Polonium: Marie Curie's Stepchild Discovery, Now In Spotlight As
Lethal Weapon  A Palestinian woman walks past a mural depicting
late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, right, and late Hamas
spiritual leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, left. (AFP/Getty Images)
Polonium-210 is back in the spotlight. The radioisotope first
gained notoriety back in 2006, after the death of Alexander
Litvinenko, a one-time source for journalists who wanted to know
about the inner workings of Russia.  Litvinenko, as the BBC
tells it, went out to tea with two Russians at a hotel in London
in early November of 2006. He drank some tea and by the end of
the month he was dead, poisoned it turned out, by a tiny bit of
Polonium-210, which decays quickly causing catastrophic damage
if inside a human body.  Of course, we're talking about it
today, because scientists from Switzerland, France and Russia
just opened the grave of former Palestinian leader Yasser
Arafat, searching for signs of the deadly element.  Traces of
radioisotope were reportedl