Fainting riddle

Mysterious fainting fits yesterday afflicted Egyptian schoolgirls, hundreds of whom were taken to hospital, Reuter reports from Cairo.

Teachers closed schools and politicians debated while doctors put the spells down to hysteria. Ministers, MPs and would-be pundits blamed everything from food poisoning to nuclear contamination and a plot to make Egyptian girls infertile. But the only certainty about the epidemic was that it was growing. The swooning wave began in a Nile Delta province but has spread across Egypt.