The owners of gas stations and tank trucks held a sit-in outside the energy ministry on Thursday to protest rising oil prices during a planned one-day strike.

Around 100 oil tank trucks also parked on the Emile Lahoud highway from the Sayyad roundabout all the way to the ministry headquarters and Karantina, causing bumper-to-bumper traffic.

Prime Minister Najib Miqati described on Thursday the cabinet session at the Baabda Palace as “productive,” also expecting the parliamentary session to go on “smoothly.”

“The legislature that will convene on Thursday will be calm and productive, particularly after the extra-budgetary spending was withdrawn from discussions,” Miqati told al-Liwaa newspaper.

A dispute between President Michel Suleiman and ministers loyal to Free Patriotic Movement leader Michel Aoun, forced the president to wrap up the session held at the Baabda Palace on Wednesday, As Safir newspaper reported.

Change and Reform bloc ministers called on renewing three months the mandate for head of the Center for Educational Research and Development Leila Fayyad, while Suleiman insisted on renewing another year for her, on Thursday.

The U.S. State Department has hailed the efforts exerted by March 14 opposition political leaders to maintain security and expressed support for a new era in Lebanese-Syrian relations.

“We support Lebanon’s political leaders’ efforts to maintain security and to prepare for the day when a democratic government in Damascus will usher in a new era in Lebanese-Syrian relations,” said the State Department on the occasion of the anniversary of the 2005 Cedar Revolution.

Minister of Transportation and Public Works Ghazi al-Aridi stressed on Thursday the importance of “flexibility” in resolving the telecom data dispute as the security agencies had made achievements in the past by obtaining this data.

“President Michel Suleiman tackled the issue during his speech (at the cabinet session on Wednesday at the Baabda Palace), and the obstacles blocking the army from obtaining the (telecom) data,” Aridi told An Nahar newspaper.

An Ethiopian domestic worker, who was caught on tape being beaten by a man outside her country’s general consulate, has committed suicide at a psychiatric hospital.

The National News Agency said Wednesday that a consulate representative was at a police station in Beirut checking on how to file a lawsuit against the owner of the woman’s employment agency, when Antelias police said Alem Dechasa, 33, hanged herself using her bed sheets.

Free Patriotic Movement leader MP Michel Aoun on Wednesday warned that the violence in Syria would spill over to Lebanon if the embattled Syrian regime was ousted, rejecting the presence of what he called “Takfiris on our border.”

“Those who backed Israel’s war on Lebanon in 2006 are the same ones who are backing the inner war against Syria, that’s why we should think of good neighborliness and the neighborhood’s security, as we cannot live with Takfiri groups on our border that are interacting with the Lebanese domestic scene,” Aoun said on the 23rd anniversary of the so-called Liberation War he waged in 1989 against Syrian forces stationed in Lebanon.

Civil society activists on Wednesday took the center stage during the rally organized by the March 14 forces to commemorate the seventh anniversary of the March 14, 2005 “Cedar Revolution.”

“Has our will really weakened? No, a thousand times no, the Cedar Revolution has not waned,” said prominent journalist May Chidiac in her speech at the rally.

The March 14 forces on Wednesday called on “all the Lebanese, without exception, to take part in preparing for an ‘uprising for peace’ that would pull us out of the tragedies of the past and lay the foundations for a better future,” during a rally at the BIEL auditorium in Beirut marking the seventh anniversary of the March 14, 2005 “Cedar Revolution.”

“Great dangers are looming today and efforts must be focused on rebuilding the foundations of a unified and unifying state that would protect all the Lebanese, through acknowledging the need to put all capabilities at its disposal,” said a document issued by the March 14 forces and recited at the rally by MP Boutros Harb.

Former Prime Minister Saad Hariri renewed on Wednesday the March 14 camp’s commitment to the state, saying that adhering to it will resolve the country’s disputes.

He said on the seventh anniversary of the March 14 independence movement: “The supporters of this movement will not accept that the Lebanese republic fall victim to a new form of hegemony, whether it is direct or indirect.”