Citizens will enjoy at least 20-hour per day power supply in early 2020, a minister said Wednesday after a meeting for a ministerial panel tasked with studying an electricity plan to resolve the country's chronic crisis.

“Near-complete consensus has been reached on the energy minister's plan and on the places where the temporary and permanent plants will be built as well as the generation capacity of each site,” Information Minister Jamal al-Jarrah said.

Israel announced Wednesday that the remains of a soldier missing since the 1982 invasion of Lebanon had been returned home, bringing to a close a highly sensitive case for Israelis.

Sergeant First Class Zachary Baumel had been missing since what is known as the Battle of Sultan Yacoub, said Israeli military spokesman Jonathan Conricus.

Mount Lebanon Prosecutor Judge Ghada Aoun on Wednesday charged Higher Council of Customs member Gracia Kazzi with “receiving bribes, money laundering and abuse of power.”

Aoun also slapped a travel ban on Kazzi pending the end of investigations and asked the Finance Ministry to suspend her from her functions at the Higher Council of Customs.

Justice Minister Albert Serhan held talks Wednesday at the ministry with visiting Special Tribunal for Lebanon President Judge Ivana Hrdličková.

“We discussed with Judge Hrdličková and the accompanying delegation the course of the investigation and the trials that are being conducted at the STL and the President explained the details of these procedures to us, which are special and somehow complicated,” Serhan said after the talks.

The General Directorate of State Security arrested two Syrian suspects who committed a criminal act in Syria and fled illegally into Lebanon, the National News Agency reported on Wednesday.

President Michel Aoun received at Baabda Palace Venezuelan Foreign Minister Jorge Arreaza who conveyed a message from Venezuela’s President briefing him on the current developments in Venezuela, the National News Agency reported on Wednesday.

NNA said discussions highlighted the Lebanese-Venezuelan relations, and the situation of the Lebanese and Venezuelans of Lebanese origin and their role in public life in Venezuela.

The Cabinet is scheduled to meet on Thursday to discuss 26 items on its agenda, but an important item was “ignored inclusion” and related to the appointment of vice governors of the Central Bank of Lebanon (Banque du Liban, BDL), al-Joumhouria daily reported on Wednesday.

Finance Minister Ali Hassan Khalil has submitted the 2019 final draft state budget to Prime Minister Saad Hariri, which awaits the approval of the Cabinet.

Lebanon’s government is pursuing an austerity policy which is crystallizing in the budget of 2019, not yet approved by the government, and includes “spending control” as part of a reform policy required by the CEDRE conference for Lebanon, Asharq al-Awsat newspaper reported on Wednesday.

Progressive Socialist Party leader ex-MP Walid Jumblat on Tuesday reassured that the new wage scale for civil servants and the armed forces will not be altered.

The wage scale was approved in 2017 after strenuous negotiations and years of street protests.