MORE PUTIN THUGGERY? “Scotland Yard has launched an investigation into an audacious attempt to murder – using a deadly poison – a leading Russian defector at a restaurant in London. . . . The crime invoked memories of the murder of Georgi Markov, 49, the prize-winning Bulgarian author and broadcaster, who was poisoned as he waited with commuters on Waterloo Bridge in 1978. Mr Markov felt a pain in his thigh and three days later he was dead: the murder weapon was an umbrella, partly developed by the KGB, which fired a pellet the size of a pinhead, containing the poison ricin.”