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The brains of 40 former staffers at the US Embassy in Cuba who developed mysterious symptoms during so-called “sonic attacks” have visible differences compared to a control group, according to a new study. The State Department has said the employees developed what became known as “Havana Syndrome” – headaches, dizziness, nausea and other symptoms that arose when they heard penetrating, high-pitched sounds. MRI scans from the 23 men and 17 women showed changes in brain structure and functional connectivity between different parts of the organ compared with 48 other adults, according to the study by the University of Pennsylvania.

Venezuelan Fighter ‘Aggressively Shadowed’ U.S. EP-3E Over Caribbean By: Megan Eckstein July 21, 2019 8:32 PM U.S. Southern Command announced that a Venezuelan fighter harassed a U.S. Navy surveillance plane in the Caribbean Sea on Friday over international waters. In a pair of tweets, SOUTHCOM wrote that a “Venezuela SU-30 Flanker ‘aggressively shadowed’ a U.S. EP-3E aircraft at an unsafe distance July 19, jeopardizing the crew & aircraft.” Noting the ongoing relationship between Nicolás Maduro’s government in Caracas and Russia – in contrast to the U.S.-backed Juan Guaidó regime that claimed power in January after an election that Maduro says...

Update as of July 22, 2019: The House is expected to vote on H.R. 549 soon. The bill is being sponsored by 29 Democrats and three Republicans....Two bills, one each in the House and Senate, have been introduced that would legislatively mandate a grant of Temporary Protected Status (TPS) to Venezuelans. They are, respectively, H.R. 549, introduced by Rep. Darren Soto (D-Fla.), and S. 636, introduced by Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.).

Full title: Brilliant! Mike Cernovich Destroys Rep. Erica Thomas and her Disgusting Hate Hoax — Breaks Down Ever-Changing Story of ‘Madame Smollett’ As reported on Saturday — State Rep. Erica Thomas told supporters a white man told her to “go back to where you came from.” Thomas is an African-American Democrat state lawmaker. ... She was at a Publix grocery store and was checking out at the express lane with too many items when the man confronted her. Thomas posted a tearful and heartrending video on social media following the confrontation. She said the man told her to “go back...

Erica Thomas is a member of the Georgia House of Representatives. Clearly, that's not where she wants her political career to end, however. Yesterday, she suddenly claimed on Twitter that a white guy had harassed her at a grocery store, and had even told her to "go back where you came from!" Obviously, this was meant to prove that President Trump's statements about The Squad are contagious. However, the accused man didn't take this lying down. When confronted by Rep. Thomas on camera he didn't take a step back and insisted that she wasn't telling the truth about their confrontation...

Two families who fled from Venezuela landed at Ben-Gurion on Wednesday amidst hundreds of olim from other countries. They received clandestine assistance to leave the country from the Jewish Agency. Venezuela, a once-wealthy country has descended into crisis over the past few years, with the current situation being total anarchy and economic destitution. The Jewish community, which included 25,000 members in the 1990s is down to about 4,000 members, with most Jews immigrating to the US, Mexico, Panama or other countries. Only about 12% immigrate to Israel, according to Jewish Agency chairman Yitzchak Herzog. "We had to leave Venezuela," Avraham...

Iran’s main proxy terrorist group is expanding in Latin America and networking with organized crime and other violent groups, according to U.S. and Argentinean officials. “It matters whether the U.S. can move the dial and thwart Iranian-backed penetration in our backyard,” Toby Dershowitz, a senior vice president at the U.S.-based Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told the Washington Examiner. "This may be the year that serves as a wake-up call for others in the region impacted adversely by Hezbollah’s malign activities — including but not limited to money laundering and narco-terrorism.” Faurie emphasized that Hezbollah has formed ties with historically...

With 'End of Discussion'-style arguments and tactics running rampant in our politics, it's important to note that while the collective Left represents more systemic and egregious offender, the Right routinely indulges in the same sort of demagoguery, too.  Examples include lumping all Black Lives Matter activists as virulently, or even violently, anti-police, conflating support for a military conflict with respect for 'the troops,' and dismissing all criticisms of Israeli government policy with anti-Semitism.  These are unfair generalizations designed to shut down legitimate debate and disqualify the opposition.  But that doesn't mean that hardcore anti-law enforcement attitudes, contempt for the military,...

Welcome to Captive Nations Week. Never heard of it? You’re not alone. Yet this usually-forgotten, federally mandated occasion — now in its 60th year — is worth resurrecting in the 21st century. Congress created Captive Nations Week in 1959, making the third week in July a time to show Americans’ solidarity with the nations dominated by communism. The original law listed 22 captive nations, most of which had substantial communities of citizens in major American cities. After the law’s passage, these communities began to hold parades and rallies every year, from Miami to New York to Los Angeles to Chicago...

When a dozen of conservatism’s best minds take on Socialism and expose it for the utopian fraud it is, attention must be paid. In a brief foreword to a special issue of National Review, Editor-in-Chief Richard Lowry admitted that many conservatives thought socialism in America had been “vanquished” after the collapse of Soviet Communism 30 years ago. But as T. S. Eliot insisted, “There is no such thing as a Lost Cause because there is no such thing as a Gained Cause.” The experts examine socialism in its many guises, beginning with Charles Cooke’s blunt assessment that socialism is not...

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump administration said Monday it will end asylum protections for most migrants who arrive at the U.S.-Mexico border in a major escalation of the president’s battle to tamp down immigration. According to a new rule published in the Federal Register , asylum seekers who pass through another country first will be ineligible for asylum at the U.S. southern border. The rule, expected to go into effect Tuesday, also applies to children who have crossed the border alone. The rule applies to anyone arriving at the U.S.-Mexico border. Sometimes asylum seekers from Africa , Cuba or Haiti...

This continues my attempt to bring noteworthy books to the attention of Freepers. Vanity? Not really, but it is a way for me to organize in a short review the main points of relevant books to our current economic, military, or political issues. "Armies of Sand" is an analysis by former CIA analyst and AEI scholar Kenneth Pollack. Although this was in part his doctoral dissertation, he has gone on to write many books about the military and especially the Middle East. He begins by looking at the Six-Day War and Arab/Egyptian military ineffectiveness, noting the AE military superiority of...

HAVANA — Dianelys Alfonso has a bold presence — brightly colored tattoos, spandex bodysuits, Technicolor hair — and a clarion voice that won her the label “Goddess of Cuba” for her turns on songs ranging from ballads to reggaeton. Now she’s also the center of a new phenomenon in Cuba after publicly accusing another renowned musician, flutist and bandleader José Luis Cortés, of repeatedly assaulting and raping her during their yearslong relationship while she was a vocalist for NG La Banda, one of the best-known Cuban bands of the last three decades. Since Alfonso’s accusations against Cortés on an internet...

Why did Nancy Pelosi reverse her earlier approach to her noisy first-term progressives and start taking them to the public woodshed? An internal poll conducted in May by Democrats might explain why Pelosi decided to start cracking down on the frosh “Squad.” Axios got its hands on the survey, which showed that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez had succeeded in making herself the “definitional face” of Democrats among swing voters.And that’s not a good thing for most other Democrats. When it comes to “white, non-college voters” that Democrats wooed away from Donald Trump in the midterms, AOC is box-office poison: Ocasio-Cortez was...

For New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, last Friday was long in coming — the day a federal prosecutor announced that after nearly a year investigating alleged corruption in the awarding of state contracts, he had wrapped up the case without any indictments. The investigation had cast a cloud over Richardson, scuttling a job in the Obama Cabinet and putting in doubt his political future. But even as Richardson and his allies proclaimed his “vindication” and predicted it would catapult him back onto the national stage, the prosecutor handling the case wouldn’t let the matter fade. U.S. Attorney Greg Fouratt fired...

The border crisis appears to have inched the Democratic Party towards another episode of internal strife. Civil war? Well, I’m not so sure about that, but it’s been getting pretty nasty. The House passed a $4.6 billion border package that included strings attached, aimed at curbing immigration enforcement. This was pie-in-the-sky. Trump would never sign it, though he did sign the Senate bill into law, which provided the same funding but without the trash provisions against enforcing the law. It was also overwhelmingly bipartisan. Moderate House Democrats and Pelosi signed off on the Senate bill, which infuriated the far left....

Thanks to oil, Venezuela was once the wealthiest country in the region — before becoming the continent’s poorest, ravaged by corruption and feckless economic policy. And amid the economic decline, high-ranking government officials became conspicuously wealthy. But how? According to U.S. indictments, former government officials, and regional experts, officials linked to the Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah and members of Maduro’s government built a massive drug syndicate — while most of the country increasingly struggled to find food to eat, or medicine to care for the sick. “Venezuela was a narco state several years ago, but it has become darker and...

Jennifer Zeng grew up admiring the Communist Party of China and adhering to its stringent rules. But her life changed forever when she embraced religion and was swept up in a government crackdown on Falun Gong. Arrested four times as a young adult and held in as a prisoner in a labor camp, she quickly woke up to the horrors of living in a socialist state. After being subject to brutal torture, Zeng managed to escape China and now tells about the evils of socialism and communism. At a time when more Americans are embracing Karl Marx’s teachings, Chris Wright...

New York Mayor Bill de Blasio’s red past showed its ugly head recently in Miami where the Democratic presidential candidate offended the masses by glamorizing a Marxist revolutionary who executed thousands to impose communism and begged his Soviet compadres to nuke the U.S. At a union rally for striking airport workers, de Blasio proudly quoted Ernesto Che Guevara, a terrorist murderer who helped Cuban dictator Fidel Castro execute thousands of men, women and children in front of firing squads. He happens to be one of the most despised historical figures in south Florida. True to his communist roots, de Blasio...

Slavery existed in Cuba longer than anywhere else in the Western Hemisphere, except Brazil. Slaves were purchased from Africa where Arab Muslim slave traders had enslaved an estimated 180 million blacks over the 14 centuries of Islamic rule. President James Buchanan wrote December 19, 1859: "When a market for African slaves shall no longer be furnished in Cuba ... Christianity and civilization may gradually penetrate the existing gloom." President Ulysses S. Grant stated, December 2, 1872: "Slavery in Cuba is ... a terrible evil ... It is greatly to be hoped that ... Spain will voluntarily adopt ... emancipation ......