POLONIUM POISONING SPREADS

Alexander Litvinenko has been dead since Nov. 23, but clues to his death by radiation continue to blossom.

The Litvinenko case took another bizarre turn on Monday, when German authorities hospitalized four more people with suspected polonium-210 poisoning. The sickened include the ex-wife of a former Russian security agent-turned-businessman, her boyfriend and her two children. RIA Novosti reports:

[T]he head of the investigation team in Hamburg 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 close associate of fugitive oligarch Boris Berezovsky, died in a London hospital after four days in a critical condition.

Dmitry Kovtun is also hospitalized with suspected polonium-210 poisoning. Kovtun met with Litvinenko at a London hotel on Nov. 1, the day Litvinenko was reportedly poisoned.

The Associated Press reports that Kovtun had a colleague at the meeting with Litvinenko. That third wheel, Andrei Lugovoi, was questioned on Monday by British investigators. The interview took place at a hospital in Moscow. Lugovoi is sick, too.