#chemical-weapons

#chemical-weapons

It came as a horrifying surprise early one morning in Hawaii: A bright flash lit up the dark sky over Honolulu, and on the horizon, a central cloud climbed higher and higher. "I thought at once it must be a nuclear explosion," a Diamond Head resident told the Honolulu Star-Bulletin in 1958. "I stepped out on the lanai [or porch] and saw what must have been the reflection of the fireball. It turned from light yellow to dark yellow and from orange to red."

The novichok attack on Salisbury in south-west England in March 2018 was an extraordinary event, sending shock waves across the world. The targeted man, the former Russian agent Sergei Skripal, recovered from an audacious assassination attempt, but an innocent British citizen, Dawn Sturgess, died. An inquiry was heard in Salisbury and London last year investigating the attack on the Skripals, the response of the emergency services and other public bodies, and how Sturgess was tragically caught up in an international incident.

Russian air defences have downed dozens of Ukrainian drones in widely dispersed parts of the country, including two near the country's second-largest city, Saint Petersburg.