Normalizing relations with Cuba

[Isgrimnur]

Havana Syndrome in Vietnam: Possible Russian role in attack on Americans, according to new evidence

U.S. officials in Vietnam were injured in a Havana Syndrome style attack ahead of Vice President Kamala Harris's 2021 trip to Hanoi. Now, new evidence suggests Russia may have been involved — and that it may have been the Vietnamese themselves who were given technology that could have caused the injuries.

At the time, the U.S. embassy in Hanoi announced that a possible "anomalous health incident," the federal government's term for so-called Havana Syndrome attacks, was slowing Harris's arrival in Vietnam. 60 Minutes has learned that 11 people reported being struck in separate incidents before Harris entered the country: two people who were officials at the American embassy in Hanoi, and nine people who were part of a Defense Department advance team preparing for Harris's visit.

While at least some of the injured U.S. personnel were medevaced out of the country, Harris was unharmed and continued her trip to Hanoi after a three-hour delay in Singapore.
...
As 60 Minutes investigated the Hanoi incident, a source suggested that the Vietnamese themselves had been given some kind of technology that may have caused the "Havana Syndrome" attack. According to the source, the Vietnamese may have been told to use the technology to listen in on the Americans ahead of Harris's trip — but they may not have known this the technology could harm the people they were using it on.

In his research, Grozev found a document that seems to indicate this theory may be correct.

[Smoove_B]

People with ‘Havana Syndrome’ Show No Brain Damage or Medical Illness

Now two medical studies that were conducted by the National Institutes of Health and released on Monday morning might finally have an answer. The researchers compared more than 80 of these affected individuals with similar healthy people. The results, detailed in the Journal of the American Medical Association, show no clinical signs or brain image indications to explain those widely varied symptoms. The JAMA findings follow the 2023 release of an intelligence community assessment that found that the injuries were not the result of foreign attacks. More likely, the assessment suggested, they were tied to previous injuries, stress, environmental concerns and “social factors” such as group psychology, in which illness symptoms reported by one individual in a community can spread serially among its members.

As an update, the NIH is cancelling all studies related to Havana syndrome:

The National Institutes of Health said Friday that it is stopping its research of what’s commonly known as Havana syndrome, a mysterious illness experienced by a number of spies, soldiers and diplomats who have reported sudden debilitating symptoms of unknown origin.

The NIH said it would end the work “out of an abundance of caution” after an internal investigation found that people had been coerced into to being part of the research.

The coercion, the agency specified, was not on its own part, but the NIH did not elaborate as to who may have forced the participation. However, it noted that voluntary consent is a fundamental pillar of the ethical conduct of research.

Some of the people who reported being sick previously claimed that the CIA made them join the research as a prerequisite for getting health care.

[GreenGoo]

"by a number of spies".

That's...interesting. Can we assume they suck at their jobs?

[hepcat]

Turns out it was just one lone kid in Havana with a slide whistle trying to drive everyone nuts.

[GreenGoo]

Succeeding.