Lebanese caricaturist Pierre Sadek died on Wednesday aged 75 after a battle with illness, the state-run National News Agency said.

Born in 1938 in Zahle, Sadek was a political caricaturist, whose drawings have been a daily staple in the An Nahar newspaper and on Lebanese public television screens.

A former personal secretary to Osama bin Laden got a strong rebuke from a judge Tuesday as he was sentenced to life in prison for a second time after claiming the Sept. 11 attacks and Superstorm Sandy were "God's punishment" for injustice against himself and others by the United States.

"You sir, in my judgment, are a committed terrorist who has betrayed his country," U.S. District Judge Lewis A. Kaplan told Wadih El-Hage after listening to the claims of the Lebanese-born man who became a U.S. citizen.

Lebanese group Hizbullah's decision to fight openly alongside the Syrian regime will increase Lebanon's involvement in Syria's conflict, despite a policy of neutrality, analysts say.

But despite inflaming tensions, the country is unlikely to face serious instability as a result, because none of its political forces have an interest in such a scenario for now, they say.

Only ten lawmakers have so far signed a petition that calls for challenging the suspension of deadlines set by the 1960 electoral law, al-Joumhouria newspaper reported on Wednesday.

The daily said that seven National Struggle Front MPs, deputy Speaker Farid Makari and lawmakers Ahmed Karami and Marwan Hamadeh had signed it by Tuesday.

Controversial Salafist cleric Sheikh Ahmed al-Asir stressed that he will not withdraw his call for jihad in Syria, urging scholars and clerics to approve his fatwa to aid “the oppressed” in the town of al-Qusayr, southeast of Homs.

“We should establish secret defense cells to defend ourselves in case (Hizbullah chief Sayyed Hassan) Nasrallah decided to start battles in Lebanon similar to what's happening in Syria,” Asir told reporters.

Speaker Nabih Berri has rejected appeals made by rival lawmakers for a parliamentary session before May 15 over the absence of a consensual electoral draft-law.

In remarks to local newspapers published Wednesday, Berri said he can't call for such a session without having a consensual vote law on parliament's agenda.

Free Patriotic Movement leader MP Michel Aoun on Tuesday blamed the abduction of two Christian bishops near Aleppo on "the countries that are fueling the war" in Syria.

"We want to know the objectives of the Arab Spring after the destruction of churches in Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, Syria, Israel and Iraq. Why are they targeting landmarks and committing abductions," Aoun said in an interview on his movement's mouthpiece OTV.

The United States designated two Lebanese foreign exchange firms as significant money launderers on Tuesday, saying they “moved money for drug traffickers and benefited Hizbullah.”

The U.S. Treasury named Kassem Rmeiti & Co. For Exchange and Halawi Exchange Co. for sanctions which freeze any assets they have on U.S. soil and ban Americans and U.S. businesses from any transactions with them.

The trial in absentia of four Hizbullah members for the 2005 bombing that killed former premier Rafik Hariri will likely start in late 2013, a court spokesman said on Tuesday.

"The prosecution has indicated the fourth quarter of 2013 as to when they would be ready for trial," Marten Youssef, spokesman for the Special Tribunal for Lebanon, told Agence France Presse.

Al-Mustaqbal parliamentary bloc on Tuesday rejected calls voiced by Lebanese Sunni clerics for “jihad” in the Syrian region of Qusayr, while urging Hizbullah to “withdraw its fighters” from the war-torn country.

In a statement issued after its weekly meeting, the bloc said the line-up of Prime Minister-designate Tammam Salam's cabinet "must be based on the rotation of portfolios" among the various political parties.