President Michel Aoun is eagerly waiting to leave the Baabda Palace when his term ends and "then we will return to our nature away from the palace’s limitations," Free Patriotic Movement chief Jebran Bassil said on Friday.

Archbishop Moussa al-Hajj had carried funds from Lebanese exiles in Israel that ended up in the hands of collaborator with Israel in Lebanon, a media report said on Friday.

“It seems that the military judiciary is pressing on with its decision to resume investigations over the recipients of the funds sent with the archbishop, especially that he was carrying a file containing names of convicted collaborators,” al-Akhbar newspaper reported.

The Lebanese prime minister on Friday warned that a massive grain silo risks collapse due to an ongoing fire that's expanding amid summer heat and humidity at the Beirut port where a devastating blast two years ago tore through the Mediterranean city.

A fire in one of the port's two silos has been smoldering for the past two weeks due to 800 tons of grain inside fermenting in the hot weather. The government said the fire expanded after flames reached nearby electrical cables.

Minister of Justice Henry Khoury met Friday with Maronite Patriarch Beshara al-Rahi over the controversial detention and interrogation of Archbishop Mussa al-Hajj.

Khoury said that dismissing Judge Fadi Akiki is not within his powers as a minister.

State Prosecutor Ghassan Oueidat has said there are no political backgrounds to the search procedure that Archbishop Mussa al-Hajj had been subjected to in Naqoura, negating that Mussa had been arrested or offended.

"Judge Fadi Akiki has enforced the law," Oueidat told Asharq al-Awsat newspaper, in remarks published Friday, as transporting products or money from Israel to Lebanon is illegal.

President Michel Aoun met Friday with Archbishop Mussa Al-Hajj who briefed him on the circumstances of his arrest in Naqoura as he was returning to Lebanon from the occupied Palestinian territories.

The Archbishop of the Archeparchy of Haifa and the Holy Land and Patriarchal Exarch of Jerusalem and Palestine and Jordan had been questioned for 12 hours earlier this week upon his return from Israel with large quantities of medicines, foodstuffs and canned goods, in addition to $460,000.

U.N. Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator for Lebanon Najat Rochdi stressed Friday the importance of protecting the most vulnerable populations, regardless of their nationality.

"Over the past weeks, public discussions over the return of Syrian refugees to Syria have increased in Lebanon. On behalf of the International Humanitarian Community and in my capacity as Humanitarian Coordinator for Lebanon, I reiterate that the protection of refugees is a humanitarian and moral imperative and lies at the heart of all humanitarian actions," Rochdi said in a statement.

United Nations Special Coordinator for Lebanon Joanna Wronecka and Under-Secretary-General for Peace Operations Jean-Pierre Lacroix have briefed the Security Council on the latest report of U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on the implementation of Resolution 1701.

"Noting the unrelenting socio-economic crisis and its dire impact on people’s daily lives, the Special Coordinator warned that Lebanon stands at a crossroad between rebound or collapse, and underscored that its trajectory will depend on the ability and willingness of the country’s leaders to urgently initiate sustainable solutions," Wronecka's office said in a statement.

The Women’s Peace and Humanitarian Fund (WPHF) together with the United Nations in Lebanon has launched the second window of its financial support to eight women-led organizations in Lebanon that are working on community peacebuilding in Lebanon, as part of strengthening their institutional capacity and maximizing peacebuilding results.

“The WPHF is a flexible and rapid financing tool supporting quality interventions to enhance the capacity of local women around the world to prevent conflict, respond to crises and emergencies, and seize key peacebuilding opportunities,” U.N. Lebanon said in a statement.

Acting State Commissioner to Military Court Judge Fadi Akiki on Thursday defended the controversial detention and interrogation of Archbishop Moussa al-Hajj, who is the Archbishop of the Archeparchy of Haifa and the Holy Land and Patriarchal Exarch of Jerusalem and Palestine and Jordan.

“The funds that he was transporting, around $460,000, are not owned by the church but they rather came from collaborators residing in Israel, the majority of whom work for the enemy in the occupied territories,” Akiki said in an interview with An-Nahar newspaper.