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A sky-high Swedish farewell cake poisons 13 Fri Oct 29, 3:14 PM ET STOCKHOLM (AFP) - Thirteen employees of a botanical garden in Stockholm ended up in the hospital showing symptoms of drug poisoning after a departing intern served them cake as a goodbye gesture, police said. A 27-year-old intern at the Bergianska traedgaard in Stockholm had baked a cake for his colleagues on his last day of work. After eating the cake with their morning coffee, "five people became ill. They showed signs of having been drugged. Later on, more people got sick," Stockholm police spokesman Bjoern Pihlblad told...

MOSCOW, Dec 27 (Reuters) - Russian prosecutors said on Wednesday that Leonid Nevzlin, a former top manager of the YUKOS business empire, could have ordered the poisoning of former Russian agent Alexander Litvinenko. "A version is being looked at that those who ordered these crimes could be the same people who are on an international wanted list for serious and very serious crimes, one of whom is ... Leonid Nevzlin," Russia's prosecutor-general's office said in a statement posted on its Web site www.genproc.gov.ru. [...] A trusted business partner of jailed Russian oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky, Nevzlin has provoked the Kremlin's...

MOSCOW, December 11 (RIA Novosti) - The ex-wife of a witness in the case of a murdered former Russian security officer, her two children and boyfriend have been hospitalized in Germany with suspected polonium-210 poisoning, the head of the investigation team in Hamburg said Monday. He said a medical examination will show if their organisms contain a dangerous concentration of the radioactive element. Authorities did not identify them by name. Businessman Dmitry Kovtun met with defector Alexander Litvinenko around the time of his poisoning at the beginning of November. Litvinenko, an outspoken critic of President Vladimir Putin's administration and a...

British detectives have questioned a Russian businessman who entertained Alexander Litvinenko in a London hotel on the day the former spy fell ill. At the same time Scotland Yard confirmed that the investigation into Litvinenko’s death by radiation poisoning had become a murder inquiry. Police have been following the trail across London left by Dimitri Kovtun and his close friend, Andrei Lugovoy. It includes a number of locations where polonium-210 has been found. Mr Kovtun was interviewed by Russian prosecutors yesterday in the presence of the British detectives, who arrived in Moscow on Monday. He and and Mr Lugovoy were...

Radiation has been found at the British Embassy in Moscow, it emerged yesterday. On Monday, officials said a room there would be tested as a precaution after former KGB bodyguard Andrei Lugovoi went there to deny involvement in poisoning Alexander Litvinenko. Mr Lugovoi and another Russian businessman reportedly met former spy Mr Litvinenko at the Millennium Hotel in Grosvenor Square, Mayfair, on November 1, the day he was apparently poisoned. A spokesman said: 'A team of experts have concluded a precautionary check of the British Embassy. 'They have found no danger to public health. Small traces of radiation were found...

MOSCOW, December 6, 2006 (RFE/RL) -- A team of British investigators today is continuing work on the case of Aleksandr Litvinenko. The former Federal Security Service (FSB) officer died in London last month from poisoning by the rare radioactive isotope polonium-210. Since then, British authorities have literally followed the polonium trail to more than a dozen locations in London, three British Airways jets, and a handful of potential suspects in Moscow.

Radioactive traces at Arsenal stadium December 6, 2006 - 12:11PM British investigators have found minute traces of polonium 210, the radioactive isotope that killed former Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko, at a London soccer stadium. The traces were found at the stadium of English Premier League club Arsenal. "Minute quantities [of polonium] were found at barely detectable levels at localised areas," said Health Protection Agency spokeswoman Katherine Lewis. "There is no risk to public health." British police are in Moscow investigating Litvinenko's death in a case that has strained ties between Britain and Russia since the exiled former spy on his...

Russia named its price yesterday for providing help in the investigation into the death by poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko. It demanded that Britain hand over the enemies of President Putin who have been given asylum in London.The ultimatum came as Russian officials imposed strict limits on how Scotland Yard detectives will be allowed to operate as they began their investigation in Moscow. The strict conditions threatened to deepen the diplomatic rift between Moscow and London caused by the death last month by radioactive polonium-210 poisoning of Litvinenko. John Reid, the Home Secretary, pledged this week that no diplomatic obstacles would...

Intelligence services in Britain are convinced that the poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko was authorised by the Russian Federal Security Service. Security sources have told The Times that the FSB orchestrated a “highly sophisticated plot” and was likely to have used some of its former agents to carry out the operation on the streets of London. “We know how the FSB operates abroad and, based on the circumstances behind the death of Mr Litvinenko, the FSB has to be the prime suspect,” a source said yesterday. The involvement of a former FSB officer made it easier to lure Mr Litvinenko to...

LONDON - Britain's senior law enforcement official said Sunday an inquiry into the death of a former KGB agent had expanded overseas, and a U.S.-based friend of the former agent said he told police the name of the person he believes orchestrated the poisoning. Yuri Shvets said had known the poisoned ex-spy, Alexander Litvinenko, since 2002 and spoke with him on Nov. 23, the day Litvinenko died following his exposure to a rare radioactive element, polonium-210. "The truth is, we have an act of international terrorism on our hands. I happen to believe I know who is behind the death...

THE Russian president, Vladimir Putin, has expressed his anger at Britain’s failure to gag Alexander Litvinenko in the final hours of his life, the cabinet has been told.Margaret Beckett, the foreign secretary, told ministers that the Russian government had “taken exception” to the poisoned former spy’s deathbed letter accusing the Putin regime of murdering him. This weekend a potential suspect — Andrei Lugovoi — admitted he had been contaminated with the radioactive poison polonium-210 but insisted: “I’ve been framed.” Beckett, who spoke to her Russian counterpart before Thursday’s cabinet meeting, said the Russians had “seemingly failed to understand” that Litvinenko...

Test results on Mario Scaramella, the man feared to be the second victim of a Russian hit squad widely blamed for the death of spy Alexander Litvinenko, shows no sign of radiation poisoning. The Italian academic who met the ex-KGB man on the day he was allegedly poisoned, was admitted to hospital on Friday having tested positive for a "significant" quantity of the radioactive substance. Health chiefs confirmed on Friday night that Mr Scaramella had traces of deadly polonium 210, which is believed to have killed Mr Litvinenko, in his body. But doctors at London's University College Hospital have said...

"Italian Mario Scaramella, a contact of dead ex-spy Alexander Litvinenko, has tested positive for polonium-210. Mr Scaramella is not thought to be suffering physical symptoms but the amount found is "likely to be of concern for [his] immediate health". He met Mr Litvinenko at sushi restaurant Itsu in central London on the day he fell ill. Meanwhile, the post-mortem examination on Mr Litvinenko, a former KGB agent, has started."

Former Russian Prime Minister Yegor Gaidar is being treated in a Moscow hospital after falling violently ill on a trip to Ireland on 24 November. Speculation is rife that he may have been poisoned. He fell ill a day after former Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko died of radiation poisoning in London. Mr Gaidar's daughter Maria said "doctors incline towards the view that his symptoms... indicate poisoning". Mr Gaidar was rushed to intensive care in Dublin, then flown to Moscow. Mr Gaidar, 50, suffered from a nose bleed and vomiting before fainting in Dublin last Friday, during a visit to promote...

THE COLD WAR was supposed to have ended 15 years ago, but the death in London of Alexander V. Litvinenko presents Scotland Yard with more than your average murder mystery. The former Russian spy and fierce critic of the Kremlin was poisoned. But how and by whom? The tale began Nov. 1 at itsu, a busy London sushi restaurant near Piccadilly Circus that features a Madame Butterfly Zinger, Squirrels Dreams and something called Bang Bang Free Range Chicken. Poison is definitely not on the menu. Litvinenko, an outspoken critic of Russian President Vladimir V. Putin and a KGB successor agency,...

Just a headline, as of 10AM.

The treatment meted out by the western Press over the Litvinenko case is utterly predictable and a shocking and chilling example of how anti-Russian those responsible for perpetuating the Cold War myth remain. When the West needed Russia in two World Wars, Russia gave up the blood of 32,350,000 of her sons and daughters. And now we are speaking about London and Moscow, what about the terrorist Zakaev, walking free in London while the parents of Beslan mourn their children? Russia shed her blood for what? To earn a constant barrage of anti-Russian stories, whipping up sentiment to serve as...

The poisoned Russian spy breathed defiance at the Kremlin as the effects of a mystery cocktail pushed him to the brink of death.“I want to survive, just to show them,” Alexander Litvinenko said in an exclusive interview just hours before he slipped into unconsciousness. Too weak to move his limbs and visibly in great pain, the former Russian intelligence officer suggested that he knew that he may not win his struggle against the lethal chemicals destroying his vital organs. But he said the campaign for truth would go on with or without him. “The bastards got me,” he whispered. “But...

Friend of poisoned Russian ex-spy accuses Kremlin 20 Nov 2006 13:03:52 GMT Source: Reuters By Kate Kelland LONDON, Nov 20 (Reuters) - A former Russian spy fighting for his life in a London hospital after being poisoned with a highly toxic chemical was the target of a Kremlin-backed plot, a close friend said on Monday, in a claim Moscow called "nonsense". A Kremlin spokesman dimissed allegations that exiled agent Alexander Litvinenko, an outspoken critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin, was the victim of an assassination attempt by Russian security services. British police are investigating after Litvinenko, a former colonel in...

He claimed he met three of the 9-11 hijackers in Shreveport a year before the attacks. Now, that man, Shreveport dentist Dr. David Graham, is dead. His family says he was poisoned more than two years ago. At the time, Graham was trying to publish a manuscript about meeting three middle easterners in Shreveport, men he feared were plotting to bomb Barksdale Air Force Base. Graham wrote that he warned the FBI. Then after 9-11, he saw their pictures among the hijackers. Before Graham was poisoned, he was supposed to testify at a deportation hearing against a pakistani man, Jamal...