Energy Minister Jebran Bassil signed the weekly fuel price update on Saturday after a four-day delay, which saw the price of the 98-graded fuel skyrocket to LL40,000.

Bassil, who usually signs the price update each Wednesday, procrastinated in his signature over fears of a backlash due to an additional LL300 rise in the price of gasoline.

Sources close to Premier Najib Miqati denied that a visit made by U.S. Ambassador Maura Connelly to the Grand Serail on Friday was aimed at thwarting meetings scheduled to be held by the Higher Lebanese-Iranian committee next month.

In remarks to As Safir daily published Saturday, the sources said: “We are not aware of any such move and the U.S. ambassador’s visit to the Serail had nothing to do with it.”

French Ambassador to Lebanon Denis Pietton said Saturday that Lebanon would have been placed in a very dangerous situation if Lebanese Forces chief Samir Geagea was killed.

In an interview published in An Nahar daily, Pietton expressed concern at the situation in Lebanon after Geagea escaped an assassination attempt as he was walking in the garden of his fortified residence in Maarab.

U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon has expressed serious concern over the repercussions of the Syrian crisis on the security and political situation in Lebanon.

In his semi-annual report on the implementation of U.N. Security Council resolution 1559, Ban condemned the violence along the Lebanese-Syrian border which has inflicted scores of casualties.

The cabinet on Friday endorsed draft amendments to the rental law, as Prime Minister Najib Miqati stressed in his opening remarks that the vote of confidence granted Thursday to his government by parliament “must be a motive to show more solidarity among its members.”

Following three days of heated parliamentary debate, the government on Thursday survived a vote of no confidence in the 128-member parliament after receiving 63 votes. Only three opposition lawmakers withheld their confidence from government amid a walkout by March 14 MPs.

U.S. Ambassador Maura Connelly visited Prime Minister Najib Miqati at the Grand Serail on Friday, a day after his cabinet survived a vote of confidence.

Miqati and Connelly “discussed areas of cooperation between the two countries and regional events,” said a U.S. embassy statement.

French Ambassador to Lebanon Denis Pietton denied on Friday that his country is considering to deploy troops along the northern Lebanese border.

“These reports aren’t based on facts and there’s no will to deploy French troops along the Lebanese northern border with Syria,” Pietton told reporters during a tour to the South.

Two women were wounded overnight when a dispute between members from the Nasereddine and Abbas families turned into a shootout in Beirut’s southern suburbs, the National News Agency reported Friday.

NNA said the members of the two families were riding a Hyundai van in Hay el-Sellom when their altercation led a member of the Nasereddine family to open fire, injuring two women.

President Michel Suleiman said that the sniper attack on Lebanese Forces leader Samir Geagea can’t be considered yet an “assassination attempt.”

“Until now, it can only be considered as a shooting and the investigations would reveal if it was an assassination attempt… and I hope it’s not,” Suleiman told reporters in Sydney.

British Foreign Office Minister for the Middle East and North Africa Alistair Burt hailed on Friday the efforts exerted by Prime Minister Najib Miqati to maintain stability in Lebanon.

“The meeting with the premier was excellent,” Burt told reporters at the Grand Serail.