Spies, Polonium & iPods

The closure of the iPod-only popXpress store in the Picadilly district of London (UK) reported here last month was born from the stuff of spy novels. Indeed, the store not far from Apple’s Regent Street location has closed. But other popXpress branches on New Street and in West London are still open and doing business, says Jonathan Cole, chairman of parent company Computer Warehouse Group. So why did the one store close? According to a Cole, the late Russian security officer and dissident Alexander Litvinenko ate at the Itsu sushi bar next to the popXpress store in Nov. 2006, and was poisoned with the radioactive substance polonium-210. He died three weeks later amid accusations the Russian government ordered his murder. The attention drawn by this international incident prompted the sushi bar’s parent company, Pret a Manger, into expansion plans, which led to their making Computer Warehouse Group an offer “they could not refuse,” Cole said. Itsu aquired the store’s lease and now plans to open an “international meeting place” by expanding into the former popXpress space.