The Helping American Victims Afflicted by Neurological Attacks (HAVANA) Act was approved by the House on Tuesday in a vote of 427-0. 

The bill now heads to President Joe Biden’s desk, as the Senate passed it without opposition back in June. The bipartisan brainchild of Senators Jeanne Shaheen (D-New Hampshire), Susan Collins (R-Maine), Mark R. Warner (D-Virginia) and Marco Rubio (R-Florida) authorizes additional funding for the CIA to compensate officers afflicted by the symptoms and grants the agency greater leeway in how the money can be spent, while requiring it to submit regular reports to Congress.

The ‘Havana Syndrome’ was named after the symptoms allegedly suffered by a number of US diplomats and spies stationed in Cuba in 2016, who complained of a persistent noise and reported migraines, nausea, memory lapses and dizziness, as well as permanent brain damage. 

Since then, more than 200 government employees and their families have complained about the symptoms, including a CIA agent who recently traveled to India with Director William Burns. That story made the rounds in Washington earlier on Tuesday, ahead of the House vote.

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The “syndrome” has been reported in numerous other places besides Havana – from Russia, China, Germany and Australia to Washington, DC itself.  The US government has officially dubbed it “anomalous health incidents” and the investigations into its nature and origins are ongoing. Scientists, spies and journalists have speculated that it could be caused by some kind of top-secret, high-tech weapon emitting directed energy waves.

Last week, a panel of Cuban scientists said that claims of secret sonic weapons were not “scientifically acceptable,” and there was “no scientific evidence of attacks.”

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Back in January 2019, a researcher at UC Berkeley said the recording of the sounds allegedly causing the “syndrome,” released by AP, matched the sounds made by the Indies short-tailed cricket.

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Activists with Black Lives Matter of greater New York picketed the Italian restaurant on the Upper West Side on Monday night, confronting both staff and patrons and calling Carmine’s “racist” and “fascist” over last week’s incident. 

“I charge Carmine’s with trying to cover up their employee’s actions by using the vaccination passport as an excuse,” said BLM NY leader Hawk Newsome, who led the protest.

New York City was the first jurisdiction in the US to require proof of vaccination for entering restaurants and other venues. The policy went into effect on September 13. Just three days later, NYPD arrested Sally Rechelle Lewis, Kaeita Nkeenge Rankin and Tyonnie Keshay Rankin, and charged them with assault and criminal mischief after a video emerged of them assaulting a Carmine’s hostess.They were released without bail.

The three women, residents of Houston and its suburb of Humble, were originally described as just “Texan,” prompting an outpouring of online vitriol, normally reserved for Republicans. The moment it emerged they were black, however, the story changed. 

Rankin’s attorney told the New York Times that the physical assault followed the hostess calling the group a derogatory racial term – something Newsome seemed to take at face value. 

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Carmine’s owner Jeffrey Bank, however, called that statement “false” and the attack on his employees “entirely unprovoked.” In response to the BLM protest, Bank released the surveillance footage of the incident to the press on Tuesday. 

“At no point did the women mention that any of the hosts ever made a racial slur. Nor did the women say that to the police officers who arrested them. Nor did anyone hear any such slur,” Bank told the New York Post. “This is because none of our hosts — all of whom are people of color — ever uttered such a slur.”

The employees that were violently attacked were black, Latino and Asian American, he said. The tapes also show that the three Texan women were allowed in after showing their vaccination papers, but got violent after the hostess turned away one of the men seeking to join them, who did not have a valid pass.

While Hawk Newsome focused his wrath on Carmine’s, his wife and fellow BLM leader Chivona took aim at the vaccination pass policy itself.

“We’re putting this city on notice that your mandate will not be another racist social-distance practice. Black people are not going to stand by, or you will see another uprising. And that is not a threat; that is a promise,” said Chivona Newsome. “The vaccination passport is not a free passport to racism.”

Claiming that 72% of New York City’s black residents age 18-44 are unvaccinated, Chivona Newsome asked “what is going to stop the Gestapo, I mean the NYPD, from rounding up black people, from snatching them off the train, off the bus?”

Co-founder of Black Women’s March, Kimberly Bernard, said the protest was “serving notice on the mayor, on the governor, on the restaurant industry that we will not allow for you to use this pandemic, vaccination cards, and masks as another reason to be racist, to put us in prison.”

At the time the measure was announced, in early August, critics pointed out the comparatively low rate of vaccination among African-Americans and said the policy would have a disparate impact, fitting the textbook definition of racism often used by the courts. 

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Democrat Mayor Bill De Blasio ignored the critics, however. Asked about it, the White House said cities and states “should be able to take steps to incentivize more people getting vaccinated.” 

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Reporter Ben Schreckinger’s book, released on Tuesday, claimed that a person who had independent access to emails from Hunter Biden, President Joe Biden’s son, confirmed that he had received two of the messages at the center of the New York Post’s influence-peddling scoop last October.

One of the messages allegedly came from Vadym Pozharsky, an adviser to Ukraine’s Burisma Holdings, who thanked the younger Biden in 2015 for getting him a meeting with Joe Biden. The other was a 2017 email from Biden business partner James Gillar, which included the line “10 held by H for the big guy?” Another former Biden partner said the phrase referred to Hunter Biden holding a 10% stake in the deal for Joe Biden.

Emails released by a Swedish government agency also matched some of the messages that the Post found on Hunter Biden’s laptop after it was left at a Delaware repair shop, Schreckinger said, citing two other people who had correspondence with the president’s son.

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As Washington Free Beacon reporter Chuck Ross pointed out on Tuesday, conservative media outlets had confirmed the authenticity of the Hunter Biden emails long before Schreckinger’s book was published. The Daily Caller said a cyber security expert confirmed that the laptop trove was authentic last October, so Schreckinger was 11 months late to the story.

But for such reporting to now come from Politico, which was among the mainstream media outlets that sought to squash the Post’s scoop as the presidential election approached, represents a sea change. In October last year, Politico called the story “Russian disinfo,” citing a letter signed by 50 former US intelligence agency officials. Those officials offered no evidence to support their claim, but pointed the finger at Moscow, saying “Russia is trying to influence how Americans vote in this election.”

Twitter censored the Post’s reporting, citing its hacked materials policy without having any evidence suggesting that the laptop had been hacked. Not only was the Post’s Twitter account blocked for more than two weeks, but users of the social media platform were prevented from sharing the article.

The Federal Elections Commission ruled last week that the censorship wasn’t politically motivated and Twitter therefore hadn’t made an illegal in-kind contribution to Joe Biden’s campaign by doing his news-suppression bidding.

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Radio host Chris Stigall was among many observers pointing out that Politico is only acknowledging the veracity of the Biden emails after the political damage of censoring it has been done. “Journalism would have been helpful last year,” he said. “Politico quietly admits, yep, that Hunter Biden story was true.”

Commenters such as Newsmax correspondent Emerald Robinson speculated that the apparent flip-flop on the Post’s scoop suggests that mainstream media outlets are poised to turn against the president. “It really means that left-wing corporate media are getting ready to turn on Biden in favor of Kamala (Harris),” Robinson said.

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The tech giant is working with University of California, Los Angeles to see if its algorithms can detect stress, anxiety and depression among iPhone users, while the partnership with Biogen is devoted to studying mild cognitive impairment among users, according to several unnamed Apple employees who spoke to the Wall Street Journal on Tuesday.

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The projects – codenamed ‘Seabreeze’ and ‘Pi’, respectively – take medical diagnostics quite a bit further than previous Apple features, though the sensors being used to collect data for them have been part of the ubiquitous phones for some time now. Usage data including mobility, physical activity, sleep patterns, typing behavior, and other seemingly innocuous interactions with the device are being analyzed in the hope of finding “digital signals associated with the target conditions,” the sources said.

The UCLA study (‘Seabreeze’) began last fall with 150 subjects tracking data from their Apple Watches and iPhones; it is supposed to expand to 3,000 people this year. The project is quite intrusive, including data from the phone’s video camera, keyboard, and audio sensors as well as information from the watch regarding movement, sleep, and vital signs. Analysis of facial expressions, tone of voice, gait, and sleep is also involved, as are typing speed and accuracy and the content of messages. Accompanying the high-volume data suck are a series of questionnaires about mood and analysis of the stress hormone cortisol in subjects’ hair. A match between usage signatures and relevant psychological conditions could result in an app warning the user they’re at risk of mental illness – though fully-fledged tele-diagnosis is supposedly not the point.

The Biogen study (‘Pi’) was only launched on Monday, according to the employees and documents they provided; meant to last two years, it hopes to follow 20,000 participants, half of whom are at risk of cognitive impairment, and uses data similar to what UCLA is slurping up. It builds on a much smaller study that found 31 adults with cognitive impairment used their phones in a markedly different manner than ‘normal’ adults.

Both studies are aimed at developing ‘unique features’ for the iPhone, a shift for Apple, which has previously focused most of its biometric efforts on its smartwatch, producing features like the atrial fibrillation detector it developed in 2018 in partnership with Stanford University researchers. While the choice may have seemed logical given that device’s closer-to-the-skin profile, it has meant the company misses out on data collection from the legions of faithful Apple users who for whatever reason opted to skip the wearable and has meant leaving terabytes of ultra-sensitive iPhone usage data out of future biometric features.

While the employees admitted the new projects are in their early stages and “may never lead to new device features,” the connection between smartphone usage and mental health is already a strong and controversial one. Smartphone addiction is a real problem, having earned its own entry in the psychiatric Diagnostic and Statistical Manual volume 5. It’s especially noticeable in teens who’ve grown up with an iPhone or iPad in their hands, but even in non-digital-natives, the so-called ‘fear of missing out’ keeps people glued to their phones when they should be sleeping, working, driving, or otherwise engaged.

Smartphone addiction is defined as feeling compelled to use the device even in “dangerous or prohibited contexts,” losing interest in other activities, irritability and unease when separated from the phone, or anxiety when unable to immediately send and receive messages. Given how many of those symptoms overlap with depression and anxiety, it’s unclear how Apple and its university partners will be able to tell which came first, the smartphone or the mental illness associated with it.

Smartphone overuse can also negatively impact posture, eyesight and hearing, and while users might believe their connections with their fellow humans are enhanced by constant connection, the reverse is often the case, with the constant distraction offered by the phone sometimes taking the place of social activities or fostering a lingering dissatisfaction based on the belief that someone, somewhere is having a better time. Others with mental illness might rely on their phone as a coping mechanism or to escape negative emotions.

Certain academic studies have indicated ways in which people with particular mental health conditions differ in their smartphone use (‘lonely’ individuals prefer voice calls to texting, while ‘anxious’ people would rather text, for example), while others have quite clearly placed the smartphone on the causal side of the equation. One such study found that poor sleep quality associated with late-night texting or calling was directly linked to a decline in mental health, manifesting in depression and low self-esteem that might persist for as much as a year after the maladaptive texting behavior.

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While some have argued that diagnosing mental illness by smartphone is wildly irresponsible, not all sufferers necessarily have access to a trained professional, especially in the US, where health insurance is not universal and often doesn’t cover specialty visits like mental health providers. The Apple employees who spoke to the Wall Street Journal have expressed hope that any feature the company comes up with can at least help bridge that gap. However, there is also the risk of stigma that comes with mental illness. For its users to be willing to trust it with their mental health data – or what it believes to be their mental health data – Apple will have to regain a significant amount of trust it has lost over the many scandals it has weathered this year.

From the revelation that Israeli spyware program Pegasus has basically had open-ended access to iPhones for years, to the botched yet sinister effort to screen all iCloud accounts for ‘child pornography’, Apple’s reputation as the pro-privacy smartphone manufacturer lies in tatters, while Google is chortling all the way to the bank – having never promised the privacy it has not delivered. Apple customers, who often pay a good deal more than their Google-loyal brethren for what are supposed to be less porous devices, are unlikely to keep shelling out the big bucks for a phone that not only spies on them for foreign governments but diagnoses them with mental illness into the bargain.

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House Democrats on Tuesday scrubbed $1 billion in funding for Israel’s Iron Dome missile defense system from a broad spending bill. The bill, a stopgap measure meant to ensure the functioning of government past the end of the month, was then reintroduced minus the missile-defense bounty for Tel Aviv.

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The Iron Dome funding was pulled due to objections from the more left-leaning progressives within the Democratic Party. With the House narrowly divided, the Democrats need to vote as a bloc to pass the bill and avert a government shutdown.

No sooner had news broke than lawmakers from both parties erupted with outrage. Republicans accused the Democrats of caving to “the anti-Semitic Left” and wanting Palestinian “rockets to hit civilians.”

“For Ilhan Omar and the left, saving Israeli lives from terror attacks is unacceptable,” Arkansas Senator Tom Cotton tweeted, name-checking one of the Democratic Party’s most vocal critics of Israel.

Many Democrats too were unhappy with the direction their party leadership took. “As Israel’s staunch ally and friend, replenishing Iron Dome funding ASAP is absolutely essential,” former Democratic National Committee chair and Florida Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz tweeted, adding that she would “work hard to achieve that critical goal.”

Even avowed progressives like Richie Torres, a New York representative and former Bernie Sanders campaign delegate, spoke out. “A missile defense system (i.e. Iron Dome) defends civilians from missiles,” he tweeted. “Hence the name. Only in a morally inverted universe would this be considered a ‘controversy.’”

Shortly after the bill was introduced, a spokesperson for House Appropriations Committee Chairwoman Rosa DeLauro (D-Connecticut) said that funding for the Iron Dome “will be included in the final, bipartisan and bicameral” defense bill later this year. 

Behind the outrage, both sides are playing politics. Republicans incensed at the apparent betrayal of Israel were likely never going to vote for the Democratic bill, Iron Dome funding or not. On the other side, DeLauro’s assurance that the Dome funding can be inserted into the yearly National Defense Authorization Act is by no means ironclad. Progressives have threatened to obstruct the defense bill if a whopping $3.5 trillion infrastructure bill that would dramatically expand the welfare state isn’t passed by then. At present, centrist Democrats are pushing party leadership to hold a vote on a more modest $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill recently passed by the Senate.

The Iron Dome has been operational since 2011, with Israel’s military saying the system is capable of shooting down around 90% of rockets fired into Israel from Gaza. However, each interception costs between $100,000 and $150,000, and after nearly two weeks of intense bombardment by Palestinian militants in May, the Israeli military needs to replenish its missiles.

At the time, President Joe Biden pledged then-Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu his “full support to replenish Israel’s Iron Dome system to ensure its defenses and security in the future.” 

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