President Michel Aoun on Wednesday signed a decree for referring to parliament an urgent draft law aimed at approving and financing the ration cards plan.

Caretaker Finance Minister Ghazi Wazni had on Monday signed the draft law, which was prepared by the Premiership and is aimed at “approving ration cards and opening an additional and extraordinary line of credit for funding them.”

The United Nations World Food Program (WFP) has started scaling up its support to a crucial national social support scheme in Lebanon to assist families struggling to make ends meet amid a severe economic downturn, skyrocketing inflation and a collapsing Lebanese pound.

In a statement issued on Wednesday, WFP said it will support an additional 195,000 people, aiming to reach a total of 300,000 people per month through the National Poverty Targeting Program (NPTP) of the Ministry of Social Affairs which is developing the national social protection framework and strategy. To address inflation and increased food prices in Lebanon, WFP “will provide each family with a cash top-up of 200,000 LBP that can be used in shops or at cash machines (ATMs),” it said.

French judicial investigators heard fugitive ex-auto tycoon Carlos Ghosn as a witness Wednesday in Beirut ahead of further questioning next week, two sources said.

The hearing came before French magistrates officially question Ghosn, who holds Lebanese, French and Brazilian citizenship, on Monday over other judicial inquiries lodged against him in France.

Migrant workers in Lebanon have been hit hard by its multiple crises and half of them left jobless, the U.N. warned Wednesday, calling for voluntary returns to be scaled up.

From marching in rallies to posting live updates on social media, Palestinian refugee Mira Krayem has barely slept since conflict gripped her ancestral homeland earlier this month.

But the 24-year-old university student, who lives in Lebanon, said she felt solidarity messages for the Palestinian cause from across the world have made her and fellow activists feel reenergized after years of crushing defeat.

Canada said Tuesday any new request to extradite Lebanese-Canadian academic Hassan Diab to France over a deadly bombing in Paris 40 years ago would be given due consideration.

Najat Rochdi, the Deputy U.N. Special Coordinator for Lebanon, Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator, on Tuesday briefed a virtual meeting of the Security Council’s Informal Expert Group on Women, Peace and Security on the situation in Lebanon, particularly with regards to impact of the current crisis on women and how women are working to sustain peace and security in the country, her office said.

Hizbullah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah on Tuesday called on President Michel Aoun and PM-designate Saad Hariri to hold consecutive meetings in order to agree on the line-up of the new government.

“The key to solving everything in the country is the formation of a new government,” Nasrallah said in a televised address marking 21 years since Israel’s military withdrawal from Lebanon.

Free Patriotic Movement chief MP Jebran Bassil on Tuesday called for “a state of right, justice and accountability in Lebanon,” in a tweet marking 21 years since Israel’s military withdrawal from Lebanon.

“The liberation of the year 2000 ended the myth of the occupation and the 2006 victory put an end to the era of the impunity of Israeli aggression,” Bassil said.

Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri has said that he has never stopped seeking a breakthrough in the government formation stalmate.