A high-speed chase in Florida may be related to a mysterious phenomenon known as “Havana syndrome,” according to a new report.
U.S. and Canadian embassy staff first reported the condition in Cuba in 2016, and it has since been reported by hundreds of U.S. employees in multiple countries.
A promo clip for a CBS News “60 Minutes” story scheduled to air later Sunday shows police body camera footage of a car being chased down a Key West highway in June 2020.
The pursuit lasted 15 miles and the driver’s top speed was 110 mph.
Eventually, he was pulled over and arrested. Inside the man’s car, officers found a device similar to a walkie-talkie that could erase bank account notes and the car’s computer data, including its GPS history.
Officers also found a Russian passport. The suspect gave his name as “Vitaly” and said he was from St. Petersburg.
When asked why he ran away from the police, he repeats, “I don’t know.”
The report comes from a nearly five-year study from the National Institutes of Health that had no explanation for the mysterious health problems reported by U.S. diplomats, including headaches, balance problems, and difficulty thinking or sleeping. It was announced a few weeks after the announcement. and other government employees.
The NIH conducted a series of advanced tests and found no brain damage or degeneration.
The NIH appeared to contradict some of its earlier findings that brain damage is possible in people experiencing what the State Department now calls “unusual health events.”
Advanced MRI scans compared patients with Havana syndrome to healthy government workers in similar jobs, including fellow embassy workers, and found no significant differences in brain volume, structure, or white matter (signs of damage or degeneration). Not detected.
There were also no significant differences in cognitive function or other tests, according to the findings published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
Researchers can’t rule out the possibility that there was temporary damage when symptoms started, but the good news is that no long-term markers typical after trauma or stroke were detected in brain scans. He said that.
Sunday’s report is the latest episode in an ongoing saga that unravels a mystery that began when employees at the U.S. Embassy in Cuba began seeking treatment for hearing loss and tinnitus after reporting sudden strange noises. .
Initially, there were concerns that Russia or other countries might have used some form of directed energy to attack Americans.
But last year, U.S. intelligence agencies said there was no indication that a foreign enemy was involved and that most incidents appeared to have a variety of causes, from undiagnosed illnesses to environmental factors.
The NIH study began in 2018 and involved more than 80 Havana syndrome patients, but it was not designed to investigate the possibility of any weapons or other triggers causing Havana syndrome symptoms. Chan said the findings are consistent with intelligence agencies’ conclusions.
