Cabinet called off on Wednesday the intermediate official exams (Brevet) for this year, approved the pending promotion of security and military officers, and renewed the UNIFIL's mandate for another year, in a session boycotted by the Free Patriotic Movement.
Cabinet also passed a decree that would turn civil defense volunteers into full-timers after years of service.

The world's poorest countries are bearing the brunt of the world's debt crisis, at a time when they need more cash than ever to fight climate change.
As top officials gather in Paris for the Summit for a New Global Financing Pact, AFP takes a look at the problem.

Hamadeh says Democratic Gathering open to ‘other candidates’
MP Marwan Hamadeh of the Democratic Gathering on Tuesday said he does not expect French presidential envoy Jean-Yves Le Drian to carry any solution “formula” during his visit to Lebanon.
The current foreign drive will certainly give an impetus to Lebanon’s presidential file, but “solutions have not ripened yet,” sources informed on the contacts said.
“There is no Iranian-Saudi decision to directly interfere” in the file, the sources told al-Joumhouria newspaper in remarks published Tuesday.

Deputy Speaker Elias Bou Saab, who had suggested early parliamentary elections to solve the presidential crisis, said that the idea was his.
"No one has encouraged me to propose early elections," Bou Saab told al-Joumhouria newspaper, in remarks published Tuesday, denying that Speaker Nabih Berri or Hezbollah had instructed him to do it, "as some people have imagined."

Auto tycoon Carlos Ghosn has filed a $1 billion lawsuit against Nissan and about a dozen individuals in Beirut over his imprisonment in Japan and what he says is misinformation spread against him, Lebanese officials said Tuesday.
According to the officials, Ghosn's lawsuit accuses Nissan and the individuals of defamation and of "fabricating charges" against him, which eventually put him behind bars in Japan.

Free Patriotic Movement chief Jebran Bassil has said that neither his party nor the defiance and opposition forces can secure the needed votes for their presidential candidate.
"The only way is consensus," Bassil said in a televised interview, after lawmakers failed last week for a 12th time to elect a new president.

Presidential candidate and ex-minister Jihad Azour “will not respond to those attacking him but will rather talk to the Lebanese through facts and documents,” a media report said on Tuesday.
“Based on the approach of accountability and the principle of transparency, he believes that every Lebanese has the right to have the truth. That’s why Azour is expected to end his presidential silence to respond to the continuous campaign against him over his role as finance minister between 2005 and 2008,” the Nidaa al-Watan newspaper reported.

A Lebanese judge has questioned auto tycoon Carlos Ghosn in Beirut over possible links to a former French Cabinet minister charged two years ago with "passive corruption" for work she did for him, officials familiar with the case said.
The Lebanese officials said Ghosn denied any dealings with France's former Justice Minister Rachida Dati who is accused of having done consulting work for Ghosn for two years starting in 2010 when she was a member of the European parliament.

Hezbollah MP Hassan Fadlallah defended Monday a legislative session boycotted by 29 opposition and independent MPs.
"Without this session, public sectors employees couldn't have received their salaries," Fadlallah said.
