A man threatened to blow himself up at a Beirut branch of the HSBC bank. I was asked by the Sunday Times to cover the story, before being called back and told the whole thing was over. This may seem like a joke, but foreign embassies remain extremely worried about possible incidents against their civilians in Lebanon, something the Lebanese authorities have tried very strenuously to play down.

A few months ago an American woman was killed in Sidon. Last weekend, a bomb blew up next to the apartment of a Dutch lady, also in Sidon, and several people were injured. It's not clear if the two incidents were linked, but the American and Dutch women didn't know each other, despite a false claim in the Lebanese newspaper Al-Liwaa.