A teenager was still being held hostage by his kidnappers on Saturday, three days after they abducted him from his father’s ranch in the Baalbek district, asking for a $150,000 ransom.

The National News Agency reported Friday that the three-member gang kidnapped 16-year-old Ziad Khaled Abou Esber from the cow ranch that lies in Adous valley on Wednesday night.

Eight people connected to a tribally-owned construction company were indicted by a federal grand jury in an elaborate kickback and money laundering scheme involving Iraqi construction projects, U.S. Attorney Kenneth J. Gonzales announced Friday.

The 91-count indictment filed this week said former officers of Laguna Construction Co. and four foreign nationals from Iraq, Jordan and Lebanon face charges including conspiracy, wire fraud and money laundering after a four-year, international investigation involving U.S. defense contracts for wartime rebuilding projects in Iraq.

Speaker Nabih Berri has snapped back at the March 14 coalition that urged him to find a comprehensive solution to the controversial extra-budgetary spending, saying the opposition should instead approve his proposal to form a joint ministerial-parliamentary committee to resolve the dispute with the March 8 forces.

In remarks published in several newspapers on Saturday, Berri said: “I improved the conditions of the success of my proposal so that it gets implemented.”

The Change and Reform bloc of MP Michel Aoun is preparing a detailed response to al-Mustaqbal bloc leader Fouad Saniora who stressed on Friday that the $11 billion extra-budgetary spending made between 2006 and 2009 had all the required documents and accounting of public finances.

Change and Reform bloc MP Ibrahim Kanaan told As Safir daily on Saturday that a press conference held by Saniora and other March 14 MPs a day earlier was “a dangerous scandal at the constitutional and parliamentary levels that cannot be covered by the media play organized by Saniora.”

President Michel Suleiman noted on Friday that Lebanon is witnessing a period of stability despite the unrest in the region, hoping that any action regarding oil exploration in the eastern Mediterranean would not take place against the country’s interests.

He said: “Any violation of our petroleum rights will lead to war.”

Phalange Party leader Amin Gemayel called on Friday for producing a new national pact in Lebanon that would place the Lebanese people’s interests above all else.

He said during his ongoing trip to Italy: “A new pact based on the Taef accord should be established.”

An unknown group hacked on Friday several Lebanese government websites.

The hackers posted a caricature on the home page of the websites depicting a skinny man, representing the people, feeding a fat man described as the government.

Two French journalists evacuated from Syria's battered city Homs arrived Friday at a military airport near Paris after escaping the besieged protest hub where two of their colleagues were killed.

A plane transporting wounded reporter Edith Bouvier, 31, and photographer William Daniels, 34, flew in from Beirut, arriving at Villacoublay airport where they were met by relatives and French President Nicolas Sarkozy.

Special Tribunal for Lebanon Pre-Trial Judge Daniel Fransen has requested the Appeals Chamber to define the crime of “criminal association” following the Prosecution’s recent request to amend the indictment, announced the STL in a statement.

“On February 8, 2012 the Prosecution requested to amend the indictment in a confidential filing only to the pre-trial judge,” it revealed.

An American advocacy group has urged Lebanon’s Central Bank governor Riyad Salameh not to conspire with Hizbullah in helping Iran evade the international financial sanctions imposed on it.

Al-Akhbar newspaper on Friday reported that the president of United against Nuclear Iran, Mark Wallace, sent Salameh a letter on Feb. 21 inquiring about the Central Bank’s efforts in preventing Iran from using the Lebanese financial sector to avoid the international economic sanctions.