Speaker Nabih Berri is exerting efforts to boost women’s participation in parliament and lowering the voting age to18 years, according to An Nahar newspaper on Tuesday.

“Women deserve to be represented at parliament… and we no longer hear about lowering the voting age to 18,” Berri told his visitors.

President Michel Suleiman telephoned on Monday Syrian President Bashar Assad, reported As Safir newspaper on Tuesday.

Sources did not reveal to the newspaper the details of the talks, but said that they focused on the crisis in Syria.

Lebanese Forces leader Samir Geagea on Monday announced that he will sue Energy and Water Minister Jebran Bassil for “misleading the investigation” into the recent attempt on his life, accusing the Free Patriotic Movement and Hizbullah of practicing “psychological terrorism.”

“There is a ‘machine’ comprising high-level officials from Hizbullah and the FPM and I call it a machine of terrorism and oppression. Whenever an incident happens, they do the same thing by casting doubt on it and its motives,” Geagea said in an interview on Future TV.

Former premier Saad Hariri on Monday called on Lebanon’s workers to “put an end to this farce and raise the voice” against the government whose members are “stealing public money.”

In a press release marking Labor Day, which Lebanon observes on May 1, Hariri said “workers are the productive class in our society and it is our duty to celebrate their day with them.”

The Phalange Party questioned on Monday the government’s ability to allow expatriates to vote in the 2013 parliamentary elections.

It said in a statement after its weekly politburo meeting: “Its failure to grant them such a right may force us to question the legitimacy of the electoral process.”

Free Patriotic Movement leader MP Michel Aoun on Monday accused the opposition March 14 camp of “practicing obstruction” and slammed Progressive Socialist Party leader MP Walid Jumblat over his rejection of an electoral law based on proportional representation.

“The parliamentary minority is practicing obstruction in collusion with some of the executive authority, and we will not remain silent over this issue even if some people launched verbal attacks,” Aoun told reporters after the weekly meeting of the Change and Reform parliamentary bloc in Rabiyeh.

Progressive Socialist Party leader MP Walid Jumblat questioned on Monday the insistence to adopt proportional representation in the parliamentary electoral law.

He noted in his weekly editorial in the PSP-affiliated al-Anbaa magazine: “Such a law will, in one way or another, help reproduce the era of hegemony in Lebanon, which will therefore be rejected by all the Lebanese people.”

U.S. Secretary of State Hilary Clinton telephoned on Monday President Michel Suleiman to praise his speech at the Arab League summit that was held in Baghdad in late March.

She lauded his call to implement democracy in political practice and expressed her country’s support to such an end.

A Lebanese man was wounded on Monday when Syrian troops opened fire at skiers in Mount Hermon in the Rashayya district, reported the National News Agency.

It said that Antoine al-Hajj was shot in the shoulder, while three of his companions were left unhurt in the incident.

The Lebanese army announced on Monday that an Iraqi woman, who was a complicit in the kidnapping of two Saudi nationals in Lebanon, was detained.

“The army intelligence bureau arrested Batoul Darwish Habib al-Mansouri, who confessed to luring (the Saudis) into an apartment in Doha al-Hoss (in southern Beirut) to financially blackmail them,” said a communique issued by the army.