Security forces said on Monday that they arrested a man suspected of murdering a young woman in the coastal town of Kaslik that lies north of Beirut.

H.H. was apprehended in the Bir Hassan neighborhood of Beirut's southern suburbs on suspicion of killing Elianne al-Safatli near a nightclub in Kaslik, police said.

The cabinet is expected on Monday to agree on the technical extension of the operations of the Naameh landfill and the contract with dump collectors, Environment Minister Mohammed al-Mashnouq said after a preliminary agreement was reached to resolve the controversial waste treatment file.

Al-Mashnouq told several local dailies that the extension would take place to avoid drowning Beirut and Mount Lebanon streets with trash.

Environment Minister Mohammed al-Mashnouq stressed on Saturday that the cabinet would reach a decision on the waste management file by January 17, the deadline for closing the Naameh landfill and the date when the contract with the company, which collects dumps in Beirut and Mount Lebanon, expires.

Al-Mashnouq told Ad-Diyar daily published on Saturday that the decision would not be reached over the weekend but definitely at the start of next week.

Kuwait's First Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Sheikh Sabah Khaled al-Sabah is scheduled to visit Beirut on Monday for talks with top officials, al-Mustaqbal newspaper reported.

The Kuwaiti FM is expected to discuss with the Lebanese officials issues of common interest linked to the latest developments in the Arab world and the region, the daily said on Saturday.

Progressive Socialist Party leader MP Walid Jumblat has called for the end of political and sectarian calculations in the government after the cabinet members failed to strike a deal on the treatment of solid waste.

“The road to the Naameh landfill will close on January 17,” said a decisive Jumblat in comments to al-Akhbar newspaper published on Friday.

Customs agents at Rafik Hariri International Airport thwarted on Sunday an attempt to smuggle narcotic pills, in the third such operation in the past 24 hours, the state-run National News Agency reported.

NNA said the agents arrested an Egyptian arriving from Cairo at around 1:30 am after finding 2,050 red-colored pills inside two icons made of wood.

Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov reportedly had a stormy meeting with Hizbullah chief Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah last month.

The Saudi al-Watan daily on Sunday quoted sources as saying that during his talks with Nasrallah, Bogdanov proposed the possibility of naming a new Syrian president to lead a transitional government.

The French foreign ministry's director for North Africa and the Middle East affairs is expected to travel to Riyadh, Tehran and the Vatican in an attempt to resolve the Lebanese presidential deadlock, pan-Arab daily Asharq al-Awsat reported on Wednesday.

The newspaper said Jean-François Girault will travel to Saudi Arabia on January 5. He is then scheduled to make a trip to Iran and later head to the Vatican for talks with top officials on Lebanon's presidential crisis.

Iran's visiting Parliament Speaker Ali Larijani said Monday that Hizbullah is an active movement and plays a positive role in the region.

“Some movements are more effective than states. Hizbullah is an example. It plays a positive role in the region,” he said.

Nearly 30,000 Syrian children born as refugees in Lebanon are in a legal limbo, not registered with any government, exposing them to the risk of a life of statelessness deprived of basic rights.

It is a problem that is replicated, to varying degrees, in nations across the Middle East where more than 3.3 million Syrians have found safe haven from the intractable civil war in their homeland.