The debate flared up again on Friday between the Syrian and Saudi ambassadors to Lebanon over the issue of a Syria-bound arms ship recently seized in Lebanon’s territorial waters.

Syrian ambassador Ali Abdul Karim Ali declared on NBN television that he has severed ties with Saudi ambassador Ali Awadh Asiri, saying “he’s the one who dealt an unfriendly blow to a brotherly relation.”

Security forces killed at least 33 people on Friday as protesters took to their streets in their thousands on Friday to call for regime change, activists and a rights watchdog said.

The Local Coordination Committees, the main activist group spurring protests on the ground, said security forces killed seven people in the northwestern province of Idlib, seven in the Damascus neighborhood of al-Tadamon, six in the central province of Hama, five in the central province of Homs, four in the northern province of Aleppo, two in the eastern province of Deir Ezzor, one in the Damascus suburb of al-Mleiha and one in the southern province of Daraa.

Prime Minister Najib Miqati held talks on Wednesday with visiting Iranian Vice President Mohammed Reza Rahimi on cooperation between Lebanon and Iran.

The meeting at the Grand Serail also focused on improving the agreements and Memorandums of Understandings signed between the two countries.

Egyptian security services foiled an Iranian plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to Cairo several months ago, the legal advisor of the kingdom's embassy said in local dailies on Tuesday.

Egypt "arrested three Iranians planning to assassinate the ambassador, Ahmed Qattan," Al-Hayat quoted Sami Jamal as saying.

Former premier Saad Hariri on Monday called on Lebanon’s workers to “put an end to this farce and raise the voice” against the government whose members are “stealing public money.”

In a press release marking Labor Day, which Lebanon observes on May 1, Hariri said “workers are the productive class in our society and it is our duty to celebrate their day with them.”

Free Patriotic Movement leader MP Michel Aoun on Monday accused the opposition March 14 camp of “practicing obstruction” and slammed Progressive Socialist Party leader MP Walid Jumblat over his rejection of an electoral law based on proportional representation.

“The parliamentary minority is practicing obstruction in collusion with some of the executive authority, and we will not remain silent over this issue even if some people launched verbal attacks,” Aoun told reporters after the weekly meeting of the Change and Reform parliamentary bloc in Rabiyeh.

Progressive Socialist Party leader MP Walid Jumblat questioned on Monday the insistence to adopt proportional representation in the parliamentary electoral law.

He noted in his weekly editorial in the PSP-affiliated al-Anbaa magazine: “Such a law will, in one way or another, help reproduce the era of hegemony in Lebanon, which will therefore be rejected by all the Lebanese people.”

U.S. Secretary of State Hilary Clinton telephoned on Monday President Michel Suleiman to praise his speech at the Arab League summit that was held in Baghdad in late March.

She lauded his call to implement democracy in political practice and expressed her country’s support to such an end.

Google and the IE Alumni Association invite AUB alumni and MBA students to a panel workshop and careers networking session on the topic of empowering SMEs in Lebanon through web-based technologies entitled "Deploying Technology to Empower SMEs in Lebanon". It will be held on Friday, May 4 at the Hotel Bristol and will feature a high-profile panel of tech industry entrepreneurs, including William Kanaan (Google), Maroun Chammas (IDM, Berytech), Hala Fadel (Comgest, MIT Enterprise Forum), and Elie Habib (Riyada Enterprise Development).

Registration Link : http://goo.gl/5Yrq8

Arab Tawhid Party chief Wiam Wahhab stressed Sunday that the motives behind the bombing that targeted his party’s Baqaata office “have become clear to us,” noting that the incident “will not go without judicial and political accountability.”

“Delusional are those who believe that the Tawhid party is merely a building, an office or only walls, because Tawhid’s beliefs have become deep-rooted in people’s mind and the bombing cannot negate this fact,” Wahhab said, during a meeting with a delegation from the Free Patriotic Movement’s Shouf committee.