Tag Archives: Havana

US

Migration talks mark progress in tense U.S.-Cuba relations

Leave a comment

HAVANA (AP) — Following a series of talks on migration with the Biden administration, Cuba said Tuesday that it will receive deportation flights from the United States that had been stalled in the pandemic — and said it was open to continuing dialogue with Washington.

The agreement comes amid one of the largest migrations from Cuba to the U.S. in decades.

In October, Cubans replaced Venezuelans as the second most numerous nationality after Mexicans arriving at the border. U.S. authorities stopped Cubans 28,848 times, up 10% from the previous month, U.S. Customs and Border Protection data shows.

That exodus is fueled by deepening and compounding crises in the Caribbean nation, which suffers from shortages of basic goods and lengthy power outages.

The two governments have had a tense relationship for 60 years — and that grew more hostile when former President Donald Trump tightened American sanctions on the island.

But migration appears to have become a meeting point for Cuba and the Biden administration, which held talks in Havana for the second time in the span of a week on Tuesday.

“It was a useful meeting and it contributed to the mutual objective, committed to achieving a safe, regular and ordered migration,” said Cuba’s Deputy Foreign Affairs Minister Carlos Cossío in a news conference Tuesday.

Cossío added there was “an obvious need” for two countries so geographically close to maintain a dialogue despite their differences.

Leading the U.S. delegation was Emily Mendrala, deputy assistant secretary for Western Hemisphere affairs.

The State Department also expressed optimism about cooperation in a brief release Tuesday afternoon, acknowledging the meeting.

“Engaging in these talks underscores our commitment to pursuing constructive discussions with the government of Cuba where appropriate to advance U.S. interests,” the statement said.

The talks follow a number of friendly — or at least non-hostile — exchanges between the two governments in recent months.

The U.S. government recently announced it would resume visa and consular services on the island in January. Those had been stalled after a series of health incidents involving U.S. diplomats starting in 2017.

When Hurricane Ian ravaged the island in September, the Biden administration announced it would provide $2 million for recovery efforts.

In August, the administration also provided 43 fire suits to Cuba following the blaze in an oil storage facility.

Read original article here

World

Oil facility fire jeopardizes Cuba’s frail electric system

Leave a comment

HAVANA (AP) — A deadly fire that began at a large oil storage facility in western Cuba spread on Monday, threatening to plunge the island into a deeper energy crisis as it forced officials to shut down a key thermoelectric plant.

Flames around dawn enveloped a third tank that firefighters had tried to cool as they struggle to fight the massive blaze in the western province of Matanza that began just days after the government announced scheduled blackouts for the capital of Havana.

“I am very worried about the children, the elderly, the economy of Matanzas and the country,” said Dailyn de la Caridad, a 28-year-old resident. “We don’t know how this is going to end.”

At least one person has died and 125 are injured, with another 14 reported missing ever since lighting struck one of the facility’s eight tanks on Friday night. A second tank caught fire on Saturday, triggering several explosions at the facility, which plays a key part in Cuba’s electric system.

“The risk we had announced happened, and the blaze of the second tank compromised the third one,” said Matanzas Gov. Mario Sabines.

By late Monday, four tanks were compromised, Lt. Col. Chief Alexander Ávalos of Cuba’s fire department told Televisión Cubana.

“The fire has taken on a greater magnitude,” he said.

Firefighters had sprayed water on the remaining tanks over the weekend to cool them but failed to stop the fire from spreading. On Monday afternoon, the government’s power company announced that the fire had forced the shut down a thermoelectric plant that provides power to the island’s western region after it ran out of water, according to the official Cubadebate website. No further details were immediately available.

The governments of Mexico and Venezuela have sent special teams to help extinguish the fire, with water cannons, planes and helicopters fighting the fire from several directions as military constructions specialists erected barriers to contain oil spills.

Local officials warned residents to use face masks or stay indoors given the billowing smoke enveloping the region that can be seen from the capital of Havana, located more than 65 miles (100 kilometers) away. Officials have warned that the cloud contains sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide, carbon monoxide and other poisonous substances.

The majority of those injured were treated for burns and smoke inhalation, and five of them remain in critical condition. A total of 24 remain hospitalized. Over the weekend, authorities found the body of one firefighter as relatives of those still missing gathered at a hotel to await news about their loved ones.

Sabines and Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel said it was impossible to search for the missing firefighters given the roiling temperatures.

The blaze at the Matanzas Supertanker Base in Matanzas city prompted officials to evacuate more than 4,900 people, most of them from the nearby Dubrocq neighborhood. The facility’s eight huge tanks hold oil used to generate electricity, although it wasn’t clear how much fuel has been lost as a result of the flames. The first tank that caught fire was at 50% capacity and contained nearly 883,000 cubic feet (25,000 cubic meters) of fuel. The second tank was full.

Jorge Piñon, director of the Latin America and Caribbean Energy Program at the University of Texas, said officials should inspect the walls of tanks that aren’t on fire to ensure they weren’t affected. He also warned that the government must be careful before bringing the system back online once the fire is extinguished.

“If not, there’ll be another catastrophe,” he said. “Unfortunately, this is going to take time.”

Piñon noted that the facility receives Cuban crude oil — operating an oil pipeline that crosses the center of the country — to be transferred via small tankers to the thermoelectric plants that produce electricity. It is also the unloading and transshipment center for imported crude oil, fuel oil and diesel, with Cuba producing only half of the fuel required to keep its economy afloat.

The blaze comes as Cuba struggles through a deep economic crisis and faces frequent power outages amid a sweltering summer, issues that helped unleashed unprecedented antigovernment protests last year. Officials have not provided a preliminary estimate of damages.

___

Associated Press videographer Osvaldo Angulo in Matanzas, Cuba, contributed.

___

Andrea Rodríguez on Twitter: www.twitter.com/ARodriguezAP



Read original article here

World

U.S. to compensate some ‘Havana syndrome’ victims with six-figure payments

Leave a comment

Placeholder while article actions load

The Biden administration plans to pay some diplomats and intelligence officers roughly $100,000 to $200,000 each to compensate for the mysterious health problems known as “Havana syndrome,” according to congressional aides and a former official familiar with the matter.

The payment plan is the culmination of a multiyear push by Congress, which passed a law last fall mandating that the State Department and CIA compensate current and former officials suffering from what the government calls Anomalous Health Incidents, or AHIs.

Despite six years of investigations, the United States still lacks certainty about what is causing the symptoms, which include headaches, vision problems, dizziness and brain fog, among other ailments. The health problems were first reported among U.S. diplomats and intelligence officers serving in Cuba’s capital but have since been reported on every continent except Antarctica.

The six-figure payments will go to those determined to have suffered the most significant setbacks, such as job loss or career derailment, said people briefed on the plan who like others spoke on the condition of anonymity because the plan has not been approved for release.

U.S. officials cautioned that the range of compensation is not yet final and could change as the State Department’s regulation goes through the final stages of a review process, which is coordinated by the Office of Management and Budget.

The CIA determined this winter that a foreign country is probably not behind a “worldwide campaign harming U.S. personnel with a weapon or mechanism” — an assessment that raised doubts about years of speculation that the health issues were the result of a mysterious directed energy weapon wielded by Russian or Chinese agents.

Government investigators have reviewed more than 1,000 cases, with the majority being attributed to a preexisting medical condition or environmental or other factors. Dozens of other reported cases remain unexplained.

As word of the compensation packages has trickled out to the federal workforce, some officials have remarked that the packages were generous while others have said the compensation range seems insufficient, given the loss of future and past income for those who suffered severe neurological damage and can no longer work.

The Biden administration has not yet released the criteria for how it will determine eligibility for compensation, but it is expected to be made public shortly. Current and former officials as well as their family members will be eligible to make claims, said those briefed on the plan.

Under the Havana Act, Congress gave the secretary of state and CIA director the authority to determine eligibility, which has already caused concerns about whether diplomats and intelligence officers will be treated the same.

“It is crucial that CIA and State implement the Havana Act in an identical fashion. To include using the exact same criteria who qualifies for compensation. There cannot be any daylight between agencies, which previously was an unfortunate hallmark in how the USG responded to the AHIs,” said Marc Polymeropoulos, a former senior CIA officer. He retired in 2019 while suffering symptoms, including painful headaches, after a trip to Moscow in 2017, when he was helping run clandestine operations in Russia.

Devising a compensation plan has been particularly difficult for U.S. government officials, given the lack of hard evidence for what’s causing the ailments and the inability to establish a clear diagnosis for the broad range of symptoms that while sometimes debilitating can also be common.

Officials with the State Department and CIA said Thursday that the Havana Act authorized the agencies to provide payments to personnel for “qualifying injuries to the brain.”

The two agencies have been working in partnership with the National Security Council on how the payment system will work and will have more information on it soon, the CIA official said.

The official added that the legislation provides the CIA and other agencies “the authority to make payments to employees, eligible family members, and other individuals affiliated with the CIA.”

“As Director Burns has emphasized, nothing is more important to him and CIA leaders than taking care of our people,” the official said, referencing CIA Director William J. Burns.

Officials from the National Institutes of Health, the Pentagon and other agencies have jointly developed a new, two-hour medical exam to screen potential new cases that can be administered by doctors or other practitioners to U.S. personnel assigned to overseas missions.

The triage process includes visual, vestibular and blood testing but not brain imaging, a fact that reflects constantly changing and sometimes-disputed science on the injuries. Even though some doctors previously identified “perceptible changes” in the brain as a result of apparent attacks, State Department physicians say they now believe the scans have no scientific validity.

Officials are also seeking to better educate medical staffers at missions worldwide, instructing them to be receptive to potential victims’ experiences — and they stress that skepticism is no longer the norm.

In January, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the State Department, like the CIA, was focused on providing medical care to those needing it, and would continue to seek a cause behind the health issues.

“We are going to continue to bring all of our resources to bear in learning more about these incidents, and there will be additional reports to follow. We will leave no stone unturned,” he wrote.

Read original article here

US

Havana hotel death toll at 30 as dogs search for survivors

Leave a comment

HAVANA (AP) — Search crews with dogs on Sunday hunted through the ruins of a luxury hotel in Cuba’s capital for survivors of a devastating explosion while officials raised the number of known dead to 30.

The Hotel Saratoga, a five-star 96-room hotel in Old Havana, was preparing to reopen after being closed for two years when an apparent gas leak ignited, blowing the outer walls into the busy, midmorning streets just a block from the country’s Capitol building on Friday.

Cuban officials on Sunday raised the known death toll to 30 from 27 even as crews continued to search for victims buried beneath piles of shattered concrete. Several nearby structures also were damaged, including the historic Marti Theater and the Calvary Baptist Church, headquarters for the denomination in western Cuba.

The church said on its Facebook page that the building suffered “significant structural damage, with several collapsed or cracked walls and columns (and) the ceiling partially collapsed,” though no church workers were hurt.

The Health Ministry said 84 people had been injured in Friday’s explosion. The dead included four minors, a pregnant woman and a Spanish tourist, whose companion was seriously injured.

The ministry on Sunday also released the names of those who died. Some 24 people remained hospitalized.

On Saturday, a representative of Grupo de Turismo Gaviota SA, which owns the hotel, said 13 of its workers remained missing. Gov. Reinaldo García Zapata said Saturday evening that 19 families had reported loved ones missing and that rescue efforts would continue.

Authorities said the cause of the explosion was still under investigation, but believed it to have been caused by a gas leak. A large crane hoisted a charred gas tanker out of the rubble Saturday.

Burials for victims have begun, according to municipal authorities. But some were still waiting for news of missing friends and relatives.

“We are hoping that something will be known about my cousin’s mother,” Angela Acosta told The Associated Press near the site of the explosion. Her relative, María de la Concepción Alard, lived in an apartment adjacent to the hotel with a black Labrador, which was rescued along with another dog Sunday.

Crews have worked to clean up streets around the hotel and by late Saturday, substantial pedestrian traffic had resumed.

“There are mothers who are without their children today,” Matha Verde, a manicurist who was walking near the Saratoga, said Sunday, when Mother’s Day was celebrated in Cuba. She said she tells women who lost their sons or daughters in the explosion that they “have to keep going.”

The explosion added to the woes of a crucial tourism industry that had been stifled by the coronavirus pandemic as well as tightened sanctions imposed by former U.S. President Donald Trump and kept in place the Biden administration. Those limited visits by U.S. tourists to the islands and restricted remittances from Cubans in the U.S. to their families in Cuba.

Tourism had started to revive somewhat early this year, but the war in Ukraine deflated a boom of Russian visitors, who accounted for almost a third of the tourists arriving in Cuba last year.

The Saratoga, which had been closed through the pandemic, was one of the elite lodgings in Havana, often hosting visiting VIPs and celebrities.

Some attention in Cuba began to shift to an official visit by Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who arrived Saturday night at the end of a five-country tour that began in Central America.

López Obrador met Sunday with Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel, who awarded him the Order of Jose Marti “for his great achievements for humanity.” It is the most important award the country gives to a foreigner.

Díaz-Canel’s office stated in a tweet that López Obrador said he would insist to U.S. President Joe Biden that Cuba not be excluded from the Summit of the Americas it will host in Los Angeles in June.

López Obrador said the objectives of the trip included signing agreements on trade, health, education and cooperation with the island, while he ratified his foreign policy stance.

“We are not in favor of hegemonies,” he said. “Let no one exclude anyone because we are independent countries, we are sovereign countries, and no one can place themselves above the rights of peoples and nations.”

Díaz-Canel visited Mexico during its independence day celebrations last year. López Obrador has recently spoken out against the apparent U.S. government intention of to exclude Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua from the upcoming summit.

Read original article here

US

Desperate search for survivors in Cuba hotel blast; 26 dead

Leave a comment

HAVANA (AP) — Relatives of the missing in Cuba’s capital desperately searched Saturday for victims of an explosion at one of Havana’s most luxurious hotels that killed at least 26 people. They checked the morgue, hospitals and if unsuccessful, they returned to the partially collapsed Hotel Saratoga, where rescuers used dogs to hunt for survivors.

A natural gas leak was the apparent cause of Friday’s blast at the 96-room hotel. The 19th-century structure in the Old Havana neighborhood did not have any guests at the time because it was undergoing renovations ahead of a planned Tuesday reopening after being closed.

Havana city officials raised the death toll to 26 on Saturday, according to the official Cubadebate news site. The dead included four children and a pregnant woman. Spain’s President Pedro Sánchez said via Twitter that a Spanish tourist was among the dead and that another Spaniard was seriously injured.

Cuban authorities confirmed the tourist’s death and said her partner was injured. They were not staying at the hotel. Tourism Minister Dalila González said a Cuban-American tourist was also injured.

Representatives of Grupo de Turismo Gaviota SA, which owns the hotel, said during a news conference Saturday that 51 workers had been inside the hotel at the time, as well as two people working on renovations. Of those, 11 were killed, 13 remained missing and six were hospitalized.

González said the cause of the blast was still under investigation, but a large crane hoisted a charred gas tanker from the hotel’s rubble early Saturday.

Search and rescue teams worked through the night and into Saturday, using ladders to descend through the rubble and twisted metal into the hotel’s basement as heavy machinery gingerly moved away piles of the building’s façade to allow access. Above, chunks of drywall dangled from wires, desks sat seemingly undisturbed inches from the void where the front of the building cleaved away.

At least one survivor was found early Saturday in the shattered ruins, and rescuers using search dogs clambered over huge chunks of concrete looking for more. Relatives of missing people remained at the site while others gathered at hospitals where the injured were being treated.

A desperate Yatmara Cobas stood outside the perimeter waiting for word of her daughter, 27-year-old housekeeper Shaidis Cobas.

“My daughter is in the Saratoga; she’s been there since 8 a.m. (Friday), and at this time I don’t know anything about her,” Cobas said. “She’s not at the morgue, she’s not in the hospital.” The mother said she had gone everywhere seeking answers from authorities, but coming up empty.

“I’m tired of the lies,” she said.

Lt. Col. Enrique Peña briefed Comandante Ramiro Valdés, who fought alongside Fidel Castro, on the search efforts at the site Saturday morning.

Peña said the presence of people had been detected on the first floor and in the basement and four teams of search dogs and handlers were working. He did not know if the victims were alive or dead.

“I don’t want to move from here,” Cristina Avellar told The Associated Press near the hotel.

Avellar was waiting for news of Odalys Barrera, a 57-year-old cashier who has worked at the hotel for five years. She is the godmother of Barrera’s daughters and considers her like a sister.

Neighbors were still in shock a day after the explosion.

“I thought it was a bomb,” said Guillermo Madan, a 73-year-old retiree, who lives just meters from the building, but was not injured. The three-decade resident of the neighborhood was cooking and watching television when he heard the blast. “My room moved from here to there. My neighbor’s window broke, the plates, everything.”

Katerine Marrero, 31, was shopping at the time. “I left the store, I felt the explosion,” she said. “Everyone started to run.”

Although no tourists were reported injured, the explosion is another blow to the country’s crucial tourism industry.

Even before the coronavirus pandemic kept tourists away from Cuba, the country was struggling with tightened sanctions imposed by former U.S. President Donald Trump and kept in place the Biden administration. Those limited visits by U.S. tourists to the islands and restricted remittances from Cubans in the U.S. to their families in Cuba.

Tourism had started to revive somewhat early this year, but the war in Ukraine deflated a boom of Russian visitors, who accounted for almost a third of the tourists arriving in Cuba last year.

Dr. Julio Guerra Izquierdo, chief of hospital services at the Ministry of Health, said at least 74 people had been injured. Among them were 14 children, according to a tweet from the office of President Miguel Díaz-Canel.

A 300-student school next to the hotel was evacuated. Havana Gov. Reinaldo García Zapata said five of the students suffered minor injuries.

The emblematic hotel had a stunning view of Cuba’s center, including the domed Capitol building about 110 yards (100 meters) away. The Capitol suffered broken glass and damaged masonry from the explosion.

The hotel was renovated in 2005 as part of the Cuban government’s revival of Old Havana and is owned by the Cuban military’s tourism business arm, Grupo de Turismo Gaviota SA. The company said it was investigating the cause of the blast and did not respond to an email from the AP seeking more details about the hotel and the renovation it was undergoing.

In the past, the Hotel Saratoga has been used by visiting VIPs and political figures, including high-ranking U.S. government delegations. Beyoncé and Jay-Z stayed there in 2013.

García Zapata said structures adjacent to the hotel were being evaluated, including two badly damaged apartment buildings. Díaz-Canel said families in affected buildings had been transferred to safer locations.

Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador was scheduled to arrive in Havana for a visit late Saturday and Mexican Foreign Relations Secretary Marcelo Ebrard said the visit would still take place.

Read original article here

World

Havana explosion damages Hotel Saratoga; at least nine dead

Leave a comment

Placeholder while article actions load

An explosion at a historic five-star hotel in Old Havana on Friday morning killed at least nine people and destroyed much of the building, Cuban officials said.

Thirteen people were missing and 40 people injured after the blast rocked the Hotel Saratoga, across from the Cuban Capitol, around 11 a.m. Firefighters and a rescue team continued to search the rubble for victims, the Cuban presidency tweeted.

The cause of the explosion was unclear, officials said, but preliminary investigation pointed to a gas leak.

“It wasn’t a bomb or an attack,” President Miguel Díaz-Canel said. “It’s an unfortunate accident.”

The hotel was preparing to reopen on Tuesday after closing two years ago during the coronavirus pandemic, it said in an April 28 Facebook post, the most recent on its page. Havana Gov. Reinaldo García Zapata said the hotel was undergoing repairs and there were no tourists inside, according to the Communist Party newspaper Granma.

Cubans who joined July protests now face stiff sentences

Videos and images on social media showed the facade of the hotel blasted away, smoke filling the air and crowds gathering in the street outside. A photo published by the news agency Reuters showed at least one body in the street outside the hotel covered with a sheet.

Witnesses outside the historic five-star Hotel Saratoga in Havana filmed the aftermath of the explosion on May 8 that left at least nine people dead. (Video: The Washington Post)

David Duque, a 30-year-old travel blogger, was about to start a photo shoot about five blocks from the Hotel Saratoga when he felt the city rumble and heard the roaring thunder of the blast.

“We thought it was a bomb or an attack,” Duque said. “I was so nervous that my legs were shaking. I didn’t know what to do. … In Cuba, we’ve never felt something like this.”

He rushed to the hotel and found a scene of chaos and confusion. He saw the bloodied faces of elderly people who had been passing by the hotel or on nearby buses at the time of the blast. He saw uniformed hotel workers standing on what was left of the upper floors of the building and screaming for help. He saw children running and others helping pull people out of the rubble.

“I felt paralyzed,” he said. “We were scared to get too close. We didn’t know what could happen next.”

A tweet from the presidency showed an injured child in a hospital bed, a patch over one eye, as Díaz-Canel visited with patients. A school is located in front of the hotel. All of its students were evacuated safely, Cuban officials said.

The Saratoga, which was built in the 1930s and renovated in 2005, has 96 rooms, two bars, two restaurants, a spa, and a rooftop pool with panoramic view of the Cuban capital, according to its website. Guests have reportedly included Beyoncé and Madonna.

Cuba is trying to revive the key tourism sector, which has been crippled by the pandemic and travel restrictions imposed by the Trump administration and maintained by the Biden administration.

As tourism plummeted, Russians helped to fill the gap, making up 40 percent of arrivals in Cuba last year, according to government figures cited by Reuters. But as Russia invaded Ukraine, thousands of Russians in Cuba rushed to find flights home.

As sanctions bite in Cuba, the U.S. — once a driver of hope — is now a source of pain

Before Friday’s blast, Cuban leaders had been attending an annual tourism fair this week in the beach town of Varadero.

Cuba’s economy has struggled to recover from the pandemic, U.S. sanctions and the collapse of Cuba’s once oil-rich patron, Venezuela. The failing economy, food shortages and blackouts last year prompted Cubans to take to the streets in the country’s largest protests in decades.

Duque, the travel blogger, lives outside of Havana but goes into the city almost every day to take photos promoting its architecture. By Friday afternoon, he was still shaken by the scene at the hotel, which he described as an iconic piece of Cuban heritage.

He hoped the hotel wouldn’t need to be demolished. “It would be a great loss,” he said.

Read original article here

World

Hotel Saratoga: At least nine dead after a massive explosion destroyed a hotel in Havana, Cuba

Leave a comment

A gas leak is thought to be the cause of the explosion at Hotel Saratoga, according to the Cuban Presidential Office, who said that more details would follow.

“Everything indicates that the explosion was caused by an accident,” the Cuban Presidential Office said in a tweet, adding that at least 30 people have been hospitalized after Friday’s blast.

Witnesses described a “massive blast,” which appeared to destroy buses and cars outside the hotel in the center of the city.

Images from the scene showed the blown-out facade of at least three floors of the ornate green-and-white stuccoed building. Plumes of dust and smoke could be seen rising around debris on the ground.

Cuban President President Miguel Diaz-Canel visited the site of the explosion on Friday and Hermanos Ameijeras hospital, where a number of victims were sent to, according to images shared by the Presidential Office on Twitter.

He said the explosion was “not a bomb nor an attack, it’s a regrettable accident,” after returning to the site of the blast, according to the Cuban Presidential Office.

Mexico’s foreign minister tweeted his solidarity with explosion’s victims. “Our solidarity to the victims and those affected as well as the people of that dear fraternal nation,” Marcelo Ebrard said in a tweet.

The hotel, which was built in the 1930s and has 96 rooms, was reopened in 2005 after refurbishment, according to its website.

This is a developing story and will be updated.

Read original article here

US

Havana Syndrome could be caused by pulsed energy devices – US expert report | US news

Leave a comment

A US intelligence report by a panel of expert scientists has named pulsed electromagnetic energy and ultrasound as plausible causes for the mystery Havana Syndrome symptoms suffered by US diplomats and spies in recent years.

The report found that a group of cases could not be explained by health or environmental factors or by psychosomatic illness. It also said that devices exist with “modest energy requirements” which were concealable and could produce the observed symptoms and be effective over hundreds of meters or through walls.

The panel, established last year by the director of national security, Avril Haines, and the CIA director, William Burns, said the investigation was not tasked to identify a culprit, but in a statement accompanying the report, Haines and Burns said it would help sharpen the search for the origins of the mysterious ailments.

“We will stay at it, with continued rigor, for however long it takes,” they said.

In a redacted executive summary of its report published on Wednesday, the panel of experts said that the signs and symptoms of the syndrome were “diverse and may be caused by multiple mechanisms” but that a subset of them “cannot be easily explained by known environmental or medical conditions”.

The expert panel report clashed in tone to a briefing given by the CIA last month which said that in the majority of cases, there was no sign of a malignant campaign by a foreign power. That briefing, possibly aimed at limiting the further spread of psychosocial illness among US officials, did caution that in some two dozen cases the symptoms could not be easily explained.

The latest panel narrowed its review of the hundreds of reported cases by defining four “core characteristics”: the sudden onset of sound or pressure in one ear or one side of the head; near simultaneous symptoms like vertigo, loss of balance and ear pain; a “strong sense of locality or directionality” – the feeling of being assailed from a particular direction; and the absence of known environmental or medical conditions that might otherwise explain the symptoms.

The summary did not go into details of cases, but the description of symptoms matched the earliest cases in 2016 reported among US and Canadian diplomats stationed in Havana, from which the syndrome got its name.

The expert panel found “the combination of the four core characteristics is distinctly unusual and unreported elsewhere in the medical literature, and so far have not been associated with a specific neurological abnormality.”

When looking at probable causes, the panel – which includes experts on medicine and engineering – pointed towards some form of external energy source.

The report found that: “Pulsed electromagnetic energy, particularly in the radio frequency range, plausibly explains the core characteristics, although information gaps exist.”

It added that “sources exist that could generate the required stimulus, are concealable, and have moderate power requirements.”

Using what the report described as “nonstandard antennas and techniques”, electromagnetic pulsed energy could be directed at a target “through air for tens to hundreds of meters, and with some loss, through most building materials”.

Pulsed electromagnetic energy had been “credibly demonstrated” to cause the observed symptoms, the panel found, and that “persons accidentally exposed to radio frequency signals described sensations similar to the core characteristics”.

However, the report said there was a “dearth of research” on the effects of such pulsed electromagnetic energy on humans.

Engineers who had been working on a potential weapon for the US marines two decades ago, known as Medusa, said that one of the reasons it was discontinued was that it was ethically impossible to conduct human tests on the prototype.

A large part of the section on pulsed electromagnetic energy was redacted in the published expert panel report.

The executive summary said that ultrasound energy was also a plausible explanation for the symptoms but only in situations where the source was close to the target.

“The required energy can be generated by ultrasonic arrays that are portable, and produce a tight beam,” it found, but noted that “ultrasound propagates poorly through air and building materials”.

The report said that psychosocial factors could not explain the cases exhibiting the four core characteristics of Havana Syndrome but could have made them worse. Such factors could also explain other incidents which “could be due to hypervigilance and normal human reactions to stress and ambiguity, particularly among a workforce attuned to its surroundings and trained to think about security”.

A victims group issued a statement on Wednesday arguing the new report “reinforces the need for the intelligence community and the broader US government to redouble their efforts to fully understand the causes of … Havana Syndrome”.

Mark Zaid, a Washington attorney representing victims from multiple federal agencies, said: “These piecemeal agency reviews at times reveal inconsistent and even contradictory results that undermine the effort to resolve this controversy.”

Read original article here

US

Most ‘Havana Syndrome’ Cases Unlikely Caused by Foreign Power, C.I.A. Says

Leave a comment

The agency has never accused Russia or another power of being responsible, but some officials, particularly in the Pentagon, said they believed there was evidence of the involvement of Moscow’s spy agencies, and many victims concurred. When Mr. Burns traveled to Moscow in December to warn Russia against invading Ukraine, he raised the issue of the health incidents and said if Russia was found responsible, there would be consequences.

Marc Polymeropoulos, a former C.I.A. officer who suffered Havana syndrome symptoms on a trip to Moscow in 2017, said it was critical to continue to investigate the cases that remain unexplained. Praising Mr. Burns’s efforts to improve care for injured officers, he added that the C.I.A. should not revert to a culture where victims were denigrated and dismissed.

“It took us 10 years to find Osama bin Laden,” Mr. Polymeropoulos said. “I would just urge patience and continued investigation by the intelligence community and the Department of Defense.”

Another victim, who asked that his name not be used because of his work for the agency, said the government had erred by pushing for more people to report ill health or unexplained symptoms. That brought in thousands of extraneous cases, the victim said, making it harder for the agency’s analysts to focus on the real cases.

The government official briefed on the findings said the effort to bring in large numbers of reports was not a mistake because it allowed the United States to speed up treatment for people suffering from symptoms. The effort also helped provide needed treatment to people with previously undiagnosed conditions, officials said.

C.I.A. officials said there was agreement within the intelligence community about the finding that the majority of Havana syndrome incidents were not the work of an adversarial power conducting a sustained campaign around the globe. Still, confidence in that assessment ranged from low to high across various intelligence agencies.

In addition to the C.I.A., an expert panel has been looking at classified information about the incidents. The panel, which has provided its findings to the government but is still finishing its report, explored technologies that could result, at least theoretically, in the symptoms being reported.

Read original article here

World

Fernando González, AP head of Caribbean news, dies in Cuba

Leave a comment

MEXICO CITY (AP) — Fernando González, who spent decades covering and directing major stories for The Associated Press across Latin America, from papal visits to border skirmishes, hurricanes and hostage standoffs, has died in Havana.

González, 60, died at his home early Monday after suffering a heart attack, Cuba’s forensic medicine director said.

Gregarious and seemingly inexhaustible, González, known for his trademark long gray ponytail, was especially strong and compassionate in crisis situations, both covering the news and tirelessly organizing help when colleagues were ill or injured.

“Fernando represented the best of AP. He was a terrific journalist and loved the big stories,” said AP Executive Editor Julie Pace. “He was also a warm and caring colleague, someone whose impact was felt across all corners of the organization. He will be dearly missed.”

Born in Uruguay, González graduated from high school in Santiago, Chile, and then attended the University of Miami. He worked for a local radio station before eventually moving into news production, often freelancing for The Associated Press in Latin America.

González joined the AP full time in 2002 as senior producer for television news in Havana. He moved to Washington, D.C., in 2014 as regional video editor for Latin America and the Caribbean and then to Mexico City as the AP’s deputy news director for the region in 2016. González returned to Cuba in 2020 as news director for the Caribbean and Andes.

Among the major stories he covered were the 1996 hostage siege at the Japanese ambassador’s residence in Peru, Hurricane Mitch’s devastating impact on Central America in 1998, and the 2004 coup that overthrew Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

In 2007 González reported from Antarctica on the visit of U.N Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.

González also covered three papal trips to Cuba by St. John Paul II, Pope Benedict XVI and Pope Francis, as well as President Barack Obama’s historic visit in 2016 and the death of former Cuban President Fidel Castro later that year.

Anita Snow, who reopened AP’s Havana bureau in 1999 after a nearly 30-year absence, praised González as “a great journalist,” calling him, “an even better human being: warm, generous and consistently kind.”

“And he probably knew Latin America better than anyone,” said Snow, who worked with González in Cuba and Mexico. She is currently an AP writer in Phoenix.

Chris Gillette, senior video producer for the AP in Brazil and a high school classmate of González, agreed.

“He was a really good people person, and very charming, so he was able to get into places others might find challenging — a true raconteur, amiable and smart,” Gillette said.

Nico Maounis, head of special news events for AP’s broadcast services, recalled Gonzalez as the consummate deal broker, gaining the AP access to everyone from presidents and other high officials to the simple man on the street.

“What was he like as a person? He was outgoing, he was cosmopolitan, he was funny, he was a diplomat, he was serious, a comic and a joker. He was everything,” Maounis said.

Longtime AP photographer Enric Marti summed up González’s compassion for those less fortunate, noting how he continued to patronize his favorite Mexico City restaurant, Lucille, even during the pandemic when others stayed away, tipping the waiters handsomely.

“He kept going and raised money for the waiters. … They basically had no tips and no money,” said Marti, AP’s deputy director of photography/global enterprise. “Whenever I was in town we would meet in Lucille. It was Fernando’s bar.”

González is survived by his wife Lisa, children Maria Linda and Nicolas, and three grandchildren, as well as his parents.

Read original article here

The Ultimate News Site