MPs Ghazi Zoaiter and Ali Hassan Khalil on Monday filed a new recusal lawsuit against Beirut port blast investigator Judge Tarek Bitar.

The lawsuit was filed before the Criminal Court of Cassation, with the two lawmakers citing “legitimate suspicion.”

Higher Judicial Council chief Judge Suheil Abboud and a group of judges who support Beirut port blast investigator Judge Tarek Bitar “have started implementing decentralization in the judiciary,” al-Akhbar newspaper reported on Monday.

Abboud and this group of judges “have started mulling the idea that Bitar practice his work from an office in Jdeideh’s Justice Palace, in an implication that this place is located in a Christian area and no one will dare to attack it,” al-Akhbar quoted prominent judicial sources as saying.

The hopeful expectations regarding a five-party meeting over Lebanon in Paris are "exaggerated", prominent political sources told al-Akhbar newspaper, in remarks published Monday.

According to the sources, the hopes that the meeting next week between the U.S., France, Qatar, Egypt and KSA will reach a settlement that would help Lebanon get out of its political and financial crisis, are "overrated."

Free Patriotic Movement chief Jebran Bassil on Sunday announced that he might nominate himself for the presidency should the other parties reject two FPM proposals for consensus.

Lebanon, two international oil giants and state-owned oil and gas company Qatar Energy signed an agreement Sunday for the Qatari firm to join a consortium that will search for gas in the Mediterranean Sea off Lebanon's coast.

Maronite Patriarch Beshara al-Rahi on Sunday threw his support behind the embattled Beirut port blast investigator, Judge Tarek Bitar, calling on him to “continue his work” despite the recusal lawsuits and the latest judicial standoff.

Hezbollah has praised an attack by a Palestinian gunman that killed seven Israelis as "heroic."

The army closed the entrances of the Shiyyah and Ain el-Remmaneh neighborhoods and took strict security measures in the area on Saturday following calls for rival rallies related to the Beirut port blast case.

The main grouping of the families of the Beirut port blast victims warned Saturday that “there are invitations that are being distributed for rallying today at 11am outside the Justice Palace in Beirut.”

MPs Najat Saliba and Melhem Khalaf have entered the second week of a sit-in inside parliament's chamber, vowing to remain inside until fellow MPs elect a new president.

Saliba and Khalaf, both from the so-called Change bloc, began their protest on January 19, after colleagues met and failed for an 11th time to agree on a new president.