There will be “no new taxes” in the 2022 state budget, “contrary to what is being rumored,” Finance Minister Youssef Khalil said after Monday’s Cabinet session.

Cabinet convened on Monday, at the Baabda Palace, for the first time since October.

President Michel Aoun presided over the session, after having met with Prime Minister Najib Miqati.

Al-Mustaqbal Movement leader ex-PM Saad Hariri on Sunday addressed crowds that flocked to the Center House from Akkar to express their rejection of his likely boycott of the upcoming parliamentary elections.

Al-Mustaqbal Movement on Sunday condemned verbal attacks on Saudi Arabia, after social media videos showed supporters of ex-PM Saad Hariri shouting insults against the kingdom during a solidarity rally outside the Center House.

Maronite Patriarch Beshara al-Rahi on Sunday warned against passing, in the 2022 state budget, new financial decisions similar to the new wage scale.

"We warn against trying to pass financial decisions that are more like a new veiled version of the new wage scale," al-Rahi ssaid.

Kuwaiti Foreign Minister Sheikh Ahmed Nasser al-Mohammed Al-Sabah met Sunday morning with President Michel Aoun in Baabda, hours after he arrived in Beirut and met with Prime Minister Najib Miqati.

After the meeting, the Kuwaiti minister said he is "carrying a Kuwaiti, Gulf, Arab and international message containing measures and ideas to build confidence again with Lebanon."

The U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) on Friday designated “Hizbullah-affiliated financial facilitator Adnan Ayad,” as well as “members of an international network of facilitators and companies connected to him and to Adel Diab, Adnan Ayad’s business partner and fellow Hizbullah financier who was designated by OFAC on January 18, 2022,” it said in a statement.

“The sanctions evasion efforts of those designated today demonstrate how Hizbullah gains access to the international financial system and raises funds in support of its acts of terrorism and other illicit activities. These actions undermine the stability, security, and sovereignty of the Lebanese people,” the Treasury added.

President Michel Aoun on Friday hoped the new year will witness “the beginning of Lebanon’s rise from the successive crises it has gone through.”

Free Patriotic Movement chief Jebran Bassil has lamented the presence of “procrastination” in the Beirut port blast probe, stressing the importance of the issuance of an indictment by Judge Tarek Bitar.

President Michel Aoun said Thursday he hopes some nations won't use the Lebanese arena to "settle their regional disputes" nor to "back certain groups at the expense of others."

In a meeting with diplomatic corps at the Baabda Palace, Aoun affirmed his keenness on maintaining the best relations with all nations, including Gulf states.