Firefighters doused on Wednesday a blaze at a shoe factory owned by Michel Daher in Sed al-Boushriyeh, media reports said.

Daher was taken to St. Joseph hospital in Dora for apparently suffering a heart attack after the fire swept through his factory, Voice of Lebanon radio station (93.3) reported.

Unknown assailants have kidnapped a jewelry merchant in eastern Lebanon, asking for a $200,000 ransom, Voice of Lebanon radio station (93.3) reported Wednesday.

Bilal al-Affi was kidnapped in the Bekaa town of Talya on Tuesday night, VDL said.

Speaker Nabih Berri criticized on Wednesday the reluctance of judiciary to try a large number of prisoners detained at Roumieh prison.

He told An Nahar daily that the tour of Heath Minister Ali Hassan Khalil and Interior Minister Marwan Charbel to Roumieh prison revealed a “chronic negligence.”

Prime Minister Najib Miqati stressed that his cabinet’s term, is linked to its capability to preserve stability, according to newspapers published on Wednesday.

“When (the cabinet) becomes incapable of maintaining stability then we can discuss this issue,” Miqati told An Nahar.

A scandal of red diesel has hit Lebanon after the residents of the country’s coldest areas, who were supposed to take advantage of a temporary government slash of Value Added Tax, suffered from shortages.

During a meeting of Parliament’s Finance Committee on Tuesday, a member of Speaker Nabih Berri’s Development and Liberation bloc, MP Yassine Jaber, stirred the issue of the red diesel shortage during the one-month VAT slash of LL3,000.

Severe power rationing is likely to exacerbate already strained ties among officials over the reasons behind the delay in the implementation of electricity projects as the scorching heat of the summer season approaches.

Premier Najib Miqati told As Safir daily published Wednesday that the government had made contacts with companies that lease power-generating ships.

Special Tribunal for Lebanon Prosecutor Daniel Bellemare met Lebanese senior officials on Wednesday during a two-day farewell visit before the end of his mandate at the end of next month.

The STL official first held talks with Prime Minister Najib Miqati at the Grand Serail. He later met with Foreign Minister Adnan Mansour.

Syrian authorities on Tuesday released a Lebanese fishing boat the Syrian navy had seized on Saturday after an incident in which a 14-year-old Lebanese boy was killed and two sailors were arrested.

A Syrian fishing boat, escorted by Syrian coastguards, towed the Lebanese boat suffering an engine failure to the sea off the coast of the northern Lebanese town of al-Arida, Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency reported.

The Military Tribunal headed by Judge Alice Shabtini upheld on Tuesday retired General Fayez Karam’s sentence to two years in prison without stripping him of his civil rights.

Karam had been imprisoned on charges of collaborating with Israel.

The Mustaqbal parliamentary bloc on Tuesday expressed its condemnation and concern over what it called “the escalating violations by the Syrian regime’s forces against Lebanese sovereignty.”

In a statement issued after its weekly meeting under former premier Fouad Saniora, the bloc denounced “the attack against the three fishermen in al-Arida, which led to the martyrdom of teenager Maher Hamad,” warning that “suck attacks will leave the residents of the border areas without jobs.”