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.

United Nations Special Coordinator for Lebanon Derek Plumbly denied any plans to set up refugee camps for the Syrians in Lebanon, praising the Lebanese authorities’ commitment to the humanitarian needs of the displaced.

“The number of the Syrian refugees in Lebanon is increasing and I was impressed by the hospitable Lebanese residents along the border,” Plumbly said in an interview with An Nahar newspaper published on Friday.

The formation of an oil authority is absent from the agenda of a cabinet session on Friday but progress is being made to speed up exploration of potential offshore gas and oil reserves.

The authority is tasked with overseeing the petroleum sector for the purpose of exploring the reserves.

The government of Premier Najib Miqati resumes its meetings on Friday after a 17-day break to discuss a series of administrative and financial issues that are not controversial.

Friday’s session at the Grand Serail includes 50 items on its agenda. But the cabinet will most likely not be able to deal with them in one day which prompted Miqati to ask the general-secretariat to set a date for another session next Wednesday.

A “disgust” expressed by Speaker Nabih Berri and the “negative distinction” caused by Phalange MP Sami Gemayel were the major highlights of the last day of a parliamentary session that led to the government’s survival of a vote of confidence.

The three-day session that ended after midnight Thursday included 30 hours of statements by 62 MPs and responses by five members of the cabinet and Premier Najib Miqati. Among the 62 lawmakers, 34 were from the March 14-led opposition and 28 were members of the Hizbullah-led March 8 coalition.

Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak said Hizbullah and other Iranian proxies would suffer if Syrian President Bashar Assad was overthrown.

"Assad's fall would be a major blow to Iran... it would weaken dramatically both Hizbullah in Lebanon and Hamas and Islamic Jihad in Gaza. It would be very positive," Barak told CNN on Thursday.