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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
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 09 2018, @01:24PM (2 children)
Vil Mirzayanov literally wrote the book on it [moonofalabama.org] and it states the substance is unstable and has low resistance to moisture.
So it's a full strength, liquid form military nerve agent suspended in Vaseline. It went from being smeared on a door handle and not killing 2 victims to killing a homeless junkie four months later? Do you want to buy a bridge?
(Score: 4, Insightful) by zocalo on Monday July 09 2018, @02:26PM (1 child)
Unless we find out exactly what Sturgess and Rowley found, and what they may have done with it once they did, I'd say it's certainly at least *possible* they found the original source container, then opened it to find a lethal dose of Novichok. We also have no information on the relative health of the Skripals and Sturgess/Rowley prior to exposure - it's also entirely possible that Sturgess simply wasn't up to fighting off even a deteriorated dose of Novichok. Besides, the UK Government's current theory is basically that there is a some other source of Novichok that could have survived for at *least* four months since it was issued for deployment lurking somewhere in the Salisbury countryside; even if that was part of some elaborate smear campaign, surely there's a better and less expensive way of doing that which doesn't entail the expense and resources of the search (faked or not) that must now happen to ensure the container or whatever isn't accidentally found by anyone else - like just announcing that the container had been found, for instance?
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 09 2018, @04:16PM
A nerve agent many times more deadly than VX [theguardian.com] kills someone 9 days after exposure? Meanwhile we're supposed to believe not only that the agent was carried by a Russian government assassin in non-binary form but also that deployment did not immediately kill the intended target? The head of the OPCW told NYT that 50-100 mg (initially misquoted as 50-100g) were used in the Skripal attack. A nerve agent, over five times as toxic as VX at five to ten times the lethal dose of VX and the intended target was released from hospital after 2 months?