Lebanon elects Aoun president, ending two-year vacuum

Lebanese lawmakers ended a two-year political vacuum Monday by electing as president ex-army chief Michel Aoun, who promised to protect the country from spillover from the war in neighbouring Syria. The deeply divided parliament took four rounds of voting to elect 81-year-old Aoun, whose supporters flooded streets across the country waving his party's orange flag. "Lebanon is still treading through a minefield, but it has been spared the fires burning across the region," Aoun said after taking the presidential oath.