{"id":686144,"date":"2026-07-11T14:35:13","date_gmt":"2026-07-11T14:35:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/686144\/"},"modified":"2026-07-11T14:35:13","modified_gmt":"2026-07-11T14:35:13","slug":"havana-syndrome-victims-get-3m-payout-from-us-government","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/686144\/","title":{"rendered":"Havana Syndrome victims get $3m payout from US government"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The US Department of Defence said it would continue to prioritise &#8220;the care of affected personnel&#8221; as it announced the compensation, paid out under the Havana Act which was signed into law in 2021.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">There has been widespread speculation for many years over what &#8211; and who &#8211; is responsible for Havana Syndrome. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Some have claimed the illness is caused by microwaves, prompting further speculation that a foreign power may have used some kind of sonar weapon to attack US overseas staff and their dependants. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;My brain is broken,&#8221; former CIA analyst Erika Stith <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cbsnews.com\/news\/havana-syndrome-cia-medical-care-financial-support\/\" class=\"ssrcss-1e0jzsh-InlineLink e1kn3p7n0\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">told CBS News in 2022, external<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;We got this as a result of serving our country. And we deserve to be taken care of,&#8221; she said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Last year, most US intelligence agencies and departments surmised that it was &#8220;very unlikely&#8221; that a foreign actor used &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/news\/articles\/c5y6dqz017qo\" class=\"ssrcss-1e0jzsh-InlineLink e1kn3p7n0\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">a novel weapon or prototype device to harm<\/a>&#8221; US personnel and their families.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Although, a small component of the US intelligence community did not completely dismiss the theory.  <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The report, by the National Intelligence Council, said none of the agencies or departments it spoke to &#8220;call[ed] into question the experiences or suffering&#8221; of US workers and their families.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The community believed that they &#8220;experienced genuine, sometimes painful and traumatic, physical symptoms and sensory phenomena and honestly and sincerely reported those events as possible anomalous health incidents&#8221;.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The US Department of Defence said it would continue to prioritise &#8220;the care of affected personnel&#8221; as it&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":686145,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":["post-686144","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/686144","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=686144"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/686144\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/686145"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=686144"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=686144"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=686144"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}