A top fundraiser for U.S. President Donald Trump received millions of dollars from a political adviser to the United Arab Emirates last April, just weeks before he began handing out a series of large political donations to U.S. lawmakers considering legislation targeting Qatar, the UAE's chief rival in the Persian Gulf, an Associated Press investigation has found.

President Michel Aoun said during a meeting with Johannes Hahn, the Commissioner for European Neighborhood Policy and Enlargement Negotiations, that aid promises made by the international community “must be put into practical steps,” the Presidency media office said.

The Lebanese Democratic Party announced on Monday the withdrawal of its Druze candidate from the electoral race in Beirut's second electoral district, it said in a statement.

With the registration deadline looming at midnight on Monday, political parties and Parliament hopefuls have rushed over the weekend to announce their electoral lists in various Lebanese districts to begin a countdown for the May 6 parliamentary elections.

Various “mosaic” electoral lists will be “fiercely” competing in Lebanon's 15 electoral districts, where once-rival parties are joining unified lists in order to garner winnings in the polls, al-Joumhouria daily reported.

Speaker Nabih Berri is expected to invite the Parliament to session this week to discuss the 2018 governmnet budget, before the country's delegation heads to France for the Cedre Conference (Paris IV) aimed at boosting investments and economic finances in Lebanon, media reports said on Monday.

Roadside bombs disguised as rocks in Yemen bear similarities to others used by Hizbullah in southern Lebanon and by insurgents in Iraq and Bahrain, suggesting at the least an Iranian influence in their manufacture, a watchdog group said Monday.

The report by Conflict Armament Research comes as the West and United Nations researchers accuse Iran of supplying arms to Yemen's Shiite rebels known as Houthis, who have held the country's capital since September 2014.

Prime Minister Saad Hariri and ex-minister Ashraf Rifi traded tirades Sunday in connection with the heated electoral battle in the northern city of Tripoli.

Prime Minister Saad Hariri met Sunday afternoon with families of Islamist prisoners at the Quality Inn Hotel in Tripoli, his office said.

The families have been staging protests for several weeks, demanding a “general amnesty” for their sons ahead of the parliamentary elections.

Finance Minister Ali Hassan Khalil on Sunday noted that some parties are seeking to win seats in the strongholds of Hizbullah and the AMAL Movement in order to “weaken the resistance.”

“The sons of this region are clinging to the 'diamond army-people-resistance equation,'” Khalil said during an electoral meeting in the South.

Former parliament speaker Hussein al-Husseini on Sunday announced his withdrawal from the electoral race in the Baalbek-Hermel district.

Slamming the new electoral law as “deformed proportional representation,” Husseini said in a statement lamented that “money, arms, mouthpieces, sectarian incitement, foreign meddling and the abuse of power will be used” in the electoral process.