Egyption education minister dismisses news of school students\' poisoning

Education Minister Mahmoud Abu el-Nasr dismissed Wednesday news reports claiming that some school students had been poisoned. The minister accused parties whom he did not identify of spreading rumors to cause panic among the public and to make students afraid of eating school meals distributed to them for free. Abu el-Nasr stressed that those behind such rumors targeted undermining the education process and disrupting the second semester, underscoring that the ministry had the medical documents that prove that school meals are valid and fit for consumption by the students. He asserted that school meals are routinely checked by health teams and samples of them as periodically analyzed by central laboratories.