French ambassador to Lebanon Patrice Paoli stated on Tuesday that the international agreement to preserve Lebanon's stability can only be achieved through Lebanon's army and security forces, As Safir daily reported.

“There is no such thing as an international umbrella and we have never said that. In reality there is an international understanding U.N. Security Council to preserve Lebanon's stability,” said Paoli in an interview to the daily.

U.S. prosecutors have tried to link a prominent businessman in the State of Iowa to a scheme in which four defendants are charged with using his shipping company facilities to smuggle weapons to Lebanon.

Bill Aossey Jr. had been in contact with the suspects, one of whom is a close friend, and is shown on surveillance video briefly going into one of the containers after it was packed, prosecutors in Cedar Rapids argued Monday.

Malala Yousafzai told world leaders they were failing Syria's children, as the Nobel Peace Prize winner spent her 18th birthday Sunday in Lebanon near the Syrian border.

As she became an adult, the teenager, who was shot by militants in her native Pakistan for campaigning for girls' rights, opened a school for more than 200 Syrian girls living in refugee camps in Lebanon's Bekaa Valley.

Prime Minister Tammam Salam stressed on Sunday that he will not let the attempts to obstruct the cabinet succeed in their endeavors, calling on all parties to keep political differences away.

“I will not allow any attempts to obstruct the cabinet's work. Let them keep their political differences away from the government,” said Salam during a meeting with popular delegations at his residence.

Education Minister Elias Bou Saab refused on Sunday descriptions hinting at PM Tamam Salam as a “Daeshi,” stressing that Salam is a “moderate figure.”

“Salam is a moderate figure and our differences with him are strictly political,” said Bou Saab, of the Free Patriotic Movement, to LBCI.

Justice Minister Ashraf Rifi said on Sunday that the Free Patriotic Movement chief MP Michel Aoun will never be a president, criticizing the street mobilizations that the latter kicked off during the latest cabinet session.

“Aoun will never be a president. What he did in the streets only indicate a state of national downfall and is a proof that he is not fit to handle responsibility at the level of the state,” said Rifi in an interview to the Kuwaiti al-Anbaa daily.

The Israeli army carried out a live ammunition maneuver early Sunday in the Shebaa farms, the National News Agency said.

At around 7:00 am, Israeli troops kicked off simulated military operations in the southern side of the Shebaa farms close to the border line using live ammunition.

A European diplomatic source said that the United States will not accept vacuum in the leadership of Lebanon's military institutions, warning that it could halt the aid program it provides to the army, the Kuwaiti al-Qabas daily reported on Sunday.

The United states, which continuously provides the army with aid and cover to dismantle terrorist cells, will not accept vacuum in the leadership of the military institution, threatening that it could reconsider the aid program if that happened, the daily added.

The Lebanese army arrested overnight suspected Islamist Amin Mansour, the brother of Osama Mansour, in the northern city of Tripoli's, the army said in a statement on Friday.

The arrest in Bab al-Tebbaneh triggered a wave of popular protests in the streets of the city, NNA added.

The Lebanese army arrested two Syrian nationals at dawn after confiscating some amounts of weapons and ammunition that they kept in hiding, the National News Agency stated on Thursday.

The army raided a warehouse in Tripoli's al-Qobbeh which belongs to Syrian nationals of the al-Raayan family.