A lawyer for two American men urged a judge Friday to block their extradition to Japan, where they are wanted on charges that they smuggled former Nissan Motor Co. Chairman Carlos Ghosn out of the country in a box last year.

Attorneys for Michael Taylor and his son, Peter Taylor, have not denied that the men helped Ghosn flee while he was awaiting trial on financial misconduct charges in December, but say their actions don't fit under the law with which Japan is trying to convict them.

For the past decade, art collector Nabil Debs has been working on turning his 19th century ancestral home in a historic neighborhood of Beirut to a hotel and art gallery. He planned to open it to the public in mid-August.

Within seconds, his lifelong dream came crashing down, along with the two-story building's stone facade and front balcony as a massive explosion tore through Beirut, shearing off facades, blasting holes in buildings, doors, stones and shattering glass across the capital.

U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for  Near Eastern Affairs David Schenker will travel to Kuwait, Qatar, and Lebanon August 28-September 4, 2020, the U.S. State Department said on Friday.

“On September 2, the Assistant Secretary will travel to Beirut, where he will meet with civil society representatives, discuss U.S. assistance efforts in the wake of the August 4 Beirut port explosion, and urge Lebanese leaders to implement reforms that respond to the Lebanese people’s desire for transparency, accountability, and a government free of corruption,” the State Dept. said in a statement.

French President Emmanuel Macron will next week meet iconic singer Fairuz and members of Lebanon's political leadership as he returns to the country in search of serious reform in the wake of the devastating Beirut port blast, the Elysee said Friday.

Macron will be in Lebanon on Monday and Tuesday for his second visit in less than a month after the August 4 blast at the Beirut port that killed 181 people and revived calls for radical change in the country.

Progressive Socialist Party leader Walid Jumblat mockingly suggested Friday that the binding parliamentary consultations to choose a new premier have been scheduled for Monday “out of courtesy.”

“After the delay in calling for consultations -- which violates the Taef Accord, as if some political forces are experimenting with a new constitution… -- the consultations were scheduled for Monday out of courtesy, seeing as the French president will arrive on Tuesday,” Jumblat tweeted.

Gunshots were fired heavily in the air Friday during the funeral of a 14-year-old teenager killed in Thursday’s sectarian clashes in Khalde.

“During the firing in the air at the funeral, some gunshots were fired at the Chebli Center, the site of yesterday’s clash, as the army sought to contain the situation,” the National News Agency said.

As part of the UK’s ongoing response to COVID19 and the devastating Beirut port explosion on August 4, British Ambassador Chris Rampling visited an isolation centre in the town of Maad in Byblos region and Bouar Government Hospital, the UK embassy said in a press release on Friday.

President Aoun has scheduled a date of Lebanon’s binding parliamentary consultations to designate a new PM Monday, some three weeks after the government resigned over a deadly Beirut blast, the president's office said Friday.

Intense political contacts in the last hours in search of a political understanding to assign a Sunni figure to head Lebanon’s new government early next week at the latest, have not reached a satisfactory result, media reports said on Friday.

The U.N. Security Council is voting on a resolution that would extend the mandate of the U.N. peacekeeping mission in southern Lebanon for a year but reduce its troop ceiling from 15,000 to 13,000 in response to U.S. pressure.

The French-drafted resolution also makes another concession to the Trump administration and its close ally Israel. It calls on the Lebanese government to facilitate "prompt and full access" to sites requested by U.N. peacekeepers for investigation, including tunnels crossing the U.N.-drawn Blue Line between Lebanon and Israel.