Firefighters doused on Monday a fire that erupted in a restaurant in ABC department store in Ashrafieyh, reported Voice of Lebanon radio.

The fire broke out in the kitchen of Leila restaurant and the firefighters succeeded in preventing the blaze from spreading to other sections of the mall.

Speaker Nabih Berri has set next Wednesday as the date for a parliamentary session to discuss a number of proposals and draft laws.

The parliament will convene on Feb. 22 at 10:30 am, his office announced.

Prime Minister Najib Miqati ruled out on Monday the return of political assassinations in Lebanon, saying that any leads in this matter are being tackled by the concerned security authorities.

He told LBC television that will be broadcast later on Monday: “Special Tribunal for Lebanon Prosecutor Daniel Bellemare informed me that he will release an updated version of the indictment in the assassination of former Premier Rafik Hariri.”

Former Prime Minister Saad Hariri denied on Monday that he took an interest free-loan worth SR 7 billion from Saudi King Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz.

A statement issued by Hariri’s press office stressed that the report published in al-Akhbar newspaper included a series of “lies and fabrications against Hariri, the Saudi kingdom and its leadership.”

Labor Minister Charbel Nahhas slammed Prime Minister Najib Miqati and President Michel Suleiman without naming them, saying that Lebanon isn’t a “Gulf state” where the ministers are just employees that take orders, according to As Safir newspaper published on Monday.

“Let them try to make me resign, if they can guarantee two-thirds of the ministers’ votes in the cabinet,” Nahhas reiterated.

Speaker Nabih Berri continued on Monday to insist on not mediating in the cabinet crisis, saying Premier Najib Miqati’s decision to suspend government sessions was “unjustified.”

“I hold onto my decision not to act as a mediator on the government crisis because Miqati’s decision on the suspension of sessions is unjustified,” Berri told As Safir daily.

Premier Najib Miqati returned to Beirut on Sunday, a day earlier than schedule, to contain the tension in the northern port city of Tripoli that has left at least three people dead.

Upon his return from a two-day official visit to Paris, Miqati held a telephone conversation with Speaker Nabih Berri and informed him that he came to Beirut a day earlier to end the “abnormal situation” in the capital of the North.

The Presidency and the Foreign Ministry received a letter from United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon inquiring if Lebanon had any comments on the renewal of the Special Tribunal for Lebanon cooperation protocol, local newspapers reported on Monday.

Ban revealed that he is willing to renew the court’s mandate for further three years, An Nahar newspaper reported.

Free Patriotic Movement leader MP Michel Aoun on Sunday stressed that his ministers “will not leave the government.”

“Let the premier quit” instead, Aoun said in an interview on Al-Jadeed television.

The Syrian community in Lebanon on Sunday staged a demonstration outside the Chinese embassy in the Beirut district of Bir Hassan to hail Beijing's veto at the Security Council that blocked U.N. action against President Bashar al-Assad’s regime.

Carrying Syrian flags and portraits of Assad, the demonstrators shouted slogans in support of the Syrian leader and denounced a number of Western and Arab countries critical of the Assad government.