World News

Doctors Identify Brain Abnormalities in Patients of US Embassy Attacks in Cuba

Personnel gather at the U.S. Embassy in Cuba on September 29, 2017 in Havana, Cuba. The U.S. State Department announced it will cut the embassy’s staff by half in the wake of mysterious health problems that have injured over 20 people associated with the U.S. embassy the U.S. also issued a travel advisory for U.S. citizens from visiting Cuba. – Photo Sven Creutzmann

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HAVANA – Doctors treating the U.S. Embassy victims of mysterious, invisible attacks in Cuba have discovered brain abnormalities as they search for clues to explain the hearing, vision, balance and memory damage, The Associated Press has learned.

It’s the most specific finding to date about physical damage, showing that whatever it was that harmed the Americans, it led to perceptible changes in their brains. The finding is also one of several factors fueling growing skepticism that some kind of sonic weapon was involved.

Medical testing has revealed the embassy workers developed changes to the white matter tracts that let different parts of the brain communicate, several U.S. officials said, describing a growing consensus held by university and government physicians researching the attacks. White matter acts like information highways between brain cells.

Loud, mysterious sounds followed by hearing loss and ear-ringing had led investigators to suspect “sonic attacks.” But officials are now carefully avoiding that term. The sounds may have been the byproduct of something else that caused damage, said three U.S. officials briefed on the investigation. They weren’t authorized to discuss it publicly and demanded anonymity.

Physicians, FBI investigators and U.S. intelligence agencies have spent months trying to piece together the puzzle in Havana, where the U.S. says 24 U.S. government officials and spouses fell ill starting last year in homes and later in some hotels. The United States refers to “specific attacks” but says it doesn’t know who’s behind them. A few Canadian Embassy staffers also got sick.

Doctors still don’t know how victims ended up with the white matter changes, nor how exactly those changes might relate to their symptoms. U.S. officials wouldn’t say whether the changes were found in all 24 patients.

But acoustic waves have never been shown to alter the brain’s white matter tracts, said Elisa Konofagou, a biomedical engineering professor at Columbia University who is not involved in the government’s investigation.

“I would be very surprised,” Konofagou said, adding that ultrasound in the brain is used frequently in modern medicine. “We never see white matter tract problems.”

Cuba has adamantly denied involvement, and calls the Trump administration’s claims that U.S. workers were attacked “deliberate lies.” The new medical details may help the U.S. counter Havana’s complaint that Washington hasn’t presented any evidence.

The case has plunged the U.S. medical community into uncharted territory. Physicians are treating the symptoms like a new, never-seen-before illness. After extensive testing and trial therapies, they’re developing the first protocols to screen cases and identify the best treatments – even as the FBI investigation struggles to identify a culprit, method and motive.

Doctors treating the victims wouldn’t speak to the AP, yet their findings are expected to be discussed in an article being submitted to the Journal of the American Medical Association, U.S. officials said. Physicians at the University of Miami and the University of Pennsylvania who have treated the Cuba victims are writing it, with input from the State Department’s medical unit and other government doctors.

But the article won’t speculate about what technology might have harmed the workers or who would have wanted to target Americans in Cuba. If investigators are any closer to solving those questions, their findings won’t be made public.

The AP first reported in August that U.S. workers reported sounds audible in parts of rooms but inaudible just a few feet away – unlike normal sound, which disperses in all directions. Doctors have now come up with a term for such incidents: “directional acoustic phenomena.”

Most patients have fully recovered, some after rehabilitation and other treatment, officials said. Many are back at work. About one-quarter had symptoms that persisted for long periods or remain to this day.

Earlier this year, the U.S. said doctors found patients had suffered concussions, known as mild traumatic brain injury, but were uncertain beyond that what had happened in their brains. Concussions are often diagnosed based solely on symptoms.

Studies have found both concussions and white matter damage in Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans who survived explosions yet had no other physical damage. But those injuries were attributed mostly to shock waves from explosions. No Havana patients reported explosions or blows to the head.

Outside medical experts said that when the sample of patients is so small, it’s difficult to establish cause and effect.

“The thing you have to wonder anytime you see something on a scan: Is it due to the episode in question, or was it something pre-existing and unrelated to what happened?” said Dr. Gerard Gianoli, an ear and brain specialist in Louisiana.

As Cuba works to limit damage to its reputation and economy, its government has produced TV specials and an online summit about its own investigation. Cuba’s experts have concluded that the Americans’ allegations are scientifically impossible.

The Cubans have urged the U.S. to release information about what it’s found. FBI investigators have spent months comparing cases to pinpoint what factors overlap.

U.S. officials told the AP that investigators have now determined:

The most frequently reported sound patients heard was a high-pitched chirp or grating metal. Fewer recalled a low-pitched noise, like a hum.
Some were asleep and awakened by the sound, even as others sleeping in the same bed or room heard nothing.
Vibrations sometimes accompanied the sound. Victims told investigators these felt similar to the rapid flutter of air when windows of a car are partially rolled down.
Those worst off knew right away something was affecting their bodies. Some developed visual symptoms within 24 hours, including trouble focusing on a computer screen.

The U.S. has not identified any specific precautions it believes can mitigate the risk for diplomats in Havana, three officials said, although an attack hasn’t been reported since late August. Since the Americans started falling ill last year, the State Department has adopted a new protocol for workers before they go to Cuba that includes bloodwork and other “baseline” tests. If they later show symptoms, doctors can retest and compare.

Doctors still don’t know the long-term medical consequences and expect that epidemiologists, who track disease patterns in populations, will monitor the 24 Americans for life. Consultations with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are underway.

ByJosh Lederman
The Associated Press

World News

Marine Le Pen’s National Rally Wins the First Round in France 2024 Election

Marine Le Pen's far-right National Rally (RN) party scored historic gains in France

Exit polls in France showed that Marine Le Pen’s right-wing National Rally (RN) party made huge gains to win the first round of election on Sunday. However, the final outcome will depend on how people trade votes in the days before next week’s run-off.

Exit polls from Ipsos, Ifop, OpinionWay, and Elabe showed that the RN got about 34% of the vote. This was a big loss for President Emmanuel Macron, who called the early election after his party lost badly in the European Parliament elections earlier this month.

The National Rally (RN) easily won more votes than its opponents on the left and center, including Macron’s Together group, whose bloc was predicted to get 20.5% to 23% of the vote. Exit polls showed that the New Popular Front (NFP), a hastily put together left-wing alliance, would get about 29% of the vote.

The results of the exit polls matched what people said in polls before the election, which made Le Pen’s fans very happy. But they didn’t say for sure if the anti-immigrant, anti-EU National Rally (RN) will be able to “cohabit” with the pro-EU Macron in a government after the runoff election next Sunday.

Voters in France Angry at Macron

Many French people have looked down on the National Rally (RN) for a long time, but now it is closer to power than it has ever been. A party known for racism and antisemitism has tried to clean up its image, and it has worked. Voters are angry at Macron, the high cost of living, and rising concerns about immigration.

Fans of Marine Le Pen waved French flags and sang the Marseillaise in the northern French district of Henin-Beaumont. The crowd cheered as Le Pen said, “The French have shown they are ready to turn the page on a power that is disrespectful and destructive.”

The National Rally’s chances of taking power next week will rest on what political deals its opponents make in the next few days. Right-wing and left-wing parties used to work together to keep the National Rally (RN) out of power, but the “republican front,” which refers to this group, is less stable than ever.

If no candidate gets 50% of the vote in the first round, the top two candidates and anyone else with 12.5% of the registered voters immediately move on to the second round. The district goes to the person who gets the most votes in the runoff.

France is likely to have a record number of three-way runoffs because so many people voted on Sunday. Experts say that these are much better for the National Rally (RN) than two-way games. Almost right away on Sunday night, the horse trade began.

Macron asked people to support candidates who are “clearly republican and democratic.” Based on what he has said recently, this would rule out candidates from the National Rally (RN) and the hard-left France Unbowed (LFI) party. Leaders on the far left and the center left both asked their third-placed candidates to drop out.

Minority government

Jean-Luc Melenchon, leader of France Unbowed, said, “Our rule is simple and clear: not a single more vote for the National Rally.” But the center-right Republicans party, which split before the vote when some of its members joined the RN, didn’t say anything.

The president of the RN party, Jordan Bardella, who is 28 years old, said he was ready to be prime minister if his party gets a majority of seats. He has said he won’t try to make a minority government, and neither Macron nor the communist NFP will work with him.

“I will be a “cohabitation” Prime Minister, respectful of the constitution and of the office of President of the Republic, but uncompromising about the policies we will implement,” he said.

A few thousand anti-RN protesters met in Paris’s Republique square on Sunday night for a rally of the leftist alliance. The mood was gloomy.

Niya Khaldi, a 33-year-old teacher, said that the RN’s good results made her feel “disgust, sadness, and fear.”

“This is not how I normally act,” she said. “I think I came to reassure myself, to not feel alone.”

Election Runoff

The result on Sunday didn’t have much of an effect on the market. In early Asia-Pacific trade, the euro gained about 0.23%. Fiona Cincotta, a senior markets expert at City Index in London, said she was glad the outcome “didn’t come as a surprise.”

“Le Pen had a slightly smaller margin than some of the polls had pointed to, which may have helped the euro a little bit higher on the open,” she noted. “Now everyone is waiting for July 7 to see if the second round supports a clear majority or not. So it does feel like we’re on the edge of something.”

Some pollsters thought the RN would win the most seats in the National Assembly, but Elabe was the only one who thought the party would win all 289 seats in the run-off. Seat projections made after the first round of voting are often very wrong, and this race is no exception.

On Sunday night, Reuters reported there were no final results for the whole country yet, but they were due in the next few hours. In France, exit polls have usually been very accurate.

Voter turnout was high compared to previous parliamentary elections. This shows how passionate people are about politics after Macron made the shocking and politically risky decision to call a vote in parliament.

Mathieu Gallard, research head at Ipsos France, said that at 1500 GMT, nearly 60% of voters had turned out, up from 39.42% two years earlier. This was the highest comparable turnout since the 1986 legislative vote. It wasn’t clear when the official number of people who voted would be changed.

World News

Pakistan Seeks US Support for Counter-Terrorism Operation Azm-e-Istehkam

(CTN News) – Pakistan’s Ambassador to the United States, Masood Khan, has urged Washington to provide Pakistan with sophisticated small arms and communication equipment to ensure the success of Operation Azm-e-Istehkam, a newly approved counter-terrorism initiative in the country.

The federal government recently approved the reinvigorated national counter-terrorism drive, which comprises three components: doctrinal, societal, and operational.

Ambassador Khan noted that work on the first two phases has already begun, with the third phase set to be implemented soon.

Addressing US policymakers, scholars, and corporate leaders at the Wilson Center in Washington, Khan emphasized the importance of strong security links, enhanced intelligence cooperation, and the resumption of sales of advanced military platforms between Pakistan and the US.

He argued that this is crucial for regional security and countering the rising tide of terrorism, which also threatens the interests of the US and its allies.

“Pakistan has launched Azm-i-Istehkam […] to oppose and dismantle terrorist networks. For that, we need sophisticated small arms and communication equipment,” said Ambassador Khan.

Pakistan–United States relations

The ambassador observed that the prospects of Pakistan-United States relations were bright, stating that the two countries “share values, our security and economic interests are interwoven, and it is the aspiration of our two peoples that strengthens our ties.”

He invited US investors and businesses to explore Pakistan’s potential in terms of demographic dividend, technological advancements, and market opportunities.

Khan also suggested that the US should consider Pakistan as a partner in its diplomatic efforts in Kabul and collaborate on counterterrorism and the rights of women and girls in Afghanistan.

He stressed that the bilateral relationship should be based on ground realities and not be hindered by a few issues.

“We should not base our engagement on the incongruity of expectations.

Our ties should be anchored in ground realities, even as we aim for stronger security and economic partnerships. Secondly, one or two issues should not hold the entire relationship hostage,” said the ambassador.

World News

China Urges Taiwanese to Visit Mainland ‘Without Worry’ Despite Execution Threat

China Urges Taiwanese to Visit Mainland Without Worry Despite Threats

China has reassured Taiwanese citizens that they can visit the mainland “without the slightest worry”, despite Taiwan raising its travel alert to the second-highest level in response to Beijing’s new judicial guidelines targeting supporters of Taiwanese independence.

Last week, China published guidelines that could impose the death penalty for “particularly serious” cases involving “diehard” advocates of Taiwanese independence.

In response, Taiwan’s government urged the public to avoid “unnecessary travel” to mainland China and Hong Kong, and raised its travel warning to the “orange” level.

However, Zhu Fenglian, a spokeswoman for a Chinese body overseeing Taiwan affairs, stated that the new directives are “aimed solely at the very small number of supporters of ‘Taiwan independence’, who are engaged in malicious acts and utterances”.

She emphasized that “the vast majority of Taiwan compatriots involved in cross-strait exchanges and cooperation do not need to have the slightest worry when they come to or leave mainland China”.

“They can arrive in high spirits and leave fully satisfied with their stay,” Zhu added.

What’s Behind The China-Taiwan Tensions?

The tensions stem from the longstanding dispute over Taiwan’s status. Mainland China claims Taiwan as part of its territory and has refused to rule out using force to bring the democratic island under its control, while Taiwan sees itself as a sovereign state.

Beijing has not conducted top-level communications with Taipei since 2016, when the Democratic Progressive Party’s Tsai Ing-wen became Taiwan’s leader. China has since branded her successor, President Lai Ching-te, a “dangerous separatist”.

“The DPP authorities have fabricated excuses to deceive the people on the island and incite confrontation and opposition,” Zhu said in her statement.
Despite the political tensions, many Taiwanese continue to travel to mainland China for work, study, or business.