A private school in a coastal town in the Shouf district was evacuated on Thursday after an SMS bomb threat that turned out to be a hoax.

Security forces searched La Cite Nationale School in Barja, south of Beirut, after the principal said a secretary received an SMS warning about a bomb.

Speaker Nabih Berri and Energy Minister Jebran Bassil expressed relief on Thursday after the cabinet approved the oil exploration decrees, according to As Safir newspaper.

“Congratulations to Lebanon… We’ve reached the stage of implementing the work, and we should exert efforts to compensate for lost time,” Berri told the daily.

The recent claims about the presence of al-Qaida in Lebanon have pushed U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon to stir the issue of the demarcation of the Lebanese-Syrian border with top Lebanese officials next week, informed sources said Thursday.

The sources told An Nahar daily that Defense Minister Fayez Ghosn’s allegations that al-Qaida was operating in the eastern town of Arsal and the contradictory statements made by officials later on, have forced Ban to discuss with the Lebanese officials about a request to demarcate the border in accordance with U.N. Security Council resolution 1680.

The army detonated a bomb that was found in the parking lot of a building in the southern city of Sidon on Wednesday night.

A citizen informed the security forces of a suspected device found around 11:00 pm in the parking lot of Hijazi Center in Sidon's Quds Square. The parking space lies near the building where Sheikh Maher Hammoud resides.

A top U.S. counterterrorism official has admitted that there are “sympathetic groups to al-Qaida in Lebanon” but refused to comment on allegations made by the Lebanese defense minister about the operations of militants in the eastern border town of Arsal.

“We’ve seen the reports, and I don’t have any further comment on them,” said Daniel Benjamin, Coordinator for Counterterrorism at the Department of State, in a special briefing on Wednesday.

The cabinet on Wednesday approved the executive decrees for the law on oil excavation in Lebanon’s territorial waters.

The parliament endorsed the bill in August 2011.

Former premier Saad Hariri on Wednesday stressed that any attempts to stir up a confrontation between the army and the Sunni residents of border regions would be “unsuccessful like those behind them.”

Answering another question on Twitter on whether he believed that removing weapons from Palestinian camps and those of the “terrorist Salafist groups” had priority over removing Hizbullah’s arms, Hariri said: “All at once; any (illegal) weapons in the country are harmful. Only the state should possess weapons.”

Authorities in Mauritania have exposed a major Israeli spy network comprising a member involved in the “bombing” of the Ethiopian plane which crashed into Lebanon’s territorial waters on January 25, 2010, a Mauritanian website has reported.

An Arab businessman heads the alleged Mossad network, elhourriya.net said.

March 14 General Secretariat lauded on Wednesday U.N. Chief Ban Ki-moon’s scheduled visit to Lebanon as a reminder that implementing U.N. Security Council resolutions are important to end the arms chaos in the country.

It said that the visit will be an opportunity to remind the Lebanese, Arab and international communities that the “full implementation of U.N. Security Council resolutions on Lebanon will put an end to the arms chaos and the lack of control on the Lebanese-Syrian border.”

The Council of Maronite Bishops on Wednesday urged officials to abide by the constitution and called for the implementation of decisions reached at the National Dialogue over the spread of arms.

Following their monthly meeting under Patriarch Beshara al-Rahi in Bkirki, the bishops expressed concern at the “fragile security situation,” urging the political leadership to “implement the decisions of the National Dialogue in terms of weapons in the entire territories and continue discussions on the rest of topics.”