President Michel Aoun on Saturday visited Dar al-Fatwa in Beirut and met with Grand Mufti Sheikh Abdul Latif Daryan.

Lebanon’s crisis is increasingly forcing young people to drop out of learning and engage in ill-paid, irregular and informal work "just to survive and help feed their families," UNICEF said in a report released Friday.

The report – Searching for Hope – says that more than 4 in 10 youth in Lebanon reduced spending on education to buy basic food, medicine and other essential items, and 3 in 10 stopped their education altogether.

The Trade and Investment Facilitation (TIF) activity, funded by The United States Agency for International Development (USAID), has launched an export promotion initiative to assist 15 Lebanese wineries to conform with regulatory and market requirements to export wines to the state of Texas in the United States.

The launch event, entitled “Wine from Lebanon: Exporting Lebanese Wine to the United States”, was held in the presence of USAID Lebanon Mission Director Eileen Devitt, the Minister of Economy and Trade Amin Salam, representatives of the 15 wineries, and other stakeholders in the wine industry. 

U.S. Special Envoy and Coordinator for International Energy Affairs Amos Hochstein will return to Lebanon in the middle of next week carrying a new proposal, media reports said.

Prime Minister Najib Miqati held talks Friday at the Grand Serail with Grand Mufti Sheikh Abdul Latif Daryan.

Cabinet held a session Friday morning that was dedicated to continuing the discussion of the draft state budget.

Progressive Socialist Party leader Walid Jumblat has noted that “very special circumstances” have pushed ex-PM Saad Hariri to announce the suspension of his political activity, noting that the U.N. Security Council Resolution 1559 “cannot be implemented.”

Lebanese security agencies have thwarted a new attempt to smuggle narcotics out of the country, Interior Minister Bassam al-Mawlawi announced on Thursday.

Kataeb Party leader Sami Gemayel held talks Thursday at Dar al-Fatwa with Grand Mufti Sheikh Abdul Latif Daryan.

Cabinet on Thursday held “a discussion in depth over the situation of state administrations and the need to secure the continuity of their work” and also tackled “the need to explain the state budget’s objectives to citizens,” the acting information minister said.