Cabinet approved Monday an increase of social contributions for the public sector and for social welfare institutions, while no agreement was reached regarding the electricity treasury loan and the customs dollar.

A social contribution of 75% of the salary basis will be given for the public sector, as well as the pensioners.

President Michel Aoun on Monday asked Foreign Minister Abdallah Bou Habib to file a U.N. Security Council complaint against Israel over its violation of Lebanon’s airspace to carry out an overnight strike on Syria.

Aoun made the request during a Cabinet session in Baabda, in which Interior Minister Bassam al-Mawlawi briefed the conferees on the busting of “17 spy networks that were working for the Israeli enemy” inside Lebanon.

President Michel Aoun on Monday reminded that he has warned against the “deliberate procrastination by the central bank in terms of handing over the complete data that is requested by forensic audit firm Alvarez & Marsal.”

“The Presidency hopes that… the central bank’s governorship does not have anything to conceal in the central bank’s accounts,” the Presidency said in a statement.

Steps and Ideas to implement the U.N. resolution 1559 have started in Washington, according to Middle East expert and former Donald Trump foreign policy advisor Walid Phares.

Al-Liwaa newspaper quoted Phares as saying that the U.S. Congress will study a "security plan prepared by Lebanese groups" for "dividing Lebanon into two security zones."

Cabinet convened Monday at the Grand Serail to continue the discussion of the draft state budget.

The session will focus today on social welfare to families in need as Social Affairs Minister Hector Hajjar is expected to submit a proposal today.

Israeli strikes early Monday hit a military outpost and weapons depot operated by Hizbullah near the Syrian capital Damascus, a war monitor reported Monday.

"Sites operated by the Lebanese Hizbullah group... in the east Qalamoun region, northeast of Damascus, were hit by Israeli strikes at dawn," the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

Iraqi airstrikes killed nine suspected Islamic State fighters, including four Lebanese, in retaliation for an IS attack on Iraqi army barracks earlier this month, officials said Sunday.

IS gunmen in Iraq broke into a barracks in the mountainous al-Azim district outside the town of Baqouba on Jan. 21, killed a guard and shot dead 11 soldiers as they slept. It was one of the boldest attacks by the militants in recent weeks and came amid an uptick in violence that stoked fears the group has been re-energized.

Kuwait said Sunday that a Lebanese response to a list of suggested measures to ease a diplomatic rift with Gulf Arab countries is currently under review.

Strong Lebanon bloc MP Alain Aoun has said that “it is possible that the Free Patriotic Movement will ally with Hizbullah in the parliamentary elections despite all the differences between them.”

Maronite Patriarch Beshara al-Rahi on Sunday stressed that Lebanese officials “do not have the right to reject the hands that are extended to help them,” in an apparent reference to the paper of Arab and international demands that has been presented to Lebanon by Kuwait.