Lebanon's Presidential Election Fails for 12th Time as Crisis Deepens.

Lebanese lawmakers failed to elect a president for the twelfth time, as Hezbollah withdrew from the voting session after the first round, breaking the quorum. Jihad Azour, a former finance minister and senior official with the International Monetary Fund, received 59 votes to 51 for Hezbollah's preferred candidate, Sleiman Frangieh, but failed to reach the two-thirds majority needed to win in the first round. Azour is backed by the country's largest Christian political parties, the Free Patriotic Movement, and the Lebanese Forces party, while Shiite members of parliament have overwhelmingly backed Frangieh. The new president's most pressing task will be to get Lebanon out of an unprecedented economic crisis that began in October 2019, rooted in decades of corruption and mismanagement by the country's political class.