The U.N. General Assembly overwhelmingly passed a resolution Friday criticizing the Security Council's failure to act on the Syria conflict, which U.N. leader Ban Ki-moon said has become a "proxy war".

The resolution, which condemned President Bashar Assad's use of "heavy weapons" in his battle against the rebellion against his rule, was passed by 133 votes with 12 countries against and 31 abstaining.

Protesters in Aleppo took to the streets Friday to demand death for Syrian President Bashar Assad even as violence raged there and 90 people were killed nationwide.

The Local Coordination Committees, the main activist group spurring protests on the ground, said regime forces shot dead at least 90 people across the country, among them 66 in Hama that witnessed a “massacre” in its al-Arbaeen neighborhood.

U.S. Ambassador to Lebanon Maura Connelly on Thursday held a meeting with Free Patriotic Movement leader MP Michel Aoun, during which she conveyed “the grave concern of the United States over recent assassination attempts in Lebanon” and said the U.S. was “deeply disturbed by the recent deportations of 14 Syrians.”

“The Ambassador and General Aoun discussed the political and security situation in Lebanon and the current situation in Syria,” said a statement issued by the U.S. Embassy after the talks.

Hizbullah Secretary-General Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah on Wednesday called on the national dialogue committee to agree on a “liberation strategy” as well as on a defense strategy, accusing the rival March 14 camp of “blackmail.”

Recalling recent remarks by MP Mohammed Raad, head of Hizbullah’s Loyalty to Resistance bloc, Nasrallah said “remarks about a liberation strategy are not new.”

YouTube's inaugural film festival has selected 10 short films, including a Lebanese picture ‘Super Full’, that it will send to the Venice Film Festival.

The Google video site announced Wednesday the finalists of its Your Film Festival. The contest was overseen by director Ridley Scott, whose production company helped winnow the 15,000 submissions down to 10.

Free Patriotic Movement leader MP Michel Aoun stated on Tuesday that telecom data is a legal need in solving crimes, criticizing however how the complete data was handed over to the security agencies.

He said after the Change and Reform bloc’s weekly meeting: “Handing over the complete data to the security agencies is a crime against the constitution.”

Several families of the 11 Lebanese pilgrims abducted in Syria held a sit-in on Tuesday near the junction that leads to the Baabda palace.

The families warned that they would escalate their measures if the men weren’t released soon and chanted slogans condemning the government’s failure to achieve their release.

Syrian renewed on Sunday its demand to Lebanon to prevent the infiltration of “terrorist groups” from its territories into its own.

Foreign Minister Walid al-Muallem stated: “We hope Lebanon would help thwart the infiltration, which will benefit it and Syria.”

Rebels fighting government forces in Syria's commercial capital Aleppo "will definitely be defeated," Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Muallem said on an unannounced visit to key ally Iran on Sunday.

"We believe that all the anti-Syrian forces have gathered in Aleppo to fight the government... and they will definitely be defeated," he told a joint news conference in Tehran with Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi.

The European Union on Friday announced “additional €5 million to support the needs of Syrian refugees and their Lebanese host communities.”

“With the influx of Syrian refugees into Lebanon some of the most deprived communities in the country are suffering from an additional strain on their already limited resources. The European Union is committed to ensure that these host communities in particular, are able to mitigate the impact of this unprecedented influx in the medium to long term,” the Delegation of the European Union in Lebanon said in a statement.