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Beirut - Two years after it decided to provide loans to those seeking plastic surgery, a Lebanese bank is expanding into loans for fertility treatment.

The loan program, a first anywhere, has attracted a fair amount of attention, even though the question of infertility has long been a social taboo in Lebanon and across the Middle East.

"We have received, since the billboards were hanged across Beirut in mid August, between 200-250 calls per day from interested customers," said Mahir Mezher, head of marketing and the campaign's creator at Lebanon's First National Bank (FNB).

Beirut  - The Lebanese Shiite militant movement Hezbollah denied on Friday rumors that its leader Hassan Nasrallah had been poisoned.

"It's a fabricated story - only rumors," Galeb Abu Zainab, a member of Hezbollah's political bureau was quoted as saying.

On Wednesday, the Iraqi website Almalaf reported that Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah had been poisoned last week and that Iranian doctors had been rushed to Lebanon to save his life.

It cited undisclosed sources as saying Israel was responsible for the assassination attempt.

Beirut- Lebanon's Shiite movement Hezbollah denied on Thursday any links with a drug-ring captured in Colombia and said such reports are aimed at defaming the image of the movement.

"This is part of a Zionist campaign against the movement to defame its picture and they are based on pure lies," said Nawaf al Mussawi, Hezbollah's foreign affairs officer.

Mussawi met with the Colombian Ambassador to Lebanon, Georgina Mallat and handed her a condemnation letter, which stated that Hezbollah "does not participate in outlawed missions."

Beirut - Iranian speaker of parliament Ali Larijani is to travel to Iraq and Lebanon in the next few days, according to a report published by the Saudi Arabian daily Al-Watan on Wednesday.

Larijani will convey messages from Iraqi Ayatollah Ali Sistani to Hezbollah Secretary General Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, the daily quoted unnamed sources from Iran as saying.

The sources said that the letter carried by Larijani, who is currently visiting Manama, revealed Sistani's position on the security agreement between Iraq and the United States.