Detectives focus on hotel as site of Litvinenko poisoning

THE Millennium Hotel where murdered Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko met three men on the day he fell ill appeared today to have become the focus of the police investigation into his death.

Detectives have ruled out Piccadilly's Itsu sushi bar - where Mr Litvinenko also had a meeting that day - as a location for the poisoning, and they are concentrating instead on the hotel in Grosvenor Square, Mayfair, it has been claimed.

Traces of polonium-210 are reported to have been found in a fourth-floor room and in a cup from the hotel's Pine Bar.

All seven staff working at the bar on the day of Mr Litvinenko's meeting with the three other Russians have been contaminated with polonium-210, it was confirmed yesterday.

They have been told they face no short-term danger but a "very small" increased risk of cancer.

More than 200 other people known to have been at the bar on November 1 will now be offered tests to determine if they have been contaminated.