A Middle East Airlines plane landed at Beirut airport on Friday morning bringing 95 Lebanese who have escaped the violence in the Ivory Coast.

The plane had 244 people on board.

Lebanese Forces leader Samir Geagea has told a U.S. official that Lebanon was in need of hundreds of MiG-29 Russian fighter jets to “threaten Israel.”

In a WikiLeaks cable dated December 19, 2008, Geagea told U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State David Hale that Lebanese army pilots need a 10-year experience on the jets to confront Israel.

Traces of Iodine-131 from Japan’s nuclear plant were found on low-lying foliage in Lebanon although they don’t pose a danger to human health, said the National Council for Scientific Research.

The small findings have now been confirmed in samples of rainwater and soaked foliage by rain that fell between April 4 and 6, according to CNRS.

Caretaker Prime Minister Saad Hariri has reportedly said that Russian MiG-29 fighter jets would strengthen the March 14 forces and prevent Hizbullah from overtaking Sunni Western Beirut as it did on May 7.

According to a WikiLeaks cable published by al-Akhbar daily on Friday, Hariri said during a meeting with U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State David Hale on December 17, 2008 that the ownership of MiG jets by the army would most probably complicate Israeli overflights.

Negotiations on the formation of the new cabinet haven’t yet reached the stage of distribution of portfolios amid reports that Premier-designate Najib Miqati is suggesting that Free Patriotic Movement leader Michel Aoun get 10 ministers.

“Negotiations haven’t yet overcome the obstacle of distribution of shares,” An Nahar daily quoted sources as saying in remarks published Friday.

The National Struggle Front leader, MP Walid Jumblat, urged Lebanese officials to steer clear of regional conflicts and return to the dialogue table.

“It would be better to stay away from regional conflicts as much as possible and resume dialogue,” Jumblat told As Safir daily in remarks published Friday.

Army and police commandos on Thursday managed to contain a new mutiny by inmates in Lebanon's notorious main prison of Roumieh, less than two days after quelling similar four-day riots at the same jail.

Around 4:00 p.m. Thursday, prisoners at Roumieh's bloc D took two policemen and three workers hostage, prompting security forces to launch an operation to liberate them.

Hizbullah snapped back Thursday at caretaker premier Saad Hariri, who earlier in the day accused Tehran of trying to turn Lebanon and Gulf states into Iranian protectorates.

Hariri’s “provocative stances sincerely echoed U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates’ latest remarks about the Iranian role in the region,” read a statement released by Hizbullah's media relations department.

Hizbullah deputy chief Sheikh Naim Qassem on Thursday noted that his party has achieved “great, significant accomplishments” through the “army-people-Resistance equation.”

These accomplishments are “the humiliating Israeli pullout (from South Lebanon) in 2000, the grand victory in July 2006 in the face of the Israeli war on Lebanon … and the participation in a national unity cabinet that aims to prevent civil strife,” said Qassem.

U.S. embassy officials visiting south Lebanon Thursday were attacked, but unhurt, by residents accusing them of being "Israeli conspirators," in the second such incident in a week, an Agence France Presse correspondent said.

Around 60 supporters of leftist groups gathered outside a government office in the port city of Sidon and pelted an embassy convoy with stones as it drove by, with some shouting "Americans, Israeli conspirators, in our government offices."