Speaker Nabih Berri informed Maronite Patriarch Beshara al-Rahi that he will call for the first round of parliamentary sessions to elect a new president next week.

According to An Nahar newspaper published on Saturday, Berri and al-Rahi discussed in a telephone conversation, ahead of the Patriarch's return from Geneva, the upcoming presidential elections.

For 22 years, Mary Mansourati has been waiting for her son, Dani, to come home. His shirts are ironed and hanging in his closet. His trousers, neatly folded, are stacked on the shelves next to his bed in the family's Beirut apartment.

Dani was 30 when he was detained by Syrian intelligence and has not been heard from since. He is among an estimated 17,000 Lebanese still missing from Lebanon's civil war or the years of Syrian domination that followed.

After weeks of discussion and nation-wide protests that were led by the Syndicate Coordination Committee, the Joint Parliamentary Committees approved late on Friday the new wage scale and referred it to the parliament for a vote.

“The joint parliamentary committees completed the examination of the new wage scale draft and the proposal about funding it, and will submit a report to the parliament,” the state-run National News Agency said.

Maronite Patriarch Beshara al-Rahi stressed on Friday the need to stage the presidential elections on time, saying that he does not have the right to interfere in the elections.

He said upon his return to Lebanon from a trip to Geneva: “I have not rejected the nomination of any March 8 or 14 camp presidential candidate and I do not have the right to refuse any bid.”

A demonstration that was planned to take place on Friday to protest the arrest warrants issued against hundreds of the northern city of Tripoli's residents has been called off, after the interference of several political figures.

A group of young men had called via social media platforms for a “mass demonstration” in Abdul Hamid Karami Square in Tripoli after Friday's prayers, to demand withdrawing the arrest warrants issued against hundreds of the city's residents.

State security forces arrested on Thursday a car theft gang in the eastern Bekaa Valley as part of the implementation of the security plan in the region, reported the National News Agency on Friday.

It said that the five-member Lebanese gang's activities were limited to robbing vehicles and later selling them or trading them for drugs.

Tensions between Speaker Nabih Berri and the Association of Banks in Lebanon eased on Friday after signs of a dispute were beginning to emerge between the two sides over the funding of the new wage scale.

The speaker had earlier during the day refused to meet with the ABL before its apologizes for its stance concerning the tax measures proposed by the joint parliamentary committees to fund the new wage scale.

As he pushes a cart full of tomatoes and cucumbers in the market at Bint Jbeil in southern Lebanon, nothing marks out Mahmoud as an experienced Hizbullah fighter.

The stocky vegetable vendor in his fifties, who sports a red beard, fought Israel in 2006, but that battle is now old news.

Vatican officials have expressed fears that a possible vacuum in the presidency would harm the role of Christians in state institutions, al-Joumhouria daily reported Friday.

The newspaper quoted the officials as saying that the election of a new president was urgent amid the turmoil in Lebanon and the region.

Al-Mustaqbal parliamentary bloc leader MP Fouad Saniora is in Riyadh to brief al-Mustaqbal movement chief ex-Premier Saad Hariri on the results of consultations held in Beirut over the presidential elections.

An Nahar daily said Friday that Saniora was accompanied by Nader Hariri, the adviser of al-Mustaqbal movement leader.