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Over the last three decades, the levels of core pollutants in the U.S. have been cut in half despite a 34 percent growth in population size, a 90 percent increase in miles driven, and a 30 percent boost in energy use.

With permission from the patients, investigators followed the trail of grocery purchases to a Rhode Island company that makes salami, then zeroed in on the pepper used to season the meat.

Never before had the CDC successfully mined the mountain of data that supermarket chains compile.

“It was really exciting. It was a break in the investigation for sure,” CDC epidemiologist Casey Barton Behravesh said.

At least 245 people in 44 states have been sickened in the outbreak. That includes 30 in California, 19 in Illinois, 18 in New York and 17 in Washington state.

The victims included Raymond Cirimele, a 55-year-old Chicago man. He said no one asked for his shopper-card data, but he would have provided it if someone had.

The report, titled “Deadly Delivery,” notes that the likelihood of a woman dying in childbirth in the U.S. is ?ve times greater than in Greece, four times greater than in Germany, and three times greater than in Spain. Every day in the U.S., more than two women die of pregnancy-related causes, with the maternal mortality ratio doubling from 6.6 deaths per 100,000 births in 1987 to 13.3 deaths per 100,000 births in 2006. (And as shocking as these figures are, Amnesty notes that the actual number of maternal deaths in the U.S. may be a lot higher since there are no federal requirements to report these outcomes and since data collection at the state and local levels needs to be improved.) “In the U.S., we spend more than any country on health care, yet American women are at greater risk of dying from pregnancy-related causes than in 40 other countries,” says Nan Strauss, the report’s co-author, who spent two years investigating the issue of maternal mortality worldwide. “We thought that was scandalous.”

According to Amnesty, which gathered data from many sources including the CDC, approximately half of the pregnancy-related deaths in the U.S. are preventable, the result of systemic failures including barriers to accessing care; inadequate, neglectful, or discriminatory care; and overuse of risky interventions like inducing labor and delivering via cesarean section. “Women are not dying from complex, mysterious causes that we don’t know how to treat,” says Strauss. “Women are dying because it’s a fragmented system, and they are not getting the comprehensive services that they need.”

In 1951, a quiet, picturesque village in southern France was suddenly and mysteriously struck down with mass insanity and hallucinations. At least five people died, dozens were interned in asylums and hundreds afflicted.

For decades it was assumed that the local bread had been unwittingly poisoned with a psychedelic mould. Now, however, an American investigative journalist has uncovered evidence suggesting the CIA peppered local food with the hallucinogenic drug LSD as part of a mind control experiment at the height of the Cold War.

The mystery of Le Pain Maudit (Cursed Bread) still haunts the inhabitants of Pont-Saint-Esprit, in the Gard, southeast France.

On August 16, 1951, the inhabitants were suddenly racked with frightful hallucinations of terrifying beasts and fire.

One man tried to drown himself, screaming that his belly was being eaten by snakes. An 11-year-old tried to strangle his grandmother. Another man shouted: “I am a plane”, before jumping out of a second-floor window, breaking his legs. He then got up and carried on for 50 yards. Another saw his heart escaping through his feet and begged a doctor to put it back. Many were taken to the local asylum in strait jackets.

Time magazine wrote at the time: “Among the stricken, delirium rose: patients thrashed wildly on their beds, screaming that red flowers were blossoming from their bodies, that their heads had turned to molten lead.”

Eventually, it was determined that the best-known local baker had unwittingly contaminated his flour with ergot, a hallucinogenic mould that infects rye grain. Another theory was the bread had been poisoned with organic mercury.

However, H P Albarelli Jr., an investigative journalist, claims the outbreak resulted from a covert experiment directed by the CIA and the US Army’s top-secret Special Operations Division (SOD) at Fort Detrick, Maryland.

The scientists who produced both alternative explanations, he writes, worked for the Swiss-based Sandoz Pharmaceutical Company, which was then secretly supplying both the Army and CIA with LSD.

Mr Albarelli came across CIA documents while investigating the suspicious suicide of Frank Olson, a biochemist working for the SOD who fell from a 13th floor window two years after the Cursed Bread incident. One note transcribes a conversation between a CIA agent and a Sandoz official who mentions the “secret of Pont-Saint-Esprit” and explains that it was not “at all” caused by mould but by diethylamide, the D in LSD.

While compiling his book, A Terrible Mistake: The Murder of Frank Olson and the CIA’s Secret Cold War Experiments, Mr Albarelli spoke to former colleagues of Mr Olson, two of whom told him that the Pont-Saint-Esprit incident was part of a mind control experiment run by the CIA and US army.

After the Korean War the Americans launched a vast research programme into the mental manipulation of prisoners and enemy troops.

Scientists at Fort Detrick told him that agents had sprayed LSD into the air and also contaminated “local foot products”.

Mr Albarelli said the real “smoking gun” was a White House document sent to members of the Rockefeller Commission formed in 1975 to investigate CIA abuses. It contained the names of a number of French nationals who had been secretly employed by the CIA and made direct reference to the “Pont St. Esprit incident.” In its quest to research LSD as an offensive weapon, Mr Albarelli claims, the US army also drugged over 5,700 unwitting American servicemen between 1953 and 1965.

None of his sources would indicate whether the French secret services were aware of the alleged operation. According to US news reports, French intelligence chiefs have demanded the CIA explain itself following the book’s revelations. French intelligence officially denies this.

Locals in Pont-Saint-Esprit still want to know why they were hit by such apocalyptic scenes. “At the time people brought up the theory of an experiment aimed at controlling a popular revolt,” said Charles Granjoh, 71.

The board voted 5-4 after parents and community leaders made final pleas to spare the schools even as the beleaguered district seeks to erase a projected $50 million budget shortfall. The approved plan calls for shuttering 29 of 61 schools – a striking amount even as public school closures rise nationwide while the recession eats away at academic budgets.

“The urban core has suffered white flight post-the 1954 U.S. Supreme Court decision Brown v. the Board of Education, blockbusting by the real estate industry, redlining by banks and other financial institutions, retail and grocery store abandonment,” Kansas City Councilwoman Sharon Sanders Brooks said to applause from a standing-room-only crowd of more than 200 people.

“And now the public education system is aiding and abetting in the economic demise of our school district,” she said. “It is shameful and sinful.”

Many school board members said the vote was difficult. An emotional Duane Kelly called it “the most painful vote” he has cast in 10 years on the board.

If Italian media sources are to be believed, then the compromising shadow of a highly active gay prostitution ring currently hangs over both the Holy See and unnamed Rome seminary colleges.

The first casualty of this potentially explosive scandal was Thiomas Ehiem, who yesterday was dismissed from the choir of the Cappella Giulia, the choir used in St Peter’s for ceremonies which do not involve the pope.

The Cappella Giulia comes under the auspices of Cardinal Angelo Comastri, arch-priest of St Peter’s.

Vatican sources pointed out that Mr Ehiem was neither a priest nor a seminary student, but a lay member of the choir.

The revelations came to light during investigations into Angelo Balducci, former head of the Italian office of public works, who was arrested last month on suspicion of corruption. This related to the awarding of a series of public contracts for major events such as last year’s G8 Summit in La Maddalena, Sardinia (later moved to L’Aquila), the 2009 World Swimming Championships, and next year’s 150th anniversary celebrations of the Unity of Italy.

Phone taps of the last two years reveal that Mr Balducci regularly contacted two men, Mr Ehiem and Lorenzo Renzi, to ask them to set up “appointments” for him, “appointments” for which he would pay up to €2,000.

Mr Balducci would ask for a description of his “escort”, and would be furnished with details of the man’s height, weight, skin colour, age and sexual availability.

Transcripts of Mr Balducci’s conversations suggest that his “escorts” came from many different backgrounds, with some being illegal immigrants who badly needed money.

Others were seminary students in Rome.

Mr Balducci, who has been a Papal Gentleman since 1995, has long worked closely with the Holy See on behalf of the Italian state, overseeing the logistical and infrastructural requirements of events such as the Holy Year in 2000, the canonisations of Padre Pio and Opus Dei founder José Maria Escriva in 2002, and the beatification of Mother Teresa in 2003.

In the context of the investigation into the office of public works, investigators believe that Mr Balducci systematically abused his position, exacting favours that ranged from a job for his son to the construction of a swimming pool by builders who had been awarded public contracts.

Investigators believe that private sector contracts for last year’s G8 Summit were inflated from an initial €290 million to €600 million.

Father Gabriele Amorth, 85, who has been the Vatican’s chief exorcist for 25 years and says he has dealt with 70,000 cases of demonic possession, said that the consequences of satanic infiltration included power struggles at the Vatican as well as “cardinals who do not believe in Jesus, and bishops who are linked to the Demon”.

He added: “When one speaks of ‘the smoke of Satan’ [a phrase coined by Pope Paul VI in 1972] in the holy rooms, it is all true – including these latest stories of violence and paedophilia.”

The Brooklyn Democrat has introduced a bill that would ban the use of salt in New York restaurants – and violators would be smacked with a $1,000 fine for every salty dish.