Police arrested a man and his wife for carrying out several robberies between Zahle and Bar Elias.

Deputy Speaker Farid Makari after meeting former PM Fouad Saniora: The policy statement will be finalized most probably in a day or two.

Al-Arabiya: Iran agrees to ship uranium stocks abroad, says details to be discussed later.

Prime Minister Saad Hariri Heading The Ministrial Statement Committee

The man named as Israel’s new ambassador to Egypt, Yitzhak Levanon, 65, is the son of a spy who had been sentenced to death in Lebanon but was eventually part of a prisoner swap, a foreign ministry official said on Monday.

A fluent Arabic speaker, Levanon was born in Lebanon, where his now 92-year-old mother was arrested and sentenced to death in 1961 after being found guilty of spying for Israel for 14 years, the official said.

Levanon’s mother was released in 1967 as part of a prisoner exchange in the aftermath of the Six Day War between Israel and its Arab neighbors that year.

Israel’s trade minister began a visit to Turkey on Monday to mend strained relations, saying Ankara could help resolve the conflict between Israel and Syria.

Israel has not yet reached a prisoner-swap deal with Hamas, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Monday as efforts for the release of soldier Gilad Shalit appeared to gather pace.

“There is no deal yet,” Netanyahu told deputies of his right-wing Likud party, according to an official present at the meeting.

A Lebanese security source told Al-Manar television on Monday that UNIFIL has not informed the Lebanese government of any Israeli plan to withdraw from the northern part of Al-Ghajar village. Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported earlier on Monday that Israeli ministers are in favor of the withdrawal, adding that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wants the security cabinet to vote on the issue on Wednesday.

Kataeb Party bloc MP Elie Marouni responded to Hezbollah Deputy Secretary General Sheikh Naim Qassem’s recent speech—in which he said that he is “satisfied in advance” with the Ministerial Statement’s clause pertaining to the Resistance—saying, “such a tone, which disregards other party’s points of view in Lebanon, is not new; as if there is no group other than Hezbollah in the country.”

Marouni said he regrets that Hezbollah can impose its opinion and achieve its goals through “political stubbornness” and added that the issue of the Resistance’s arms should not be included in the Ministerial Statement, but instead be discussed in the National Dialogue.

Former PM Fouad Saniora: Preserving independence is a continuous challenge that we should not back off from.