International
Researcher points to Russia as responsible for the “Havana syndrome”
A former U.S. military investigator believes that health incidents known as “Havana syndrome” have been the result of attacks by Russia, according to the results of an investigation issued by the 60 Minutes program.
The report comes out as a result of a joint investigation by the CBS television network, the Russian media outlet The Insider, and the German magazine Der Spiegel.
Retired Army Lieutenant Colonel Greg Edgreen, who handled the Pentagon’s investigation into what the United States officially describes as “anomalous health incidents,” said on the 60 Minutes program that the affected officials received an attack from Russia.
More than 200 American diplomats and relatives destined for different countries have suffered symptoms of the so-called “Havana syndrome,” which was first detected in the Cuban capital in 2016 and would manifest with dizziness, nausea, hearing problems or migraines.
A little more than a year ago, the United States intelligence concluded that it was “very unlikely” that a foreign adversary will provoke the so-called “Havana syndrome.”
Edgreen told CBS that, in the investigation, the criterion for validating the evidence was very strict because the government does not want to accept realities such as the possible omission in its duty to protect Americans.
“Unfortunately, I can’t give the details, due to the classification,” he added. “But I can tell you that from very early (in research) I began to focus on Moscow.”
Edgreen said that the affected officials have excelled in their performance and “there was constantly a Russian link.”
According to the former soldier, “they worked against Russia, focused on Russia, and they did it extremely well.”
The then-President Donald Trump (2017-2021) decided following the detection of these health incidents to suspend consular services in Havana in 2017 and minimize diplomatic staff on the island.
Havana has denied any responsibility and set up a commission of experts that found no scientific or criminal evidence that linked the symptoms to possible sonic attacks, microwaves or other deliberate action.
The Insider, for its part, published the testimony of Mar Polymeropoulos, identified as a former operations officer in the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), with assignments in places such as Baghdad and Kabul, and who suffered the symptoms related to “Havana syndrome” after a trip to Moscow in 2017.
The symptoms, according to this report, corresponded to the “Havana syndrome,” and for years Polymeropoulos had to struggle with his employer to access the medical care that his condition demanded.
60 Minutes indicated that, according to several of its informants last year, when President Joe Biden attended a North Atlantic Treaty Organization summit in Lithuania, a high-ranking official in the Pentagon became ill.
Edgreen pointed out that, in his opinion, “that indicates that there are no barriers to what Moscow will do, or who it will attack and that, if we do not face this head-on, the problem will get worse.”
A senior official of the United States Department of Defense who attended the NATO summit in Vilnius (Lithuania) in 2023 experienced strange symptoms similar to those of the so-called ‘Havana syndrome’, the Pentagon confirmed on Monday.
“I can confirm that a senior official of the Department of Defense experienced symptoms similar to those reported in other instances,” Sabrina Singh, one of the Pentagon’s spokespersons, said on Monday during a press conference.
The official, whose identity was not revealed, was not part of the official delegation of the Secretary of Defense, Lloyd Austin, at the NATO summit in Vilnius, but attended “separately, meetings that were part of the summit,” the spokeswoman explained.
Singh did not specify what type of symptoms the affected person suffered, citing medical privacy.
International
China shows at the UN its “condemnation” of Israel for the “violation of Iran’s sovereignty”
The Chinese ambassador to the United Nations, Fu Cong, showed the “condemnation” of his country against the “violation of the sovereignty, security and territorial integrity of Iran” after the air attack launched by Israel against multiple targets in that country, the official newspaper Diario del Pueblo reports this Saturday.
That media echoes Fu’s speech to the UN Security Council on Friday, in which he demanded that Israel “immediately stop all its military actions.”
“China (…) opposes the expansion of conflicts, and is deeply concerned about the serious consequences that may arise from Israel’s actions. The intensification of regional tensions does not interest any of the parties involved,” said the Chinese emissary.
Beijing called on Tel Aviv and Tehran to “resolve their disputes through political and diplomatic means, and maintain peace and stability at the regional level jointly.”
In Fu’s view, the Israeli attack will have a “negative impact” on the negotiations on Iran’s nuclear program: “China has always been committed to the peaceful resolution of the Iranian nuclear issue through dialogue and consultations, and opposes the use of force, illegal unilateral sanctions and armed attacks on peaceful nuclear facilities.”
This Friday, China had already expressed its willingness to “play a constructive role” to curb the escalation of tensions and facilitate conciliation, in line with its traditional position of active neutrality in the region’s conflicts.
The Israeli attack, which according to Tehran caused dozens of deaths, including senior military commanders and at least six nuclear scientists, targeted key facilities such as the uranium enrichment plant in Natanz. Numerous civilian casualties were also reported.
Israel justified the offensive by claiming that the Iranian regime is secretly developing a program to manufacture nuclear weapons.
For his part, Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, promised a “severe response” and assured that the attack would reveal the “evil nature” of Israel.
UN Secretary-General António Guterres also expressed concern about the bombing, at a time when Iran and the US The United States is holding talks about the Iranian nuclear program.
International
Donald Trump’s government pauses its program of indiscriminate raides against migrants
The government of US President Donald Trump has decided to pause its campaign of discretionary roundings against migrants in certain areas due to its apparent concern about the growing unpopularity of these methods, according to The New York Times newspaper on Friday.
According to an email to which the newspaper has had access and the confirmation of US officials, the Executive has ordered the Immigration and Customs Control Service (ICE) to pause the beatings that affect the agricultural industry and the hospitality industry.
The spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security, Tricia McLaughlin, confirmed in a statement that “the president’s instructions” will be obeyed and the portfolio will also continue to “work to get the worst illegal foreign criminals out of the streets of the United States.”
The decision points out that this campaign of discretionary arrests to try to deport large-scale immigrants is harming industries and electoral constituencies whose support Trump wants to retain for next year’s legislative elections.
The new instructions were transmitted to ICE in an email sent last Thursday asking that “all investigations/law enforcement operations be suspended in work centers in the agricultural sector (including aquaculture and meat packing plants), restaurants and hotels.”
These new guidelines come in turn after more than a week of intense protests in Los Angeles against this immigration policy and that Trump himself admitted that the raids seem to be affecting the agricultural sector, which in states like California, where beatings have intensified, depend almost exclusively on immigrant labor.
Since his return to the White House in January, Trump has implemented an aggressive policy of hard hand against immigration and as a sample of his Cabinet officials recently held a meeting with the ICE leadership to order them to carry out 3,000 arrests a day, a mandate that seems to be behind the intensification of the raids.
International
Trump says he knew “everything” about the attack on Iran and assures that the dialogue remains open
US President Donald Trump said on Friday that Washington “known everything” about the Israeli attack on Iran and that the dialogue on Tehran’s nuclear program “is not dead.”
“We knew everything and I tried to avoid Iran all this humiliation and death. I tried hard to avoid it because I would have loved to see an agreement,” Trump said in an interview with Reuters.
The US president insisted on what he wrote today about the attack on social networks, where he said he gave an ultimatum of 60 days to Tehran to reach an agreement.
“We knew practically everything. We knew enough to give Iran 60 days to reach an agreement and today it is already 61 days,” he explained in the interview, in which he said he did not know what the current situation of the Iranian nuclear program is after the attack launched by Israel, which also ended the lives of key military leaders of the Persian country.
Regarding the dialogue between the US and Iran about the nuclear program of the ayatollahs, Trump assured that “he is not dead”, that “an agreement is still possible” and also recalled that on Sunday a sixth round of dialogue is scheduled in Muscat (Oman) that they consider is now in the air.
“We have a meeting with them on Sunday. Now, I’m not sure if that meeting will take place, but we have a meeting with them on Sunday,” he said.
The United States and Iran have held five rounds of talks on the Iranian nuclear program since April, with Washington demanding that Tehran discard its capabilities both to manufacture an atomic bomb and to enrich uranium, something that the ayatollahs considered unacceptable.
Both Israel and Trump himself had warned of possible preventive attacks on the Persian country due to this refusal by Iran.
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