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MOSCOW-A Russian human rights lawyer whose clients have included leading Kremlin opponents said on Tuesday she had found poisonous mercury in her car in France and believed it may have been a warning to her. Karina Moskalenko told Russia's Ekho Moskvy radio station the incident had prevented her from traveling to Moscow to take part in the trial of three suspected accomplices in the 2006 murder of journalist and Kremlin critic Anna Politkovskaya."People do not put mercury in your car to improve your health," Moskalenko, who spends much of her time in the French city of Strasbourg, told the radio station. "I am very concerned because there were children in that car."Mercury is an element that occurs naturally but exposure to high levels can damage the brain, heart, kidneys, lungs, immune and nervous systems.A high level of exposure in metallic form-most commonly by breathing in vapor-can lead to death, said the U.S. government's Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry."I think it may have been a demonstration because there was lots of it (mercury.) How could you not notice it?" She did not say who she thought might have been responsible.Strasbourg assistant prosecutor Claude Palpacuer said an investigation had been opened.He said Moskalenko and members of her family had been invited to undergo a medical examination to check if they had been contaminated."The circumstances as well as her background are such that she is concerned," he told Reuters.As in the days of Noah...
