Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah told Russian President Dmitry Medvedev that dialogue on Syria was "futile", the official SPA news agency reported on Wednesday.

Russia should have "coordinated with the Arabs... before using the veto" to block a resolution on Syria in the U.N. Security Council, King Abdullah was quoted as saying.

Free Patriotic Movement leader MP Michel Aoun revealed on Tuesday that he has not yet decided whether he will accept Labor Minister Charbel Nahhas’ resignation.

He said after the Change and Reform bloc’s weekly meeting: “The dispute over the transportation allowance is now between us and Nahhas.”

The General Labor Confederation filed a complaint on Tuesday to the International Labor Organization against the Lebanese government and Labor Ministry.

It filed the complaint against violations committed by the government and ministry in determining wages.

Free Patriotic Movement leader MP Michel Aoun said on Saturday that officials are working on resolving the cabinet crisis, stressing that his party is not linked to the red diesel scandal.

“We are working on legalizing the cabinet’s decree concerning the transportation allowance instead of raising the issue to the Shura Council,” Aoun said during a dinner banquet for his party’s Engineers Association.

Prime Minister Najib Miqati reiterated on Saturday that the cabinet crisis requires the efficiency of its members in order to be solved.

“Keep the faith… and let’s all work together for the national interest of our country,” Miqati said on twitter.

A severe snowstorm lashing Lebanon since Friday has caused considerable damage to crops, blocked major roads and downed power lines in several areas.

Strong winds in the northern district of Akkar blocked the international highway of al-Abdeh-Abboudiyeh after it toppled trees. The residents later reopened it.

The Permanent Military Tribunal headed by Brig. Gen. Nizar Khalil on Friday sentenced to death Haitham al-Sahmarani, a retired Internal Security Forces first sergeant, on charges of collaboration with Israel.

Upon his arrest in 2009 Sahmarani confessed to collaborating, along with his wife, with the Mossad, Israel’s intelligence agency.

New York Times correspondent Anthony Shadid, a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner who strove to capture untold stories in Middle East conflicts from Libya to Iraq, died Thursday in eastern Syria after slipping into the country to report on the uprising against its president.

Shadid, shot in the West Bank in 2002 and kidnapped for six days in Libya last year, apparently died of an asthma attack, the Times said. Times photographer Tyler Hicks was with him and carried his body to Turkey, the newspaper said.

March 14 general-secretariat coordinator Fares Soaid has said that Hizbullah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah didn’t clarify in his speech on Thursday whether his party would heed the demand of the March 14 opposition to integrate its arms in the state.

“We waited for an answer from him on the March 14’s proposal for Hizbullah to abide by the conditions of the state, i.e. the cooperation with the international tribunal to hand over the suspects and the handing over of the arms so that they could be placed under the state’s care,” Soaid said in remarks published Friday.

The U.N. General Assembly voted 137 to 12 on Thursday to approve a resolution calling for an immediate halt to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's violent crackdown on dissent.

China, Russia and Iran were among the nations that opposed the text.