Finance Minister Ali Hassan Khalil revealed on Friday that he is mulling a long-term “revolutionary idea” to terminate customs and replace it with tax on consumption, except on national industries.

“I know those who are corrupt in name... Their turn will come,” Khalil said in comments published in As Safir newspaper.

The leaders of Palestinian factions at the southern refugee camp of Ain el-Hilweh are holding meetings and coordinating with Lebanese officials to set the stage for a security plan in the shantytown, al-Akhbar newspaper reported on Friday.

The preparatory meetings are being held as Munir Maqdah was appointed the head of the joint security forces in Ain el-Hilweh, said the daily.

Terrorist groups belonging to the al-Qaida-linked Abdullah Azzam Brigades are plotting to carry out bombings in a Lebanese city and its neighboring areas, As Safir daily reported on Friday.

The newspaper said that security forces and the military informed several officials to limit their movements and take utmost precautions after learning that the militants were planning to carry out bombings and launch rockets on the city, which it did not identify, and on a main highway that links a Lebanese region with Beirut.

Army Commander General Jean Qahwaji will travel to Saudi Arabia next week to attend a meeting for military leaders from more than 20 partner nations in a U.S.-led coalition to degrade and destroy Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).

According to An Nahar newspaper published on Friday, the meeting is a follow up for the first one that was held in Washington last year.

The criminal case against a U.S.-Lebanese Marine accused of deserting his unit in Iraq a decade ago began taking shape when Navy criminal investigators assumed the worst about the corporal based on hearsay from other service members, a defense attorney argued Thursday.

Prosecutors countered in their own opening statements that Cpl. Wassef Hassoun burned personal items and withdrew money before he disappeared from a base in Iraq in 2004; avoided some duties; and was unhappy he couldn't join the woman with whom he'd entered an arranged marriage.

Al-Mustaqbal movement leader MP Saad Hariri stressed Thursday that the political and economic project of his slain father, former premier Rafik Hariri, will eventually “prevail” despite attempts to stop it through “arms, terrorism and assassination attempts.”

“Ten years ago, Lebanon was being built and someone tried to stop the process of Lebanon's reconstruction … and after 10 years, we're witnessing recurrent attempts to stop this project, but we shall continue,” Hariri told LBCI TV, two days before the tenth anniversary of his father's assassination in a massive bombing in Beirut.

A much-anticipated security plan for the Bekaa Valley kicked off at dawn Thursday, resulting in the arrest of 10 fugitives and the confiscation of 18 stolen cars.

Media reports said a joint force from the Internal Security Forces' special panthers unit and the Lebanese army cordoned off the towns of Hawr Taala and Brital at 4:00 am.

Regime troops shelled rebel-held villages in southern Syria Thursday, as a snowstorm slowed an advance led by Hizbullah near the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, a monitor said.

According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, the army shelled Jizeh and the west of Atman village in the southern province of Daraa.

A cabinet session held at the Grand Serail on Thursday failed to address the mechanism of its functioning following tensions between ministers, reported MTV.

It said that tensions between Education Minister Elias Bou Saab and Telecommunications Minister Butros Harb caused tensions at the meeting, forcing Prime Minister Tammam Salam to end the session.

A person was killed and four others wounded in a multi-vehicle pileup on al-Palma road in the northern city of Tripoli towards the capital Beirut.

The horrific accident occurred between a truck and five cars, the Traffic Management Center reported.