The assets of Fransabank were seized and all monetary operations were suspended and safes and registers were sealed with red wax, after a depositor filed a lawsuit against the bank.

Earlier this week, Judge Ghada Aoun had also frozen the assets of five of Lebanon’s largest banks and those of their board of directors as she investigates possible transfers of billions of dollars aboard during the country’s economic meltdown.

The Cabinet on Wednesday approved the long-awaited electricity plant, the information minister said after the session, while noting that the power plant that will be set up in the North will not necessarily be in the town of Selaata.

Moreover, the sector’s regulatory commission will be formed in 2022, not in 2023, while some articles and environmental conditions were amended, Information Minister Ziad Makari said.

Relatives of Beirut port blast victims staged a protest Wednesday outside the residence of Justice Minister Henri Khoury.

“Cowardly Minister!” was one of the phrases that they wrote on the external walls of Khoury’s apartment. The protesters also wrote names of victims.

Ukraine and Russia have made “significant progress” on a tentative 15-point peace plan that would involve Kyiv renouncing NATO membership ambitions in return for security guarantees, the Financial Times reported on Wednesday.

The plan include a ceasefire and Russian withdrawal if Kyiv declares neutrality and accepts limits on its armed forces, the FT quoted three people involved in the talks as saying.

Lebanese authorities on Wednesday seized the assets of Fransabank, one of the country’s biggest banks, based on an order issued by Judge Mariana Anani, the head of the Enforcement Department in Beirut.

The order followed a lawsuit filed by the depositor Ayyad Gherbawi Ibrahim who requested that he be paid his money in banknotes and not through a check.

Interior Minister Bassam Mawlawi announced Wednesday that Lebanon is ready to hold the elections, as doors have closed for parliament candidacy with 1043 candidates.

He asked the civil and international communities to monitor the elections and make sure they are transparent.

U.S. Ambassador to Lebanon Dorothy Shea announced Tuesday that she had a “positive discussion” with Energy Minister Walid Fayyad, while denying claims by Hizbullah chief Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah about the fate of Lebanon's U.S.-sponsored energy deals with each of Egypt and Jordan.

“I am encouraged when I hear about the continued progress on these regional energy deals. It is a long and complicated process, and I would urge the audiences out there to not believe the naysayers who would have you believe that there is no progress,” Shea said after the talks, apparently responding to Nasrallah’s remarks.

Ex-PM Fouad Saniora on Tuesday officially announced that he will not nominate himself for the upcoming parliamentary elections.

At a press conference, Saniora added that his decision is aimed at “making way for competent and new faces,” while noting that he will be “fully involved” in the elections in terms of backing certain electoral lists.

The negotiations with the International Monetary Fund have not stopped and "things are going well," Deputy Prime Minister Saadeh Shami's office said.

Shami's office negated, in a statement Tuesday, media reports that said the negotiations had stopped and that no results have been reached.

Progressive Socialist Party leader Walid Jumblat on Tuesday lamented that the Arab countries have “abandoned” Lebanon due to “the absurd statements of top leaders against the Gulf countries.”

“Amid this suffocating social and economic crisis that Lebanon is going through, today we are bearing the price of the Arab countries’ abandonment of us,” Jumblat tweeted.