial banks association said on Thursday, amid a wave of protests and heists targeting its failing financial system.

The Association of Banks in Lebanon initially announced a three-day strike, after at least seven bank branches were stormed last week, where assailants demanded they withdraw their trapped savings. Among them is Sali Hafez, who broke into a Beirut bank branch with a fake pistol and retrieved some $13,000 in her savings to cover her sister's cancer treatment.