After four cabinet meetings dedicated to address the controversial wage hike crisis, Prime Minister Saad Hariri announced Friday that the cabinet has reached an agreement on the issue.

Hariri announced that the “cabinet has agreed on an expedited draft law that includes tax adjustments,” noting that “it will be referred to the parliament.”

After the cabinet agreed on Thursday to pay the salaries according to the new wage hikes, the Lebanese Forces emphasized the need to secure revenues to fund the scale for future disbursement of salaries to “prevent financial deterioration,” al-Joumhouria daily reported on Friday.

Firebrand Islamist cleric Ahmed al-Asir was on Thursday sentenced to death in the case of the 2013 Abra clashes as pop star-turned-Islamist militant Fadel Shaker was sentenced in absentia to 15 years of hard labor.

The court also sentenced to death two other defendants and five Islamists who remain at large, including the cleric's brother Amjad.

The Cabinet on Thursday reached a solution to the wage hike crisis after “very positive” deliberations and another session will be held Friday to put the final touches, the information minister said.

“President Michel Aoun briefed the Cabinet on the outcome of his visits to New York and France, as Prime Minister Saad Hariri demonstrated the stages that followed the approval of the new wage scale all the way to the Constitutional Council's ruling,” Information Minister Melhem Riachi told reporters after the session.

Lebanese Forces chief Samir Geagea and Kataeb party leader Sami Gemayel held separate talks on Thursday with Saudi Defense Minister Mohammed bin Salman bin Abdulaziz.

An explosion was heard overnight on Thursday in the border region of Akkar in Wadi Khaled wounding one person, the National News Agency reported on Thursday.

The blast rocked the border town of al-Hisheh near a Syrian refugee camp in Wadi Khaled shortly after midnight, NNA said.

The government will convene on Thursday at the Baabda Palace under the chairmanship of President Michel Aoun to discuss needed mechanisms after the Constitutional Council's decision to annul a tax law intended to fund the wage scale, in addition to a number of fiery issues that took their toll lately on the general situation in the country.

Sources close to President Aoun told al-Akhbar daily: “The aim of today's meeting is to come up with a solution. Contacts are continuing between ministers of the Free Patriotic Movement and ministers of the Amal movement to reach a formula,” as for the repercussions of the annulled tax law that triggered uproar in the country.

Prime Minister Saad Hariri welcomed the Palestinian reconciliation between Fatah and Hamas, and hoped it would be a “step towards achieving full Palestinian unity and establishing a Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital,” Hariri's media office said Wednesday.

Lebanon's and Egypt's national carriers will halt flights to the Iraqi Kurdish regional capital Arbil this week at the request of the Baghdad authorities, they said on Wednesday.

Their decision comes after Iraq's government threatened to ban international flights to and from Iraqi Kurdistan after the region held an independence referendum on Monday.

The Lebanese Army confiscated explosive devices and suicide explosive belts in the Khirbet Yunine town in the outskirts of Arsal, the Army Command-Orientation Directorate said Wednesday.

“A patrol from the army intelligence directorate confiscated six explosive devices that were prepared for detonation each weighing 500 kg,” said the statement.