The ministerial committee tasked with following up the issue of oil and gas exploration on Wednesday referred the executive decrees prepared by the energy and water ministry to the government, which will discuss them in its January 4 session.

Briefing reporters after the committee’s meeting at the Grand Serail, Energy and Water Minister Jebran Bassil said: “I want to announce the good news to the Lebanese: the ministerial committees tasked with studying the oil decrees has reached an agreement and referred the decrees prepared by the energy ministry to the upcoming Jan. 4 cabinet session.”

Unbeknownst to many, Turkish diplomats on duty around Europe saved hundreds of Jews during World War II by giving them Turkish passports, enabling them to travel to safety in Turkey.

This little known episode is told in an independent documentary entitled "Turkish Passport", being promoted as finally revealing "a secret kept for 66 years".

A rocket was fired from Gaza into southern Israel on Wednesday morning without exploding or causing any casualties or damage, Israeli police said.

"A rocket fired from Gaza fell this morning in the area of Shaar Hanegev. The device did not explode and there were no injuries or damage," police spokesman Louba Samri told Agence France Presse.

Israeli air strikes killed at least one Palestinian and wounded 10, two seriously, in the Gaza Strip late on Tuesday, Palestinian medics and health officials told Agence France Presse.

They named the dead man as Abdullah al-Telbani, 22, and said he was riding in a motorized rickshaw in Jabaliya refugee camp in the north of the strip when the attack took place. It was not immediately clear if the other casualties were riding with him.

Israeli President Shimon Peres said on Tuesday that Israel's longstanding refusal to confirm or deny reports that it has a nuclear arsenal is itself an effective deterrent.

"Israel has 'real or assumed' capabilities that are sufficient for deterrence," Peres' office quoted him as telling a closed-door annual meeting of Israel's envoys abroad.

Speaker Nabih Berri threatened on Tuesday the government against failing to issue the decrees concerning the implementation of decisions reached on oil exploration.

As Safir newspaper reported that Berri warned to call on the parliament to convene to question the cabinet over its performance if it didn’t issue the decrees during a session scheduled to be held at Baabda palace on Wednesday.

Canada is concerned that forces worse than deposed strongman Hosni Mubarak could rise to power in a newly democratic Egypt, Prime Minister Stephen Harper said in an interview.

"There are obviously forces who want democracy and progressive change (in Egypt), but there are clearly some forces that would want something that's probably worse than what we had before," he said in a taped interview with CTV News to be aired Monday.

An Israeli parliamentary committee is to hold a debate on Monday on recognizing genocide in Armenia, a move likely to further strain already tense relations with Turkey.

The education committee is to convene at 10 am (08:00 GMT) to discuss a proposal to mark April 24, the day when Turkish mass killings of Armenians started in 1915, as a memorial day for "the massacre of the Armenian people."

Israeli soldiers detained five Palestinians trying to infiltrate the Jewish state from the Gaza Strip on Sunday, an Israeli military spokeswoman said.

"This evening the soldiers spotted and arrested three Palestinians who were trying to cross the security barrier separating Israel from the central part of the Gaza Strip" controlled by the Hamas movement, she told Agence France Presse.

Israel's defense ministry said on Sunday that the United States has agreed to provide it with an additional 235 million dollars to finance its rocket defense system.

"The aid from the American Congress is a supplementary step in the reinforcement of Israeli-American relations in the area of defense," Defense Minister Ehud Barak said in a statement.