Akkar MP and State Minister for Refugee Affairs Moein al-Merehbi walked out angrily of a parliament session on Thursday evening in protest at failure to earmark funds for projects in the impoverished regions of Akkar and Baalbek-Hermel.

Speaker Nabih Berri clarified that the law prevents the Parliament from adding funds to the state budget, but Merehbi walked out, announcing “his withdrawal from his ministerial and parliamentary posts.”

Prime Minister Saad Hariri announced Thursday that “those who assassinated Rafik Hariri and Wissam al-Hassan are cowards.”

“Wissam was a brother to me, and his loss on the personal level was very big. But it is a greater loss at the national level, because he was the man who worked to protect Lebanon from all dangers,” Hariri told reporters after visiting the tombs of al-Hassan and his companion Ahmed Sahyouni on the 5th anniversary of their assassination.

Lebanon's Internal Security Forces have seized what they said was "probably an original" painting by surrealist master Salvador Dali and arrested four people suspected of attempting to sell it.

Kataeb Party chief MP Sami Gemayel on Thursday hinted that he might file an appeal before the Constitutional Council after Parliament approved a bill that allows it to pass the 2017 state budget without annual final accounts for 2016 and the ten years that preceded it.

A so-called final account details the state's revenues and spending at the end of a fiscal year.

The Chairman of the U.S. House of Representatives Appropriations Committee (HAC), Rodney Frelinghuysen, led a Congressional delegation visit to Lebanon on October 16-19, the U.S. Embassy said on Thursday.

Frelinghuysen was joined by fellow HAC member, Representative Henry Cuellar.

The State Security Directorate said it arrested in the district of Hasbaya a 4-member cell comprised of Syrian nationals who had been monitoring “strategic locations with the intention of carrying out terrorist attack plots,” the National News Agency reported on Thursday.

During interrogation, the mastermind who was identified as Kh.M., confessed to having formed groups affiliated to the Islamic State organization via social media.

An Israeli bulldozer carried out digging works in Wadi Qatamoun across the town of Rmeish in the Bint Jbeil district, the National News Agency reported on Thursday.

According to NNA the bulldozer started digging works inside the border of occupied Palestinian territories adjacent to the U.N. demarcated Blue Line.

Lebanese Forces chief Samir Geagea stated that the Syrian “tutelage” has exiled President Michel Aoun back in 1990 and ordered his own detention, as he reassured that the March 14 alliance “has not died but is alive" and well.

The Lebanese Forces party stressed on Thursday that remarks made by deputy chief MP George Adwan about BDL's possible tax evasion are not aimed at indicting its governor Riad Salameh but were mere questions that needed answers, the pan-Arab Asharq al-Awsat reported on Thursday.

Prime Minister Saad Hariri defended his government on Wednesday in the face of criticism from several MPs, as he denied claims that the Sunni community in Lebanon is “frustrated.”

“I cannot accept the claim that this government is not productive because it is the most productive government, despite the fact that it was formed less than a year ago,” said Hariri after the end of parliamentary debate sessions on the 2017 state budget.