President Michel Suleiman said Friday that political stability backed by security stability contributes to a large extent to economic growth in the country.

In a statement issued by his press office, Suleiman expressed his confidence in the ability of the Lebanese economy to rise and adjust to the developments due to the investments that Lebanese expatriates make in the country.

Occupants of two vehicles robbed $254,000 and 60,000 euros from two men in Beirut’s southern suburbs as they were transporting the money in their car, the National News Agency reported Friday.

NNA said that Hussein Mohammed Srour and Ali Mustafa Srour filed a complaint to police claiming that two vehicles with tinted windows – a Murano and a BMW X5 without license plates – intercepted them at around 2:00 am in Haret Hreik and snatched from their car a red bag that contained the money.

Prime Minister Najib Miqati will probably meet with Saudi King Abdullah bin Abdul-Aziz during his visit to the country to perform the Omra.

Sources told al-Liwaa newspaper on Friday that the Lebanese officials are observing how the official Saudi reception of the PM will be.

The Progressive Socialist Party will not become a follower and refuses to allow Energy Minister Jebran Bassil to spend $1.2 billion to build power plants without the control of a technical committee, PSP sources said.

The sources of PSP leader Walid Jumblat told the Saudi al-Riyadh daily in remarks published Friday that all it is asking from Bassil is to form a committee to supervise under the leadership of the minister the spending of the money.

A Trans Mediterranean Airlines plane carrying 35 tons of food and medical aid headed to the Somali capital of Mogadishu to help the country’s famine victims, the National News Agency reported Friday.

NNA said the TMA flight took off from Rafik Hariri international airport at 7:00 am. The plane is carrying 33 tons of food and 2 tons of medicine and medical equipment.

Special Tribunal for Lebanon Registrar Herman von Hebel stressed on Friday that the trials in the case of the assassination of ex-Premier Rafik Hariri will begin in mid-2012 whether they were in the presence of the suspects or in absentia, As Safir newspaper reported.

“The final decision in setting the timing goes back to the judges,” Von Hebel said.

The regime of Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi killed Shiite cleric Moussa al-Sadr 33 years ago and threw his body into the sea, Iranian security sources said.

The sources, who had collaborated with the Shah’s regime, told an Iranian website that al-Sadr and his two companions Sheikh Mohammed Yacoub and journalist Abbas Badreddine were killed upon their abduction by the Gadhafi regime and their bodies were thrown into the sea after being attached to cement blocks.

The Lebanese judiciary will summon reporters working for TIME magazine after its correspondent Nicholas Blanford provided General Prosecutor Saeed Mirza with their names, informed sources said.

The sources told pan-Arab daily al-Hayat published Friday that during his meeting with Mirza on Tuesday, Blanford told the general prosecutor about the names of all reporters working for the magazine after claiming that he did not know who carried out an interview with one of the four suspects indicted in ex-Premier Rafik Hariri’s assassination case.

The March 14-led opposition rejected turning the parliament and constitutional institutions into platforms from which Hizbullah launches campaigns against the international tribunal, the coalition’s sources said.

The sources told An Nahar daily published Friday that Hizbullah was using the state institutions to defend the four suspects that the Special Tribunal for Lebanon indicted in ex-Premier Rafik Hariri’s Feb. 2005 assassination.

Energy and Water Minister Jebran Bassil on Thursday warned that the country will suffer “governmental and parliamentary paralysis if the dispute over the electricity plan is not solved,” noting that “the issue can be resolved in cabinet.”

“We will topple any government that does not want to implement the plan,” Bassil vowed.