The Indian Mahindra industrial group has been granted a consultative role by the United Nations on building three industrial cities in Lebanon but the $16.9 billion global federation of companies has huge activities in Israel and some in the military field, al-Akhbar daily reported on Tuesday.

According to the website of Mahindra group, which is based in Mumbai, Mahindra Special Services Group has been selected by The Israel Export and International Cooperation Institute (IEICI) as its Homeland Security (HLS) partner.

Hizbullah chief Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah has failed to reconcile powerful Iraqi Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr with former Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, al-Mustaqbal daily reported on Tuesday.

The newspaper quoted an Iranian diplomat as saying that the efforts exerted by Nasrallah to bridge the gap between al-Sadr and al-Maliki, also a Shiite, have not yielded results.

Beirut will abide by a U.S. law that imposes sanctions on banks that knowingly do business with Hizbullah, Lebanon's central bank governor has said.

Riad Salameh told The Associated Press in an interview that bank officials are now studying regulations issued on Friday in Washington by the U.S. Department of the Treasury.

The Lebanese father of two children at the heart of a high-profile custody dispute has said he will not drop attempted kidnapping charges against his estranged Australian wife, who tried to take the children from him two weeks ago.

Sally Faulkner has been jailed in Lebanon along with prominent Australian TV journalist Tara Brown and Brown's three-person camera crew on charges relating to a botched attempt to seize Faulkner's two children on their way to school in Beirut. Another four suspects, two Britons and two Lebanese, have also been detained and charged.

An army drone crashed on Monday in a garden in the region of Batroun, north of Beirut, reported the National News Agency.

It said that the drone crashed in the garden of the residence of Tony Moneim in the town of Ajdabra.

The iron-gated doors and blacked-out windows keep the room dark at all hours of the day. Lingerie is splayed across the floor and a whip hangs over the bed.

This nightmarish setting north of the Lebanese capital is where Soha, a 26-year-old Syrian woman, was trapped for eight years with dozens of other Syrian victims of sex trafficking.

The 38th session to elect a president was postponed on Monday following a renewed lack of quorum at parliament.

Speaker Nabih Berri scheduled the new electoral session for May 10.

Police arrested in the eastern Bekaa town of Brital a man wanted on 125 arrest warrants, the state-run National News Agency reported on Monday.

The Internal Security Forces International Anti-Thefts Bureau arrested on Monday at dawn Hussein Hassan Bou Mehsen after raiding his home in the town, NNA said.

The government is expected to agree on Monday on a solution to the controversial issue of the State Security agency, ministerial sources said.

The sources told An Nahar daily that the government will likely approve the allocation of funds to State Security, which tops the agenda of the cabinet session.

The fate of the Lebanese soldiers held captive by the Islamic State group could see a glimpse of light after reports that the kidnappers might accept a deal to open a channel of negotiations with the Lebanese state, al-Akhbar daily reported on Monday.

The mediator negotiating the file of the soldiers was informed that the military Emir of the IS in the Syrian al-Qalamoun region bordering Lebanon, Mwafaq Abu el-Sous, sent a message to the “capital of the caliphate in al-Reqqa” promising a positive outcome with regard to the fate of the soldiers, the daily said.