Lebanon on Friday reported record daily coronavirus deaths and cases according to a statement issued by the Health Ministry.

The Ministry said the small country witnessed 18 deaths and 750 new virus cases over the past 24 hours.

Progressive Socialist Party leader Walid Jumblat on Friday issued warnings to the feuding political camps that are bickering over the finance ministerial portfolio.

“Very soon, the advocates of the old pact and the advocates of the new norm will realize that there is no money at the treasury,” Jumblat tweeted, apparently referring to a grouping of Sunni ex-PMs and to the country’s two biggest Shiite parties -- Hizbullah and Amal.

The army on Friday announced that it has disposed of 1,320 kilograms of fireworks found by its units at a Beirut port hangar during an ongoing inspection process.

“As part of the inspection works that army units are carrying out at Beirut port, 1,320 kilograms of fireworks were found packed in 120 cartons at one of the hangars,” an army statement said.

MP Ali Bazzi of Speaker Nabih Berri's Development and Liberation bloc on Friday described ex-PMs Saad Hariri, Najib Miqati, Fouad Saniora and Tammam Salam as "the shadow PMs," accusing them of seeking to "isolate" an "entire sect."

In addition to his phone talks with President Michel Aoun on Friday, French President Emmanuel Macron has also called Speaker Nabih Berri and ex-PM Saad Hariri, MTV said on Friday.

“France has no intention to freeze its initiative, which is not confined to a deadline that expires on Sunday, as previously rumored,” MTV quoted unnamed sources as saying.

Lebanese Forces chief Samir Geagea said the French initiative was not launched to solve Lebanon’s multiple crises, but came to alleviate the suffering and burden of the Lebanese people.

A prominent Lebanese footballer has died of a bullet wound sustained last month during a funeral for one of the victims of the Beirut port blast, his club said Friday.

Mohamed Atwi, 32, played as a midfielder for a number of Lebanese clubs and won the national league three times with Beirut's Ansar, his club for almost a decade.

President Michel Aoun received a telephone call on Friday from his French counterpart where talks focused on the hurdles delaying the formation of the government missing a French deadline.

An Israeli court on Friday charged a Palestinian woman from east Jerusalem with membership in a terrorist organization after Israel's internal security service said the Lebanese group Hizbullah had recruited her five years ago.

Yasmine Jaber was arrested in early August. The Shin Bet internal security service said she was recruited by Hizbullah operatives at a conference in 2015 and asked to recruit others in east Jerusalem. It said she traveled to Istanbul on a number of occasions to meet Hizbullah operatives and communicated with them via social media.

A hearing session kicked off at Mount Lebanon's Justice Palace to question anti-Hizbullah Shiite scholar Ali al-Amin over accusations of "meeting Israeli officials” during a conference in Bahrain.