Lebanese depositor Wafik Mohammed Kalo on Monday locked up himself and other people inside BLOM Bank’s branch in the southern city of Sidon, demanding that he be paid $5,000 from his account to pay for his son’s heart surgery.

The drama ended a few hours later after the bank paid Kalo LBP 280 million.

Hezbollah is pushing towards forming a new government by the end of this week, Nidaa al-Watan newspaper reported Monday, adding that ministerial sources have showed optimism regarding this matter.

The daily said that calls will intensify during the coming hours with Free Patriotic chief Jebran Bassil, in order to convince him to lower his conditions.

Lebanon’s parliament on Monday failed for the fourth time to elect a new president for the country, only a week away from the expiry of President Michel Aoun’s term.

Out of 128 MPs, only 114 attended the vote’s first round.

Lebanon and Israel will sign a U.S.-brokered maritime border demarcation deal on Thursday, U.S. mediator Amos Hochstein said.

"We're going to have a deal," Hochstein told CNN, adding that it will "hopefully" be signed this Thursday.

The dollar exchange rate dropped from LBP 40,600 to 36,000 on the black market overnight, shortly after Central Bank Governor Riad Salamah said in a statement that the Central Bank would stop buying dollars on the Sayrafa platform as of Tuesday.

The unofficial exchange rate later surged to LBP 37,000.

The Israeli army said Monday it has thwarted a drug and weapon smuggling attempt from Lebanese territory into Israel overnight.

"A suspect was apprehended and two handguns and 30kg of drugs were confiscated," the Israeli army stated on twitter.

Author Salman Rushdie lost vision in one eye and was left "incapacitated" in a hand after he was stabbed in the United States in August, his agent said in an interview published this weekend.

The 75-year-old writer, who had received several death threats after the publication of his "The Satanic Verses", was stabbed several times in the neck and abdomen before he was due to give a talk in the state of New York.

Maronite Patriarch Beshara al-Rahi on Sunday said the political forces that seek presidential vacuum would be comitting "national treason."

The Presidency on Sunday dismissed as "totally baseless" media reports claiming that President Michel Aoun intends to sign "a decree accepting the government's resignation."

Israel's Supreme Court on Sunday paved the way for the signing of a maritime border deal with Lebanon, after it rejected appeals that the pact requires parliamentary approval.