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posted by martyb on Monday July 09 2018, @09:42AM   Printer-friendly
from the nasty-way-to-go dept.

A woman who lived a short distance from where Sergei and Yulia Skripal were poisoned with the Novichok nerve agent has died. Prime Minister Theresa May is "appalled and shocked" by the death:

Police have launched a murder inquiry after a woman exposed to nerve agent Novichok in Wiltshire died. Dawn Sturgess, 44, died in hospital on Sunday evening after falling critically ill on 30 June. Charlie Rowley, 45, who was also exposed to the nerve agent in Amesbury, remains critically ill in hospital.

[...] Officers are still trying to work out how Ms Sturgess and Mr Rowley were exposed to the nerve agent although tests have confirmed they touched a contaminated item with their hands.

[...] Mrs May sent her "thoughts and condolences" and said officials are "working urgently to establish the facts". She said: "The government is committed to providing full support to the local community as it deals with this tragedy." British diplomat Julian King, the European Commissioner responsible for the EU's security union, said: "Those behind this are murderers."

[...] The working hypothesis is that the pair became contaminated after touching a poison container left over from the March attack on Sergei and Yulia Skripal. The death of Dawn Sturgess, a British citizen on British soil, now changes the investigation to a murder inquiry, with all the diplomatic and security ramifications that carries. Britain has been blaming Moscow for the original attack in March, saying there is no plausible alternative to the Kremlin having ordered the assassination attempt. Russia has denied any involvement, suggesting instead this was the action of a weak British government looking to undermine the success of the current World Cup being hosted by Russia.

Here's something from the other side.

Previously: Former Russian Spy Exposed to "Unknown Substance" in Salisbury, England
Use of Nerve Agent Confirmed in Skripal Assassination Attempt
UK Gives Russia Until Midnight to Explain Use of Novichok Nerve Agent


Original Submission

 
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  • (Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 09 2018, @10:32AM (7 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 09 2018, @10:32AM (#704489)

    Were Sturgess and Rowley poisoned with Novichok so Russia could claim "These people were not double agents! Why would we poison these two? Someone else is doing this and they poisoned the Skripals, not us."

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  • (Score: 0, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 09 2018, @10:36AM (4 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 09 2018, @10:36AM (#704492)

    Your theory lacks enough lizard people from outer space to be believable.

    Please extend the antennae on your tinfoil hat, further information incoming.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 09 2018, @10:53AM (3 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 09 2018, @10:53AM (#704495)

      Two bits for your dismissle: first, I don't introduce the lizard people until slide #38 in the power point presentation (I need the pick-me-up after the 35 slides of historical images of nerve gas victims), and second, lizard people don't eat herring (not just red, but any color).

      • (Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday July 09 2018, @04:36PM (1 child)

        by c0lo (156) on Monday July 09 2018, @04:36PM (#704615) Journal

        and second, lizard people don't eat herring (not just red, but any color).

        I wonder how you know?

        --
        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0
      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 09 2018, @07:42PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 09 2018, @07:42PM (#704688)

        Is that why Trump and Putin are meeting in Helsinki? Starve the lizards by reducing their diet to herring, rye, squeaky cheese, and vodka?

  • (Score: 2) by HiThere on Monday July 09 2018, @06:38PM (1 child)

    by HiThere (866) on Monday July 09 2018, @06:38PM (#704659) Journal

    An interesting question. If it were true, what evidence would you expect to find? How could it be falsified?

    The thing is, one can always come up with lots of possible explanations for anything, but to estimate the probability it helps to answer those two questions.

    Unfortunately, for most news stories, there is no way that they can be falsified by the average person without the expenditure of considerable effort. So they probably shouldn't be believed, but only considered as "well, it's a possibility, and some people assert it". Similarly for most news stories the only evidence that one would expect to find is evidence that there's been a news story, and that some people are spreading it. More grounds for being dubious.

    Given this situation, I consider your assertion to be not much less plausible than the other news. You didn't invest much in creating it, but then you also don't have a paid staff of photographers. (I've been on the site of a couple of news events, and seen the way they carefully chose what to include and what to exclude, and that was before the editors clipped and framed the story for presentation. So I don't believe news film clips show what they're pretending to show.)

    --
    Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 09 2018, @08:56PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 09 2018, @08:56PM (#704720)

      An interesting question. If it were true, what evidence would you expect to find? How could it be falsified?

      The only known source of Novichok is Mother Russia. Why go to all of the trouble to cook up Novichok when easier ways to frame Russia exist? And why poison these two? The Skripals make sense. As does the other double agent killed the same weekend that the Skripals were exposed to Novichok (but he was simply strangled, arguably more effective than Novichok).

      Unless some cloak and dagger dirt finds its way to the surface, these two were either accidental victims or they were sacrificed to throw the scent off of the original Skripal attack.