The Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL) charged with prosecuting those responsible for the February 2005 assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri has further refined its Rules of Procedure and Evidence, officials said Friday.The amendments, adopted in October, were aimed at further enhancing the efficiency, effectiveness and integrity of the proceedings, a statement from the STL said.

Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri said Friday that Israeli claims about an alleged arms ship sent from Iran to Hizbullah were fabricated by Israel to target the resistance, which he stressed had the right to obtain weapons from "anywhere in the world."The speaker added that Israel's capture of a ship near Cyprus was also a bid to deflect attention away from the Goldstone report, on Israeli war crimes during the Gaza war.

UN Special Coordinator for Lebanon Michael Williams on Friday held separate meetings with Speaker Nabih Berri and Prime Minister-designate Saad Hariri to express his unease over the delay in the formation of a new government.Lebanon hasn't had a government since the country's June 7 parliamentary elections, in which the Hizbullah-led March 8 opposition was defeated by the March 14 coalition.

Corruption has embedded itself in every level of Lebanese society, according to Lebanese Transparency Association (LTA), which takes the government to task for not enacting a national anti-corruption strategy in their report released this week.The 130-page "National Integrity System" study highlights Lebanon's many institutional weaknesses and key areas.

Al-Qaeda official in Lebanon Nabil Rhayem was sentenced to hard labor on Thursday along with three other suspects for committing terrorist acts. The Permanent Military Tribunal sentenced Rhayem, a Lebanese suspect and two Palestinians to hard labor and denied them their civil rights for forming an armed gang, carrying out terrorist acts and smuggling weapons.

Leading members of the terrorist group Fatah al-Islam were sentenced to hard labor by the Beirut Criminal Court on Friday for robbing a branch of BLOM Bank in the neighborhood of Corniche al-Mazraa. Taha Haji Ahmad Suleiman and Shaker al-Abssi were sentenced, along with two other members of the group, for having robbed the bank using unlicensed weapons in April 2006.

Shiite party Hizbullah slammed Friday two Arab satellite providers for dropping a television channel from predominantly Shiite Iran as a "violation of freedom of speech and opinion." "Hizbullah condemns Arabsat and Nilesat's decision to stop broadcasting the channel Al-Alam: a decision made on political grounds," the party said, calling it "a violation of freedom of speech and opinion."

Lebanon may have overtaken Israel in terms of Middle East press liberty, but a culture of censorship still weighs heavily on freedom of speech, said a new report.The Samir Kassir Eyes Center for Media and Cultural Freedom (SKeyes), in its November bulletin, said that in spite of relative domestic calm and good working conditions for journalists following the June 2009 elections, "censorship on culture has returned to Lebanon."