A number of Syrian refugees on Friday staged a sit-in in the Akkar town of Khirbet Daoud in rejection of the June 3 presidential elections in their war-torn country.

According to Lebanon's National News Agency, speakers at the sit-in stressed “the need to boycott these polls,” confirming that they will not head to “the ballot boxes that will be placed by the Syrian regime at legal border crossings with Lebanon on June 3.”

Justice Minister Ashraf Rifi on Friday returned to the Lebanese foreign ministry four legal notices that had been sent by Damascus to the Lebanese authorities.

According to Rifi's office, the notices were not sent to “MP Walid Jumblat, journalist Fares Khashan and two other citizens given the illegal nature of the writs.”

The Syndicate Coordination Committee on Friday declared an open-ended general strike in the public sector and a boycott of the official school exams that were scheduled to begin on June 7, in a bid to press MPs to approve the long-stalled new wage scale.

“We declare an open-ended general strike in the public sector and a boycott of the June 7 official school exams,” Mahmoud Ayyoub, head of the association of elementary school teachers, announced after a meeting for the SCC at its headquarters in Beirut.

The Lebanese army announced on Friday that it arrested 10 Syrians in a border area in the eastern Bekaa Valley for illegally entering Lebanon.

An army communique said soldiers apprehended the Syrian nationals in Arsal in northeastern Lebanon after they infiltrated into Lebanese territories.

The General Security Department said Friday that it has arrested several Lebanese and a Syrian in southern Lebanon for forming a money counterfeit network.

A patrol from the department raided two apartments in the southern towns of al-Dweir and Mayfadoun on Thursday and arrested four Lebanese and a Syrian national, it said in a communique.

The trial of former Minister Michel Samaha was once again postponed to later this year after authorities failed to summon his associate Syrian security chief General Ali Mamlouk.

Samaha's trial had previously been postponed from June to December last year. It was then delayed to May 30 for the same reasons.

Visiting Norwegian Foreign Minister Borge Brende kicked off a series of meetings in Beirut on Friday with senior Lebanese officials, hailing the security improvement.

“We are committed to cooperating with Lebanon,” the FM said in a press conference with his Lebanese counterpart Jebran Bassil.

A national was severely wounded on Friday after an unknown assailant stabbed him several times in an attempt to steal his vehicle in the Keserwan neighborhood of Adonis.

According to the state-run National News Agency, R. Rizk, who hails from the town of Tannourine in the Batroun District, was stabbed during a fistfight with a thief trying to steal his vehicle.

Justice Minister Ashraf Rifi expressed hope on Friday that the political arch-foes would bridge the gap and agree on surpassing the difficult stage that the country is passing through.

“We have to confront the enormous challenges,” Rifi said in comments published in al-Liwaa newspaper.

Progressive Socialist Party leader MP Walid Jumblat expressed willingness to amend the Taef accord, deeming it a must to safeguard the Christians in Lebanon.

Jumblat in remarks published in As Safir newspaper on Friday said that improving the Taef accord would also strengthen the jurisdictions of the country's top Christian post.