High in Lebanon's rugged mountains, hatmaker Youssef Akiki is among the last artisans practicing the thousand-year-old skill of making traditional warm woolen caps once widely worn against the icy winter chill.

Akiki believes he may be the last commercial maker of the sheep wool "labbadeh" -- a named derived from the Arabic for felt, or "labd" -- a waterproof and warm cap colored off-white, grey, brown or black.

A 6.4-magnitude earthquake on Monday rocked Turkey's southern province of Hatay and northern Syria, killing eight people and sparking fresh panic after a February 6 tremor that left nearly 45,000 dead in both countries.

Hezbollah has rejected a recent request from Free Patriotic Movement chief Jebran Bassil for meeting with the party’s secretary-general Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, a senior Shiite Duo source said.

The term of General Security chief Maj. Gen. Abbas Ibrahim might be extended through an administrative decision or a Cabinet resolution should parliament fail to hold a legislative session, a media report said on Monday.

A Lebanese parliamentary delegation led by MP Ali Hassan Khalil has met in Damascus with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

A Parliament Bureau meeting that was supposed to discuss the possibility of holding a legislative session was on Monday postponed to a date that would be announced later, Deputy Speaker Elias Bou Saab said.

"While stressing parliament's right to legislate as happened in the past, the capital control format that was issued by the Joint Committees must be accompanied by a comprehensive plan. Accordingly, it has been decided to postpone Parliament Bureau's meeting to a later date," Bou Saab added after meeting with Speaker Nabih Berri.

Central Bank Governor Riad Salameh has announced that he has decided to leave his post following the end of his term.

The European Union and Samir Kassir Foundation launched today, February 20, the 18th edition of the Samir Kassir Award for Freedom of the Press.

Contacts were held over the past 48 hours between senior officials and political leaders, especially Speaker Nabih Berri and caretaker PM Najib Mikati, in a bid to defuse the tensions related to the latest Lebanese currency crash and the banking sector strike, a media report said.

An Israeli air strike in Syria killed 15 people early Sunday and badly damaged a building in a Damascus district that is home to several state security agencies, a war monitoring group said. 

Civilians, including two women, were among those killed in "the deadliest Israeli attack in the Syrian capital" so far, said Rami Abdel Rahman, head of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.