NEWS FLASH

U.N. And W.H.O. Reports Cast Doubt On Afghan Schoolgirl Poisonings | Over recent months, a spate of reports suggested Afghan girls’ schools were targeted by fundamentalists for mass-poisonings. Now, U.N. and World Health Organization (WHO) reports are casting doubt on those accounts. “No conclusive evidence of deliberate poisoning was found” in 200 samples from girls that took ill, a WHO spokesperson told Newsweek. Medical investigators told Newsweek’s Matthieu Aikins that the likely cause was “mass psychogenic illness” — panic among the school girls sometimes set off by various isolated (and non-poisoning) medical episodes, such as an epileptic seizure.