The U.S. Treasury Department has said that it placed sanctions on an Africa-based Hizbullah support network.

Mustapha Fawaz, Fouzi Fawaz, and Abdallah Tahini were sanctioned for acting for or on behalf of Hizbullah in Nigeria, the Treasury said in a statement.

Prime Minister Tammam Salam accused some members of the cabinet of paralyzing the government for linking its work with the presidential elections despite their insistence that their aim is to back the PM.

“Some of them linked the cabinet work with the presidential elections. So we reached a state of paralysis,” Salam told As Safir daily published on Friday.

Lebanese Forces official Melhem Riachi stressed on Friday that it's normal for talks with the Free Patriotic Movement, which aim at preparing for a wider meeting between FPM chief MP Michel Aoun and LF leader Samir Geagea, to take a long time.

“A page from the past will be folded and we will not go back there,” Riachi said in comments published in al-Mustaqbal newspaper.

The U.N. refugee chief, Antonio Guterres, has called for more financial assistance for Lebanon and other countries hosting Syrian refugees, saying it is “absurd” for the tiny country not to enjoy World Bank grants

“Countries like Lebanon and Jordan need much more financial assistance – not only to local refugee hosting communities, but also through government budget support for necessary structural investments in health systems, education, water supply, electricity and other public infrastructure cracking under the huge pressure,” Guterres told the Security Council on Thursday.

The French judiciary on Thursday dismissed a ninth parole request submitted by detained leftist Lebanese militant Georges Ibrahim Abdallah, who has been in jail since 30 years.

At a protest outside the French embassy in Beirut, a spokesman for the International Campaign for the Release of Georges Ibrahim Abdallah said the activists were notified by the prisoner's lawyer that the parole was rejected.

Customs agents at the Rafik Hariri International Airport discovered on Thursday radioactive material in a shipment of mobile phone covers.

The Finance Ministry announced that a shipment of 98 crates of mobile phone covers, imported from China, were suspected of carrying radioactive material.

The Lebanese army advanced on Thursday on the outskirts of the northeastern villages of Ras Baalbek and Arsal, establishing new checkpoints and surveillance posts, in a “swift” operation that left five troops wounded.

The military said in a communique that “army units deployed at dawn (on Thursday) on the outskirts of Ras Baalbek and fully controlled the heights of Sadr al-Jarash and Harf al-Jarash.”

An Israeli military unit advanced on Thursday towards al-Wazzani river on the southern border raising alert among Lebanese troops and peacekeepers, the state-run National News Agency reported.

NNA said the 20-member unit was backed by a Merkava tank for monitoring.

Bassel al-Moussawi, who was abducted at gunpoint in the Bekaa town of Ali al-Nohri earlier on Thursday, was released, the state-run National News Agency reported.

The circumstances of his abduction remain unclear.

The case of Lebanese hostages is expected to further complicate after a secret mediator in the case died while in the custody of Lebanese security agency, al-Akhbar newspaper reported on Thursday.

Mustapha Behlok, who has been playing the role of mediator between the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) and the Lebanese state, was detained recently on Wadi Hmeid checkpoint in the northeastern border town of Arsal.