Saudi Arabia's state oil giant Aramco will raise its refining capacity by 50 percent to above six million barrels a day by expanding at home and abroad, chief executive Khalid al Falih said Tuesday.

Work was progressing on two new refineries in the kingdom, he told a meeting in Seoul.

Tawheed movement leader Wiam Wahhab revealed on Saturday photos of checks addressed to Mustaqbal MP Jamal al-Jarrah signed by Saudi Prince Turki bin Abdul Aziz, a member of the Saudi royal family.

The check, worth $300,000, was issued in Cairo, he told NBN television.

The daily An Nahar revealed on Sunday that Progressive Socialist Party leader MP Walid Jumblat and the head of the Mustaqbal bloc Fouad Saniora met over dinner at a mutual friend’s house a few says ago.

It added that members of Jumblat’s National Struggle Front were also present.

As popular revolts continue to shake the Arab world, the political stalemate in Lebanon is unlikely to end soon because key players Syria and Saudi Arabia are busy on other fronts, analysts say.

"The situation is very tense in the region and everyone is waiting to see how the political landscape is going to change," said Hilal Khashan, political science professor at the American University of Beirut.

Municipal elections in Saudi Arabia, the only form of public vote in the conservative kingdom, are to be held on September 22, the electoral commission said on its website.

Local dailies had mistakenly reported last month that the elections would start on April 23. But a timetable posted on the website Intekhab clarified that the registration of eligible voters, not voting, would start on that date.

U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates held talks in Riyadh on Wednesday with Saudi King Abdullah, with both sides concerned by Iranian intentions in the region and spiraling unrest in Yemen.

"We talked about developments all over the region, obviously talked about Iran," Gates said following the meeting.

MP Marwan Hamadeh stressed the importance of money in confronting Hizbullah’s growing influence in Lebanon, revealed a leaked U.S. Embassy cable published in Al-Akhbar newspaper on Wednesday.

The August 2006 WikiLeaks cable spoke of a meeting between Hamadeh, then MP Nayla Mouawad, and then U.S. Ambassador to Lebanon Jeffrey Feltman during which they hoped that the American administration would pressure Arab gulf states to transfer political funds to the March 14 camp to confront Hizbullah.

U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates arrived in Riyadh on Wednesday to meet with Saudi King Abdullah, as the Arabian Peninsula is shaken by spiraling unrest in Yemen.

The meeting, which will be Gates' first with King Abdullah since the monarch returned home in February after months of treatment abroad for a back ailment, comes amid mounting international anger over bloodshed in the kingdom's southern neighbor Yemen and pressure on its president to stand down.

Gulf Arab foreign ministers were to meet Sunday in the Saudi capital to discuss Iranian interference after Arab world unrest spilled over into some of the region's Western-backed monarchies.

Abdul Latif al-Zayani, the Gulf Cooperation Council's new secretary general, condemned "Iran's meddling in the internal affairs of GCC countries" on the eve of the meeting, saying it "threatened security and stability in the region".

Saudi Arabia has urged Iran to mind its own business after a parliamentary panel in Tehran warned that Riyadh was "playing with fire" by deploying troops in Bahrain.

"Iran's statement deliberately ignores Iran's interference in the region's affairs and its violation of the independence and sovereignty of the region," a government official said late on Friday, quoted by state news agency SPA.