The government general secretariat has started preparing the agenda for the upcoming cabinet session, scheduled for next week, reported al-Joumhouria newspaper on Thursday.

Sources of Premier Tammam Salam told the daily that the cabinet is likely to resume holding weekly sessions to restore its previous work rate and in order to tackle a number of affairs that have been pending for a long time.

Speaker Nabih Berri stressed on Thursday that he didn't tackle the extension of the parliament's term with any political party, pointing out that the priority is for staging the presidential elections.

“Contacts with political powers are focusing on the election of a new head of state and not the parliamentary polls,” Berri said in comments published in As Safir newspaper.

Israeli troops handed a Lebanese shepherd over to the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon a day after kidnapping him, the National News Agency reported on Thursday.

NNA reported that UNIFIL handed over Lebanese shepherd Ismail Khalil Nabaa, who was abducted by the Israeli army, over to the Lebanese security forces through the Naqoura crossing.

Two rockets landed near the Bekaa town of Hermel on Wednesday after being fired from the Eastern Mountain Range on the Lebanese-Syrian border, where clashes are still ongoing between Syrian rebels and Hizbullah fighters.

“Two rockets fell in the vicinity of the town of Hermel after they were launched from the Eastern Mountain Range,” state-run National News Agency reported.

A Lebanese delegation currently present in Mali to follow up on the doomed Air Algerie passenger plane's case is trying to transfer the bodies of the Lebanese victims who were on board despite the “difficulty” of the process.

A statement released by the media office of Higher Defense Council chief General Mohammed Kheir said on Wednesday that investigation is ongoing to reveal the details surrounding flight AH5017's crash, elaborating on the work of the Lebanese delegation in Mali.

Influential British band Massive Attack dedicated their only Middle East gig to the children of Gaza, openly condemning Israel's "massacre" of the Palestinians.

As the band played in Byblos, in Lebanon, just a few hundred kilometers north of Gaza, swaying music-lovers on Tuesday night held up Palestinian flags as Massive Attack issued a rare, explicit condemnation of Israel's offensive.

Former Tripoli MP Ahmed Hbous is in critical condition after accidentally shooting himself.

Hbous, a Alawite, was handling his gun when the bullet struck his face.

A Lebanese expatriate in Abidjan succumbed to his wounds on Wednesday after sustaining gunshot wounds, the state-run National News Agency reported.

According to NNA, 40-year-old Mohammed Malek, who hails from the southern village of Beit Leif, was severely wounded after unknown assailants opened fire at him during a burglary.

An Israeli infantry unit abducted on Wednesday a shepherd from the southern border town of Shebaa a day after two shepherds escaped when soldiers seized their flock of goats, the Lebanese army said.

The army and the state-run National News Agency said Ismail Khalil Nabaa was kidnapped and taken to the occupied Shebaa Farms area at dawn Wednesday.

The Lebanese army detained overnight a number of Syrian nationals suspected of having links with an an offshoot of al-Qaida, the military and the state-run National News Agency said Wednesday.

The army said in a communique that it seized 8 Syrians in the eastern border town of Arsal for illegal entry. Some of them were driving unregistered cars and motorcycles and are suspected of belonging to terrorist organizations, it added.