The World Bank issued a clarification expressing readiness to lend a helping hand if the Lebanese government commits to a series of pledged reforms mainly focusing on the country’s ailing power sector, media reports said on Tuesday.

Progressive Socialist Party leader Walid Jumblat on Monday launched his fiercest rant yet against President Michel Aoun’s tenure, as he blasted the State Security agency as a “gang.”

“Let the presidential tenure and its cronies be reassured: every time you arrest one of us, hatred towards you and towards State Security and its gang will increase,” Jumblat tweeted.

Prime Minister Saad Hariri on Monday announced that he was “very optimistic” regarding expected Emirati support for Lebanon, after he held talks with Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed and took part in the second UAE-Lebanon Investment Forum.

“My visit to Abu Dhabi made me very optimistic and I thank Crown Prince Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahyan for his support,” Hariri told reporters.

Central Bank Governor Riad Salameh reassured Monday that there is no “parallel market” for U.S. dollars in Lebanon.

“Banque du Liban is continuously supplying the Lebanese markets with dollars for steady prices,” said Salameh in remarks to the second UAE-Lebanon Investment Forum in Abu Dhabi.

An Israeli patrol on Monday attempted to kidnap a shepherd from the outskirts of a Lebanese border town, Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency said.

NNA said the four-soldier patrol tried to nab the shepherd M.H. in the Saddanet al-Rous area in the outskirts of the Hasbaya district town of al-Hibbariyeh.

President Michel Aoun on Monday reassured that Lebanon will “overcome the difficult economic circumstances that it is currently going through.”

“The measures that are being taken on the economic and financial levels will revitalize the national economy and the productive sectors,” Aoun said during a meeting with Archbishop Joseph al-Zehlaoui, the Metropolitan of the Antiochian Orthodox Christian Archdiocese of North America.

Lebanese Forces leader Samir Geagea called upon ministers of the majority to resign from the government in order to make way for another lineup that would make a different approach to the current situation, the National News Agency reported on Monday.

Prime Minister Saad Hariri said in remarks he made to WAM news agency that the Lebanese government is against any activities hostile to Arab and Gulf countries.

Prime Minister Saad Hariri on Monday said at the UAE-Lebanon investment forum in Abu Dhabi that Lebanon still has a chance despite the difficult conditions it is enduring, noting that the Lebanese and UAE investment forces can do wonders together in Lebanon.

Nicolas Chammas, president of the Beirut Traders Association and general secretary of the Lebanese Economic Organization warned of a new batch of taxes prepared "in secret" that could aggravate the economic burden on the private sector and affect the whole Lebanese, al-Joumhouria daily reported on Monday.