Prime Minister Saad Hariri on Friday presided over a ministerial meeting aimed at addressing the pollution that is affecting the Litani River, stressing that this topic is among his priorities.

The army arrested a suspect on the northern Arsal-Labweh highway over charges of smuggling materials used in the manufacturing of narcotics, the Lebanese Army Orientation Directorate said in a statement on Friday.

After thorough follow-up, army intelligence units detained Mohammed Hussein Rayid on the Labweh-Arsal highway, said the statement.

MP Qassem Hashem stressed on Friday that efforts to ease obstacles preventing an agreement on a new voting system are ongoing, stressing that Lebanon's current 1960 electoral law was still in effect "whether we like it or not".

The Lebanese army continues to target the posts of militants in the outskirts of Ras Baalbek and Arsal, amid “absence of any Hizbullah presence” after the latter handed over to the army its military posts on Lebanon's eastern border, media reports said on Friday.

“Hizbullah has no more positions in Arsal or Ras Baalbek. The army alone is positioned there and has expanded its deployment on the entire Lebanese eastern border,” a senior military source told al-Joumhouria daily on condition of anonymity.

Chances for Lebanon's parliamentary elections to be staged in accordance with the electoral law in force (the 1960) have grown, after political parties failed to agree on a new voting system to rule the May polls, al-Akhbar daily reported on Friday.

However, political forces insist that a new voting system can be “born” within a few days despite the fact that efforts have failed for many years to devise one, added the daily.

A Lebanese parliamentary delegation held a “positive” Washington meeting on Thursday with U.S. lawmaker Ed Royce, the Chairman of the United States House Committee on Foreign Affairs, media reports said.

Militants belonging to the extremist Islamic State group on Thursday kidnapped a Lebanese man from the eastern border town of Arsal, media reports said.

The top official of the jihadist al-Nusra Front group in the border region between Syria and Lebanon, Abu Malek al-Talli, might have been killed in a strike Wednesday in the outskirts of the Lebanese border town of Arsal, media reports said on Thursday.

Interior Minister Nouhad al-Mashnouq said on Thursday that a legal committee will be formed to follow-up on hunger strikers in Lebanese prisons, stressing that the current political atmospheres are unsuitable for discussing general amnesty law.

A halted Saudi grant to provide the Lebanese army with French weapons, might be revived by the newly formed French government under elected President Emmanuel Macron, al-Joumhouria daily reported on Thursday.