A huge fire at a well known jewelry shop in Beirut's Ashrafiyeh district caused material damage only as firefighters were able to salvage jewelry from the store, the state-run National News Agency and an official said Friday.

The fire, which erupted at around 7:00 am at the ground floor of Zoughaib jewelry in Sofil Center, was extinguished a couple of hours later, NNA said.

The March 14 opposition alliance plans to commemorate the 8th anniversary of the assassination of ex-PM Rafik Hariri at the Beirut International Exhibition and Leisure Center BIEL on Feb 14 in a massive rally, media reports said.

Prominent political figures and MPs representing all parties of the alliance including cadres of al-Mustaqbal movement would participate in the event, reports quoted the secretary-general of the movement, Ahmad Hariri, as saying.

A decision by the cabinet to extend granting security forces the telecom data after the consecutive security incidents that rocked Lebanon will have a positive affect on safeguarding the country during the delicate stage it's passing through, local newspapers reported on Friday.

“Handing over the telecommunications movement... activates preventive security,” a security source told An Nahar newspaper.

A decision by General Prosecutor Judge Hatem Madi to reopen the fraud case at al-Madina Bank raised question marks on his intentions, only days after he requested lifting the parliamentary immunity off MP Butros Harb for allegedly offending the president and the judiciary.

Madi tasked on Thursday an experts committee to reveal the names of persons who had received funds from al-Madina and its twin the United Credit Bank.

Speaker Nabih Berri expressed optimism on the electoral subcommittee meetings, pointing out that if the members failed to reach common ground then the matter will be referred to the joint parliamentary committees.

The speaker told An Nahar newspaper on Friday that the subcommittee's chairman, MP Robert Ghanem, briefed him on the appearance of new “positive” signs during the meetings.

LBCI television reported on Thursday two different versions of Friday's incident in the Bekaa town of Arsal that resulted in the death of Major Pierre Bashaalani and Adjutant Ibrahim Zahraman, revealing that both stories are “under investigation by concerned authorities”.

According to the town's residents, three civil vehicles fired shotguns at Khaled Hmayyed, a suspect wanted on terrorism charges, near his house in Arsal while he was on his way to perform Friday's prayers.

The suspected Hizbullah bomber who killed five Israelis in Bulgaria last July did not intend to die in the attack, but wanted to return to Lebanon with his two accomplices, the government said Thursday.

The man "was not a kamikaze but only meant to put the ... explosive device in the baggage compartment of the bus and detonate it later from afar," Interior Minister Tsvetan Tsvetanov said.

Special Tribunal for Lebanon Prosecutor Norman Farrell filed on Wednesday a “confidential motion seeking amendments to the present indictment in the Ayyash et al. Case”, announced the STL on Thursday.

The proposed amendments set out certain clarifications.

More than half of the estimated 300,000 Syrian refugees who have fled to Lebanon are not receiving the medical treatment they need because of high costs, Doctors Without Borders (MSF) said Thursday.

In a report entitled "Misery beyond the war zone," MSF gave the results of a survey carried out in the southern city of Sidon, the eastern Bekaa Valley and the northern city of Tripoli, where its teams are providing free medical care.

President Michel Suleiman said Thursday there are instructions not to deport any Syrian to his home country in accordance with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

“The instructions are not to deport any Syrian to Syria in conformity with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights,” said Suleiman on twitter.