Investigations into the Lebanese navy’s interception of weapons reportedly destined for Syrian rebels showed that no Lebanese national was involved in the case, judicial sources said Sunday.
The sources told pan-Arab daily al-Hayat that investigators are trying to find out the exact destination of the arms that were stashed in three containers aboard the Sierra Leone-flagged Lutfallah II ship.
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Al-Mustaqbal bloc leader MP Fouad Saniora visited Lebanese Forces chief Samir Geagea for the first time after the LF leader escaped an assassination attempt on April 4, An Nahar daily reported Sunday.
Saniora inspected on Friday night the wall that was hit by the bullets intended to target Geagea in the sniper attack in his residence in Maarab, the newspaper said.
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A proposal by three March 8 lawmakers to probe alleged spending violations made between 1993 and 2011 is aimed at taking the dispute with the March 14 opposition to new levels, highly informed parliamentary sources said Sunday.
The proposal was made on Saturday by Loyalty to the Resistance bloc MP Ali Fayyad, Development and Liberation bloc lawmaker Yassine Jaber and Change and Reform bloc MP Ibrahim Kanaan to form a parliamentary investigative committee to “probe the violations of spending made since the beginning of 1993 until the end of 2011.”
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President Michel Suleiman lashed out on Saturday at Free Patriotic Movement leader MP Michel Aoun for refusing to elect a new consensus president.
Aoun said earlier in a live Twitter and Facebook session that experience “doesn’t encourage” accepting this compromise again.
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Politicians and religious leaders of different affiliations gathered Saturday to pay their respects to the late head of the Druze spiritual authority Sheikh Abu Mohammed Jawad Walieddine.
The funeral of Sheikh Walieddine, who died Friday at age of 96 of natural causes, was held in the Chouf town of Baaqlin, southeast Beirut.
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Internal Security forces detained 19 Egyptian workers on Saturday who joined a protest outside the Egyptian embassy in Beirut.
According to the National News Agency, Egyptian workers held a sit-in near the Labor ministry in Shiyah demanding the end of the “sponsorship system” for foreign laborers in Lebanon.
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Finance Minister Mohammed al-Safadi recognized on Saturday the rightful demands of the Lebanese laborers to live in dignity in their own country.
Safadi said in a statement that the 2012 draft state budget includes a plan that would cover the social and health care costs for all workers, which would be added to the increase in salaries that the cabinet approved in January.
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Airport security succeeded on Saturday in thwarting a drug smuggling operation that was headed to Russia.
It said that an Arab national was trying to smuggle 7.850 kilograms of heroin to Russia.
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President Michel Suleiman hailed on Saturday the interception of a ship suspected of delivering weapons to Syria as the Lebanese army issued a statement confirming the incident.
“The army intercepted on Friday Sierra Leone-flagged Lutfallah II ship suspected of carrying weapons and ammunition to Syria,” the statement said.
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President Michel Suleiman noted that in light of the changes in the Arab world, it would be unacceptable for Lebanon to fail to hold the parliamentary elections in 2013, reported al-Joumhouria newspaper on Saturday.
He told the newspaper: “The elections should be held regardless of which electoral law is adopted.”
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