President Michel Suleiman lashed out on Saturday at Free Patriotic Movement leader MP Michel Aoun for refusing to elect a new consensus president.

Aoun said earlier in a live Twitter and Facebook session that experience “doesn’t encourage” accepting this compromise again.

Politicians and religious leaders of different affiliations gathered Saturday to pay their respects to the late head of the Druze spiritual authority Sheikh Abu Mohammed Jawad Walieddine.

The funeral of Sheikh Walieddine, who died Friday at age of 96 of natural causes, was held in the Chouf town of Baaqlin, southeast Beirut.

Internal Security forces detained 19 Egyptian workers on Saturday who joined a protest outside the Egyptian embassy in Beirut.

According to the National News Agency, Egyptian workers held a sit-in near the Labor ministry in Shiyah demanding the end of the “sponsorship system” for foreign laborers in Lebanon.

Finance Minister Mohammed al-Safadi recognized on Saturday the rightful demands of the Lebanese laborers to live in dignity in their own country.

Safadi said in a statement that the 2012 draft state budget includes a plan that would cover the social and health care costs for all workers, which would be added to the increase in salaries that the cabinet approved in January.

Airport security succeeded on Saturday in thwarting a drug smuggling operation that was headed to Russia.

It said that an Arab national was trying to smuggle 7.850 kilograms of heroin to Russia.

President Michel Suleiman hailed on Saturday the interception of a ship suspected of delivering weapons to Syria as the Lebanese army issued a statement confirming the incident.

“The army intercepted on Friday Sierra Leone-flagged Lutfallah II ship suspected of carrying weapons and ammunition to Syria,” the statement said.

President Michel Suleiman noted that in light of the changes in the Arab world, it would be unacceptable for Lebanon to fail to hold the parliamentary elections in 2013, reported al-Joumhouria newspaper on Saturday.

He told the newspaper: “The elections should be held regardless of which electoral law is adopted.”

Assistant U.S. Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs Jeffery Feltman is expected to arrive in Lebanon next week where he is scheduled to hold talks with a number of officials, reported the daily An Nahar on Saturday.

The talks are likely to focus on the repercussions of the Syrian crisis on Lebanon and the 2013 parliamentary elections, said the daily.

Unidentified individuals on Friday deliberately set fire to used tires dumped in an area adjacent to the Bourj Hammoud landfill, causing an “environmental disaster” and sending plumes of smoke that filled the sky over Beirut and its suburbs.

According to MTV, the fire -- which was first reported as having taken place in Bourj Hammoud’s landfill – resulted from the burning of tires by “those who want to financially benefit from the copper (contained in tires), whose prices have soared lately.”

Pictures of a number of ministers and MPs have been posted along the walls of the Hamra area in Beirut, accusing them of “breaching public morality.”

Some posters also accused them of being “racist” and “sectarian.”