The U.S. government tightened sanctions against three Libya-controlled banks in Turkey, Tunisia and Lebanon on Tuesday, ratcheting up the pressure on leader Moammer Gadhafi's support.

The U.S. Treasury Department said it had targeted three foreign Libyan-owned banks, identified six additional companies subject to sanctions, and lifted sanctions against a former Libyan oil minister who defected from the Gadhafi regime last month.

Several opposition officials have traveled to Paris to discuss with former Premier Saad Hariri the approach that the March 14 forces would take after the formation of PM Najib Miqati’s cabinet.

An Nahar daily said that among the March 14 politicians who went to France are Phalange party leader Amin Gemayel, MP Marwan Hamadeh and former lawmakers Fares Soaid, Samir Franjieh and Bassem al-Sabaa.

The March 14 forces vowed on Wednesday to confront alleged attempts by the new Lebanese cabinet to take Lebanon back to the era of Syrian hegemony and integrate the country’s institutions into Hizbullah’s statelet.

The general-secretariat of the coalition said after its weekly meeting that it would prevent Premier Najib Miqati’s government to “return Lebanon to the dark stage that the Cedar Revolution liberated” after ex-Premier Rafik Hariri’s assassination in February 2005.

Two armed parties clashed in Beirut’s Shiyyah neighborhood at dawn Sunday, the state-run National News Agency reported without identifying the gunmen.

It said armed fighters from two parties exchanged fire with automatic rifles in Shiyyah’s al-Tayyar street at around 3:00 am.

A pick-up hauling watermelons overturned on the Damour highway linking the south with Beirut, throwing the fruits on the road and causing a huge traffic, the National News Agency reported Wednesday.

The accident at 9:00 am shut down the highway for an hour through the morning rush, while Internal Security Forces worked along with the driver to clear the scene.

The Justice Ministry building in Beirut was partially evacuated on Tuesday after a bomb threat that turned out to be a hoax, the state-run National News Agency reported.

The Internal Security Forces searched the building using sniffer dogs but found no bomb. The threat caused panic, however.

Hizbullah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah and Free Patriotic Movement chief Michel Aoun have held talks in an attempt to end the government impasse, al-Liwaa daily reported Tuesday.

According to the newspaper, Nasrallah intentionally did not address local issues during the opening session of an intellectual conference on Iran’s Supreme Leader Sayyed Ali Khamenei in Beirut on Monday.

A Canadian court ruled Monday that a Canadian-Lebanese national accused of a 1980 bombing of a Paris synagogue that killed four people can be extradited to France, but warned the French government's case was "weak."

French prosecutors want Hassan Diab to face charges of murder, attempted murder and willful destruction of property, for the first fatal attack against the French Jewish community since the Nazi occupation in World War II.

Some 700 Syrians and Lebanese staged a rally in Beirut’s southern suburbs on Saturday to show their support for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

Syrian residents of Lebanon organized the demonstration in the southern suburb of Hay al-Sellum, a bastion of Hizbullah, to display their support for Assad and his late father and predecessor, Hafez al-Assad.

Hundreds of supporters of Syrian President Bashar Assad held a sit-in outside al-Omari mosque in downtown Beirut on Friday as anti-Assad protestors rallied inside the mosque against violence in the neighboring country.

The National News Agency said that around 200 people gathered outside the mosque shouting slogans in support of Assad and denouncing a sit-in organized by Hizb ut-Tahrir inside.