Hizbullah and Amal Movement’s return to Cabinet meetings was prompted by a surge in foreign pressures, especially from France, which played a key role in this regard, a media report said on Wednesday.

A Lebanese American man's survivors, who filed an ambitious lawsuit last year alleging Lebanon's security agency kidnapped and tortured him before he died in the U.S., hope to find an opening after the agency recently responded in an American court.

Amer Fakhoury died in the United States in August 2020 at age 57 after suffering from stage 4 lymphoma. His family's suit says he developed the illness and other serious medical issues while imprisoned during a visit to Lebanon over decades-old murder and torture charges that he denied.

The U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) on Tuesday designated three “Hizbullah-linked financial facilitators and their Lebanon-based travel company,” the Treasury said in a statement.

Specifically, OFAC designated Adel Diab, Ali Mohamad Daoun, Jihad Salem Alame, and their company, Dar Al Salam for Travel & Tourism.

Prime Minister Najib Miqati held talks Tuesday at the Baabda Palace with President Michel Aoun.

Mount Lebanon Attorney General Judge Ghada Aoun on Tuesday issued a no disposal note for all real state properties and vehicles belonging to Central Bank Governor Riad Salameh.

A depositor armed with an assault weapon and a hand grenade took dozens of employees and clients hostage at a Jeb Jannine bank on Tuesday, the National News Agency said.

Lebanon is making improvements in the preliminary talks with the International Monetary Fund, sources said.

Prime Minister Najib Miqati is keen on holding the elections on time and sees the participation of al-Mustaqbal Movement leader ex-PM Saad Hariri as indispensable, sources said.

Miqati's sources told al-Joumhouria newspaper, in remarks published Tuesday, that Miqati thinks it is necessary for Hariri to participate in the upcoming parliamentary elections in person or through his bloc.

Prime Minister Najib Miqati will call for a Cabinet session on Monday, MP Ali Darwish, a member of Miqati’s bloc, said.

He added that the state budget will be discussed in Cabinet next Wednesday or Thursday.

Interior Minister Bassam al-Mawlawi on Monday stressed that the hole that was discovered in a plane belonging to Greece’s Aegean Airlines did not happen in Beirut.