Lebanon recorded three new cases of the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic raising the total to 710, the Health Ministry said on Monday.

Lebanon's currency continued its downward spiral against the dollar on Monday, as money exchange houses failed to abide by the Central Bank’s Sunday memo setting the rate at LBP 3,200 for dollars.

Israeli warplanes staged at dawn on Monday heavy” mock raids over the southern city of Sidon, said the State-run National News Agency.

Israeli troops also resumed installations of surveillance cameras on the Palestinian-Lebanese border near Fatima Gate in Kfar Kila on Sunday, said NNA.

Iraq is planning painful cuts in social benefits relied on by millions of government workers. Saudi Arabia will likely have to delay mega-projects. Egypt and Lebanon face a blow as their workers in the Gulf send back less of the much-needed dollars that help keep their fragile economies afloat.

The historic crash in oil prices in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic is reverberating across the Middle East as crude-dependent countries scramble to offset losses from a key source of state revenue — and all this at a time when several of them already face explosive social unrest.

Demonstrators blocked roads through Lebanon on Monday and late on Sunday, despite a lockdown and curfew imposed because of the coronavirus.

Al-Mustaqbal Movement on Sunday lashed out anew at Prime Minister Hassan Diab and Free Patriotic Movement chief Jebran Bassil.

Maronite Patriarch Beshara al-Rahi on Sunday threw his support behind Central Bank Governor Riad Salameh and criticized Prime Minister Hassan Diab over his latest remarks.

Free Patriotic Movement leader Jebran Bassil on Sunday said several parties must bear the country's huge financial losses, as he warned religious leaders against “protecting corrupts” for sectarian reasons.

Health Minister Hamad Hasan said Sunday that some foreign studies that have declared the end of the coronavirus pandemic in Lebanon are neither "accurate" nor "authoritative."

Molotov cocktails were thrown at dawn Sunday at a bank branch in the southern city of Tyre, hours after an explosive device was hurled at a bank in Sidon.