With the UN peacekeeping force in the south (UNIFIL) set to expire on Dec⁠ember 31, 2026, and no agreed successor, the Free Patriotic Movement's Gebran Bassil has a new idea: a force drawn from the five permanent Security Council members. Earlier proposals floated a French-Italian alliance and a Chapter VII mission, but none has been defined.

• Bassil's plan would need a Security Council resolution giving the force real powers: securing a full Israeli withdrawal, the return of displaced residents, and reconstruction.
• It would also back the Lebanese Army's bid to hold the state's weapons exclusively.
• The FPM says it will start contacts with Lebanese officials and influential countries to sell the idea.
• Its own circles concede a catch: five-power membership does not mean any of them sends troops, or that the force could compel Israel to leave.

Why it matters: With the south still lacking an agreed successor, any plan has to answer who is willing to enforce what once UNIFIL's mandate ends.

Fresh dollar deposits, the new-money accounts opened since the 2019 crash, are growing faster this war year than last. We reported they hit $5.4 billion by the end of Jul⁠y. The new numbers suggest this reflects fear, not restored trust in banks.

• Deposits are rising by about $144 million a month in 2026, versus about $107 million a month in 2025, roughly 35% faster, according to an economic source speaking to Lebanon24.
• The same source expects the total to pass $6 billion by the end of the year.
• Shelling and displacement made cash at home riskier than a bank account, even one the depositor distrusts.
• Banks hold $8.3 billion in fresh liquidity, about 154% of new deposits, and are keeping it idle rather than lending.

The bigger picture: Money is flowing into banks without flowing out into loans, so businesses that need financing to rebuild still operate mostly on cash.

Prime Minister Nawaf Salam opened public consultations on a draft National Plan for the Governance of Palestinian Camps in Lebanon. The plan was prepared by the Lebanese-Palestinian Dialogue Committee, and it aims to bring camp security and services under regular state authority.

• Salam said the camps fall under Lebanese sovereignty and law, and that cooperation with the Palestinian leadership on camp weapons has already begun.
• He restated Lebanon's rejection of naturalization and of displacing Palestinians, while backing refugees' right of return.
• The plan would divide responsibilities among state institutions, Palestinian entities and UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees.
• A companion draft law on refugees' status would cover labor and social security.
• Institutions, camp representatives, municipalities and rights groups are invited to submit comments before the final version goes to cabinet.

What to watch: Salam says the principles are fixed while the methods stay open, so the consultation's real test is what changes in the draft before it reaches the government.

Earlier this⁠ month, governments urged website administrators to rush emergency updates after flaws nicknamed PHP2Shell turned up in PHP, the programming language behind about 70% of websites. AI tools found them after more than a decade unnoticed, because humans would have struggled to exploit them. The volunteers who maintain this software are now buried in new findings, and the problem is bigger than PHP.

• PHP is open source, meaning anyone can download, modify and share it. A nonprofit foundation has coordinated it since 2021 on a meagre budget, and Facebook and Wikipedia were built on it.
• Google reported more than 1,000 security bugs in its latest Chrome update, more than the last two dozen updates combined.
• Mozilla, the foundation behind Firefox, found over 400 vulnerabilities in Apr⁠il, against 76 the month before.
• An Apache Software Foundation volunteer says his team has about 10 times more issues than usual, and every AI-flagged bug still needs a human to verify it, which takes time and money.

What to watch: Corporate programs like Alpha-Omega fund open-source security work at about $7 million a year, and the volunteers doing the fixing say it is still a fraction of the need.

Almost 20,000 people have tried the crossing from Libya's east coast to the Greek island of Crete this⁠ year, making it an increasingly significant route into Europe. Libya has been split since 2014 between a UN-backed government in Tripoli and a rival leadership in the east, allied with commander Khalifa Haftar. Researchers say smuggling has become part of the economy of that division.

• On Oct⁠ober 20 alone, Greek authorities registered 710 people in 14 boats, according to Kathimerini, the Greek daily.
• Passage reportedly costs up to $4,000 and takes about a day and a half. Crackdowns on the Italy route in 2023 pushed networks toward Crete, using smaller boats.
• Researchers say armed actors profit from smuggling routes, and that visible action against smugglers can earn political legitimacy. No proven links tie the Haftar family's networks to the smugglers.
• The EU cooperates with Libyan authorities on migration control, which researchers say also adds to those authorities' local power.
• A UN migration agency report counts around 950,000 migrants and refugees living in Libya, many without permits or access to healthcare.

Zooming out: The eastern government has just signed a maritime deal with Turkey that Greece rejects, and a researcher says migrant flows could become geopolitical leverage, though no direct link is shown.

A Reuters investigation says Iran built a secret network of more than 5,000 military-linked agencies, all with names starting "MOD" for Ministry of Defense, to import hardware despite the US naval blockade and Western sanctions. It sheds light on one of the war's open questions: how Iran keeps firing missiles and drones in their thousands since the US and Israel began striking it on Feb⁠ruary 28.

• The network imported at least $2 billion in hardware, explosives and heavy trucks since Jan⁠uary 2025, according to the Reuters report.
• One agency, MOD 346428, brought in rocket propellants, explosives, weapons components and trucks that can serve as missile launchers, much of it recorded as coming from China, Russia and Germany.
• For 97% of reviewed shipments, settlement was "without currency transfer": frontmen abroad paid with cash from illicit oil sales, so money rarely crossed borders where it might trip a sanctions alarm.
• Reuters found no evidence that any numbered agency has been sanctioned by Western governments.
• A US Treasury spokeswoman says Washington is "10 steps ahead" of sanctions evasion, while China says it is unaware of the situation described.

The bigger picture: Experts note much of the material is dual-use, so civilian purposes are possible, but the scale looks to them like an effort to rebuild Iran's drone and missile fleet.