Grand Mufti Sheikh Mohammed Rashid Qabbani downplayed on Wednesday the resignation of several members at the Higher Islamic Council he leads, lashing out at former Prime Minister Fouad Saniora.

“Until this moment these resignations are only media material, we haven't received yet anything written,” Qabbani said in comments published in An Nahar newspaper.

Parliament failed for the ninth time on Wednesday in electing a president due a lack of quorum.

Speaker Nabih Berri, who did not attend the session, set August 12 as the date for the tenth session.

Progressive Socialist Party leader MP Walid Jumblat visited Beirut's Southern suburbs recently in a first-of-its-kind move after Hizbullah engaged in the war raging in the neighboring country Syria.

Jumblat visited Dahiyeh to offer condolences to Hizbullah Secretary General Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah's political adviser Hajj Hussein Khalil on the death of his mother, As Safir newspaper reported on Wednesday.

U.S. lawmakers voted Tuesday to thwart efforts to fund Hizbullah by punishing banks and other financial organizations that help the funneling of money to the group.

Al-Mustaqbal parliamentary bloc on Tuesday announced that it will organize a sit-in Wednesday to denounce the Israeli assault on Gaza which has killed more than 600 people until the moment, as it warned of “an attempt to blow up the situations in Tripoli.”

Condemning the Israeli “enemy's hostility, barbarism and brutal attacks, which were also committed in the past against Gaza, Lebanon and unarmed innocents in several Palestinian regions,” the bloc hailed “the endurance of the Palestinian people and the valor of the Palestinian resistance's heroic fighters.”

U.S. federal agents have arrested a Lebanese man who the Irish government says is a suspect in the abduction, torture and killing of two Irish soldiers serving as United Nations peacekeepers in Lebanon 34 years ago.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrested Mahmoud Bazzi on Tuesday at his home in the Detroit suburb of Dearborn. The agency arrested Bazzi for "administrative immigration violations" not directly in connection with the killings in Lebanon, spokeswoman Gillian Christensen told The Associated Press last week.

Free Patriotic Movement leader MP Michel Aoun stressed Tuesday that parliamentary polls must precede the stalled presidential vote, noting that “scaring” people of the electoral law proposed by the Orthodox Gathering reflects “unjustified concerns.”

“Some parties are trying to disregard national pacts in the presidential elections. Some parties are bargaining over the presidential seat but we don't care who gets elected, as our battle is aimed at reforming the laws of presidential and parliamentary elections, which would prevent any president from being subordinate to foreign powers,” Aoun told reporters after the weekly meeting of the Change and Reform bloc in Rabieh.

Finance Minister Ali Hassan Khalil on Tuesday reiterated his call for issuing legislation aimed at paying the salaries of public employees, warning that civil servants will be deprived of their wages if no such law is passed.

“Any increase in expenditure requires legislation and the issue will be raised in cabinet,” Khalil said after meeting Speaker Nabih Berri in Ain al-Tineh.

Outgoing United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon Commander Major General Paolo Serra met with several Lebanese officials on Tuesday on a farewell visit, accompanied by his successor Major-General Luciano Portolano.

Serra said at the end of his tour on senior officials that he wanted to “thank them for their unflinching support.”

Several members of the Higher Islamic Council led by Grand Mufti Sheikh Mohammed Rashid Qabbani resigned on Tuesday thus ending a three-year war that sought the division of the highest Sunni authority in Lebanon.

Fifteen members had so far submitted their resignations thus suspending the works of the HIC headed by Qabbani.