World IN BRIEF : RUSSIA : Nazi Chemical Arms May Pollute Seas

Chemical weapons stockpiles that the Allied powers seized from Nazi Germany after World War II were dumped in the North and Baltic seas, and they now pose a major environmental hazard, a Moscow newspaper reported. Soviet authorities discharged about 38,500 tons of Nazi chemical weapons near Denmark’s Bornholm island and along the Latvian coast near Liepaja in 1946-47, the daily Trud reported. The United States and Britain dumped their share of the German arsenal in straits connecting the Baltic and North seas, the newspaper said. According to the report, experts said it takes about 50 years for such artillery shells and bombs to be corroded by water. They then could leak deadly toxic agents.