title: Power Rangers (film)

text: On December 8, 2016, a new poster debuted, as well as a photo of Rita Repulsa. On December 19, 2016, Lionsgate and Boom! Studios announced that they would release a graphic novel titled "Power Rangers: Aftershock", set immediately after the events of the movie. An international trailer was released on December 22, 2016. Qualcomm and Lionsgate produced a virtual reality mobile app of the film "Power Rangers Movie Command Center" that was exhibited at the CES 2017, from January 5–8, 2017, and was released in the App Store on March 8, 2017. On January 19, a second trailer, titled "It’s Morphin Time!", was released. Lionsgate debuted yet another trailer, which it called the "All-Star Trailer", on February 17. New TV spots were released on February 27, two about the Power Rangers, and one about Rita Repulsa. A clip was released on March 6, followed by two more on March 9. Thirty-seven stills were then released. Another TV spot was released on March 10. In the final week before the movie premiered, two more clips, as well as photos, were released.


title: Power Rangers (film)

text: A Build-A-Bear Workshop Power Ranger product range was announced on March 9, 2017. Krispy Kreme released doughnuts to promote the film, and served as an advertising partner. Placement of Krispy Kreme products and locations were featured in the film numerous times.


title: Power Rangers (film)

text: The group collaborated with YouTube sports entertainment group Dude Perfect ahead of the film's release, in a video titled "Dude Perfect vs. Power Rangers".


title: Power Rangers (film)

text: Lionsgate and Saban, in collaboration with nWay Games, released a PvP fighting mobile game called "" on March 24, 2017, to coincide with the film's release. The game was featured on both Android and the Apple Store and got to the top spot on the Apple App Store for both iPhones and iPads, for two consecutive days and number two on the Google Play Store.


title: Power Rangers (film)

text: "Power Rangers" was released on Digital HD on June 13, 2017, and was followed by a release on DVD, Blu-ray, and Ultra HD Blu-ray on June 27, 2017 with retail exclusive variants being made available at Best Buy,<ref name="Power Rangers Best buy Blu-Ray/DVD Combo Review"></ref> Target and Wal-Mart. The film debuted at the No. 1 spot on the NPD VideoScan overall disc sales chart which tracks combined DVD and Blu-ray Disc sales; NPD's dedicated Blu-ray Disc sales chart; and Home Media Magazine's video rental chart for the week ending July 2, 2017. The film retained the top spot on the NPD VideoScan's overall disc sales chart for the week ending on July 9, 2017.


title: Power Rangers (film)

text: "Power Rangers" grossed $85.4 million in the United States and Canada, and $57 million in other territories, for a worldwide gross of $142.3 million, against a production budget of $100 million. The film lost the studio an estimated $74 million, when factoring in all revenues and expenses.


title: Power Rangers (film)

text: In the United States and Canada, "Power Rangers" opened alongside "Life", "CHiPs" and "Wilson", and was projected to gross $30–35 million from 3,693 theaters on its opening weekend. The film made $3.6 million from Thursday night previews and $15 million on its first day. It went on to debut to $40.3 million, finishing second at the box office behind "Beauty and the Beast" ($90.4 million). The audience was notably diverse and mostly 18–34 years old. In its second weekend the film grossed $14.5 million (a drop of 64%), finishing fourth at the box office. In June 2017, Dean Israelite said that the film's PG-13 rating probably contributed to the film's underperformance at the box office.


title: Power Rangers (film)

text: "Power Rangers" received mixed reviews from critics. On review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of based on reviews, and an average rating of . The site's critical consensus reads, ""Power Rangers" has neither the campy fun of its TV predecessor nor the blockbuster action of its cinematic superhero competitors, and sadly never quite manages to shift into turbo for some good old-fashioned morphin time." On Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating, the film has a score 44 out of 100, based on 30 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "A" on an A+ to F scale, while PostTrak reported 66% of audience members gave the film a "definite recommend".


title: Power Rangers (film)

text: IGN gave the film a 7/10, saying, ""Power Rangers" doesn’t quite pull off everything it wants to, but it’s a fun time at the theater nonetheless." Mike McCahill of "The Guardian" wrote that "the film achieves a functioning mediocrity we perhaps might have thought beyond this franchise," and gave it 2 out of 5 stars.


title: Power Rangers (film)

text: Mike Ryan of "Uproxx" gave the film a negative review, writing: ""Power Rangers" has one of the most zig-zagged tones of any big budget studio film I’ve seen in a long time. It’s jarring at times how often it goes back and forth between 'gritty' and 'silly'." Writing for "Variety", Owen Gleiberman also criticized the film's conflicting tones, saying: "...25 years ago, "Mighty Morphin Power Rangers" was launched as superhero fodder for kids, and there was indeed a place for it, but we’re now so awash in superhero culture that kids no longer need the safe, lame, pandering junior-league version of it. They can just watch "Ant-Man" or the PG-13 "Suicide Squad". Safe, lame, and pandering have all grown up." In a review for "The Telegraph", Robbie Collin gave it one star out of five, criticizing the "abjectly embarrassing frenzy of product placement".


title: Power Rangers (film)

text: The film was nominated in six categories at the 2017 Teen Choice Awards, the film for Choice Sci-Fi Movie, Dacre Montgomery for Choice Sci-Fi Movie Actor, Becky G. and Naomi Scott for Choice Sci-Fi Movie Actress, RJ Cyler for Choice Scene Stealer, and Elizabeth Banks for Choice Movie Villain.


title: Power Rangers (film)

text: In a May 2016 conference call to analysts, Lionsgate CEO Jon Feltheimer stated, "We could see doing five or six or seven." On March 22, 2017, Haim Saban said that he and Lionsgate already have a six-film story arc. However, in May 2017, "Forbes" noted that due to the underwhelming performance of the film in most markets, it was unlikely any sequels would be made. Later that same month, it was reported that the sequels could still be made thanks to record-breaking merchandise sales. Prior to the home release of the movie, Israelite confirmed that talks were taking place regarding a sequel and that he would like to include Lord Zedd and Tommy Oliver (Green Ranger) in it. The possibility of a sequel increased once more in early July 2017 when it was reported that the film held the number one spot in home media sales and rentals in its first week. In August 2017, Saban abandoned its trademark for the film's logo. A Saban Brands representative stated in October 2017 that "Power Rangers continues to own and renew hundreds of trademark registrations worldwide, including for the 2017 movie logo. The trademark registration process is very nuanced, and the status of the single application has no bearing on our ownership of or the future plans for Power Rangers. The franchise remains as strong and enthusiastic about its future as ever." On May 1, 2018, Saban Brands agreed to sell Power Rangers and other entertainment assets to Hasbro for US$522 million in cash and stock with the sale expected to closed in the second quarter.


title: Power Rangers (film)

text: On August 8, 2018, Hasbro announced they would be working with a film studio to develop a follow-up to "Power Rangers". In February 2019, Hasbro CEO Brian Goldner announced in a financial call that Hasbro was in talks with Paramount Pictures to produce the sequel.


title: Power Rangers (film)

text: On July 11, 2019, in the AMA thread on the "Stranger Things" subreddit, Dacre Montgomery revealed that the studio had plans to produce a second reboot, without him, the rest of the cast or the director returning. On December 13, 2019, it was reported that Jonathan Entwistle is in early negotiations to direct the reboot, with Patrick Burleigh being set to write the script. The plot will reportedly involve time travel and will be set in the 1990s. On October 20, 2020, It was announced that Entwistle will work on the reboot with Hasbro and eOne as he will be overseeing, and directing, both film and television adaptations and the next week, "Deadline" reported that Bryan Edward Hill will write the script for the reboot.


title: LP (singer)

text: Laura Pergolizzi (born March 18, 1981), known professionally as LP, is an American singer and songwriter. LP has released six albums and three EPs. LP has written songs for other artists including Cher, Rihanna, the Backstreet Boys, Leona Lewis, Mylène Farmer, Céline Dion and Christina Aguilera.


title: LP (singer)

text: Pergolizzi was born in 1981 on Long Island, to an Italian father and mother, her paternal grandfather coming from Palermo and grandmother from Naples, Italy. Pergolizzi adopted the stage name "LP" after moving to New York City.


title: LP (singer)

text: David Lowery of the band Cracker saw LP performing and featured her on "Cinderella", a hidden track on the band's 1998 album, "Gentleman's Blues". Lowery followed up by producing LP's debut album "Heart-Shaped Scar", released in 2001 through Koch Records. LP's second album, "Suburban Sprawl & Alcohol", was released in June 2004 through Lightswitch Records. On the record, she collaborated with songwriter and music producer Linda Perry. However, in spite of extensive touring to promote the release and positive reviews from music critics, the album failed to gain widespread recognition.


title: LP (singer)

text: In 2006, LP appeared at the music conference South by Southwest and reportedly sparked a bidding war amongst major music labels, eventually being signed by L.A. Reid to his The Island Def Jam Music Group record label, part of the Universal Music Group. However, due to artistic differences, LP left the contract. She signed with SoBe Entertainment in 2007, an independent record label, with the album tracks they have written at the major label. "Love Will Keep You Up All Night", one of the tracks they had written at The Island Def Jam Music Group with Billy Mann, was released in late 2007 on the Backstreet Boys album, "Unbreakable". LP wrote and performed "Wasted", from the album "Suburban Sprawl & Alcohol". "Wasted" was used as the theme song for the TV series "South of Nowhere", which aired on Noggin's teen block, The N. MTV's "The Hills" also featured LP's song "Damage Is Done" in mid-2010, and it was released on iTunes.


title: LP (singer)

text: During 2009, LP started writing songs for other artists, including several songs which ended up on Heidi Montag's album, "Superficial" released by Warner Music Group. LP co-wrote the single, "More Is More", as well as the album tracks, "Twisted", "Hey Boy" and "Love It or Leave It". She also co-wrote other tracks for and with Montag, such as the Cathy Dennis co-written, "Look How I'm Doin'", "I Do This" and "Who's That Girl". A song LP wrote with Alexander Kronlund, "Standing Where You Left Me", was released on Erik Hassle's debut UK album, "Pieces" released by Island Records and Republic Records. LP moved to Los Angeles in 2010.


title: LP (singer)

text: In August 2010, it was announced that LP had signed with RedOne's record label, 2011 Records. LP landed her first major breakthrough as a songwriter, co-writing Rihanna's song, "Cheers (Drink to That)", featured on Rihanna's fifth studio album "Loud", released on November 12, 2010, on Def Jam Recordings. "Cheers" features a vocal hook performed by LP (taken from Avril Lavigne's "I'm with You"). In a 2010 interview with MTV News, Rihanna said: "I love that song ("Cheers"). That is one of my favorite songs on the album. It makes you feel like celebrating. It gives you a great feeling inside like you want to go out and have a drink. ... People can't wait for the weekend." LP's major label songwriting breakthroughs continued, and she co-wrote "Beautiful People", performed by Christina Aguilera. The song is featured on the "Burlesque: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack" album, which was released on November 22, 2010, through RCA Records.


title: LP (singer)

text: In June 2011, LP co-wrote "Afraid to Sleep", which was performed by NBC's "The Voice" finalist Vicci Martinez and reached #10 on the iTunes Top Singles Chart. In September 2011, LP signed a deal with Warner Bros. Records. Shortly after, "Into the Wild", written and performed by LP, was prominently used in a Citibank national television advertisement campaign. In April 2012, LP released her first major label album, "", a five-song live extended play, and started touring extensively including festivals such as SXSW, Bonnaroo, Lollapalooza, Bumbershoot, Tropfest as well as Tokyo's Sonic Boom and London's Hyde Park. In 2012, LP became the first female Martin Guitar ambassador.


title: LP (singer)

text: In May 2012, LP was featured as the Artist of the Week in "Vogue" magazine. Over the following two years, she completed the recording of their album that included collaborations with Billy Steinberg, Isabella "Machine" Summers (from Florence and the Machine), Josh Alexander, Claude Kelly, Justyn Pilbrow, Carl Ryden and Rob Kleiner. The album was produced by Rob Cavallo, Warner Bros. Records' chairman and producer. On April 1, 2014, it was announced that LP's third full-length studio album would be titled "Forever for Now" and was scheduled to be released on June 3, 2014. The album was promoted by the lead single "Night Like This". Following the album, a second single, "Someday", was released in June 2014 in Canada. On September 16, 2014, a music video for "Tokyo Sunrise" officially premiered on "Time" magazine's website.


title: LP (singer)

text: In September 2015, the song "Muddy Waters" was released as the first single from LP's fourth studio album "Lost on You". In November 2015 one of LP's best known songs, "Lost on You" was released to great success.


title: LP (singer)

text: In June 2016, "Muddy Waters" featured in the closing scene of the season four finale of Netflix's original series "Orange Is the New Black". It was also featured in the trailer for the NBC show "Shades of Blue". "Muddy Waters" clarifies the ending of season 5, episode 4 of Starz "Power". In November, the album's eponymous second single was released, while LP held a residency at the No Vacancy club. Both songs originate from a collaboration with Mike Del Rio. An EP titled "Death Valley" was released on June 17, 2016.


title: LP (singer)

text: The song "Hi Ho Nobody Home" by David Baerwald featuring LP was used in an episode of "Mr. Mercedes".


title: LP (singer)

text: In 2017 LP performed the song "Back Where I Belong" (Otto Knows featuring Avicii) for episode 5 of season 2 of Netflix's original series "Sense8".


title: LP (singer)

text: LP duets with Mylène Farmer on the single , released on June 22. The single immediately hit number 1 on the French iTunes chart upon release. The track is the second single from Farmer's upcoming studio album, .


title: LP (singer)

text: On June 15, 2018, LP announced on her Facebook page that she had been working on a new album. A day later, the first track from the record, "Girls Go Wild" was released. 'Recovery' was released later. A Genius annotation for 'Girls Go Wild' was released on the 17 August 2018.


title: LP (singer)

text: In June 2019, LP gave an exclusive interview to "ÖMC Dergi (Dergi)", Turkey's biggest digital music magazine, as part of the promotion of the new album "Heart to Mouth", and became the cover star of a magazine for the first time in Turkey. LP performed three big concerts in Istanbul, İzmir, Ankara, respectively, in Turkey after giving an interview to the magazine.


title: LP (singer)

text: Sharing the cover photo of ÖMC Dergi, which introduced their album for the first time and gave an interview, LP posted on all her social media accounts, "Interview + Cover Artist for June!! Ankara - See you Soon!" The director and photographer Darren Craig took the photoshoot for the ÖMC Dergi - June 2019 issue of the LP.


title: LP (singer)

text: "How Low Can You Go" and "The One That You Love" were released in 2020. "One Last Time", "Goodbye", and "Angles" were released in 2021. All five songs were released as singles for the album "Churches", which was released on December 3 that year.


title: LP (singer)

text: October 2022- LP was featured on the song 'Line It Up' released by American band Palaye Royale in their new album Fever Dream.


title: LP (singer)

text: LP identifies as a lesbian, and said in a 2016 interview: "It's not important to prove myself as a lesbian. But nevertheless visibility is important. We are normal people just like anybody else."


title: LP (singer)

text: LP wrote the song "Lost on You" after her breakup with actress Tamzin Brown, and was in a relationship with American singer-songwriter Lauren Ruth Ward, who appears in the music video.


title: LP (singer)

text: LP identifies as gender-neutral, stating in an interview: "I go by 'she' and 'her', but I honestly don't love it. But it would take me out of my life too much to insist on 'they'. But I respect people doing it." She also stated she is "equally comfortable" being considered a "garden variety lesbian woman." As of 2022, LP's official bio uses 'she' pronouns.


title: Austin Powers

text: Austin Powers is a series of American spy action comedy films: "" (1997), "" (1999) and "Austin Powers in Goldmember" (2002). The films were produced and written by Mike Myers, who also starred as the title character and Dr. Evil. They were directed by Jay Roach and distributed by New Line Cinema.


title: Austin Powers

text: The franchise parodies numerous films and characters, including the "James Bond" series and "Jason King", and incorporates myriad other elements of popular culture as it follows a British spy's quest to bring his nemesis down. The character of Powers represents an archetype of 1960s Swinging London, with his advocacy of free love, his use of obscure impressions and his clothing style.


title: Austin Powers

text: The films poke fun at the outrageous plots, rampant sexual innuendo, and two dimensional stock characters associated with 1960s spy films.


title: Austin Powers

text: The general theme of the films is that the arch villain Dr. Evil plots to extort large sums of money from governments or international bodies but is constantly thwarted by Powers, and (to a degree) his own inexperience with life and culture in the 1990s.


title: Austin Powers

text: In "Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery", Austin and Dr. Evil are awakened after being placed in cryonic suspension for thirty years. Continuing to incorporate cultural elements of the 1960s and 1970s, "Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me" and "Austin Powers in Goldmember" feature time travel as a plot device and deliberately overlook inconsistencies. A proposed fourth film, "Austin Powers 4", has reportedly been in development since 2005, but has since been stalled.


title: Austin Powers

text: Myers himself has stated in interviews that the idea for "Austin Powers" came to him one night while driving home from ice hockey practice. Hearing the song "The Look of Love" by Burt Bacharach on his car radio, he wondered "Where have all the swingers gone?" and conceived the character who would become Austin Powers.


title: Austin Powers

text: In an interview in November 2018 with "Access Hollywood", Myers stated, "After my dad died in 1991, I was taking stock of his influence on me as a person and his influence on me with comedy in general. So Austin Powers was a tribute to my father, who [introduced me to] James Bond, Peter Sellers, The Beatles, The Goodies, Peter Cook and Dudley Moore."


title: Austin Powers

text: The Austin Powers character first appeared in the band Ming Tea, with Myers as Powers, Susanna Hoffs as Jillian Shagwell, and Matthew Sweet as Sid Belvedere. Myers' wife Robin Ruzan said Myers should write a movie based on Powers.


title: Austin Powers

text: The first phrase he thought the character might say was "Do I make you horny?", which later did indeed become a catchphrase for the character. He has also disclosed that the character also draws on his recollections of former Radio Caroline DJ Simon Dee, who hosted the first real television chat show in the United Kingdom in 1967, which ended with his driving off in a sports car with a young blonde in the passenger seat. An important inspiration for the series is British super spy James Bond. Myers said of Bond, "I can't even tell you how huge it was in our house ... That's really why I wanted to do Austin Powers. Austin Powers is out of pure love for James Bond."


title: Austin Powers

text: Though Myers is Canadian by birth, his parents are natives of Liverpool, England, and Myers holds dual nationality. Although the films parody the plots and characters of 1960s spy movies and the Swinging London fashion scene of the era, the humour is influenced by Myers's British heritage, particularly the "Carry On" films and the comedic works of Benny Hill and Peter Sellers, the latter of whom Myers is a self confessed fan (his favorite films being the Bond spoof "Casino Royale" and "The Party").


title: Austin Powers

text: Powers' bad teeth were created by Los Angeles dental technician Gary Archer. Myers came to Archer and told him, "I want bad British 1960s teeth", based on a widely-held stereotype. Archer took pictures of expat patrons at an English pub that he frequented in the San Fernando Valley, made sketches, and showed Myers the design. Myers told him that he had "nailed it".


title: Austin Powers

text: Influences from Sellers' films are apparent throughout the series; the character of Austin Powers reflects the inspiration of Sellers' portrayal of the character Robert Danvers in the 1970 film "There's a Girl in My Soup". Myers states Powers' dandyish appearance was also inspired by that of Jason King – the adventurous character (played by Peter Wyngarde) from the ITV Spy fi series "Department S" who was featured in the eponymous spin off series. Myers was also influenced by the comedy troupe Monty Python, with film critic Robbie Collin writing "the "Austin Powers" series chugs along on Pythonisms."


title: Austin Powers

text: Other obviously apparent influences are the BBC's "Adam Adamant Lives!" television series, whose protagonist was a Victorian era spy, who was frozen in 1902, and then revived in the year 1966; The 1965 James Bond parody "Dr. Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine", in which a mad scientist builds a small army of attractive female robots; the Matt Helm series of film starring Dean Martin; The Beatles films, "The Monkees" television series, and the "cocktail party" skits from "Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In". Powers was also influenced by the secret agent Harry Palmer (played by Michael Caine in three films, beginning with the 1965 film "The Ipcress File"), especially Caine's thick horn-rimmed glasses. Caine himself starred in "Austin Powers in Goldmember" (2002), with his portrayal of Nigel Powers, father of Austin Powers, spoofing Harry Palmer.


title: Austin Powers

text: The series featured two cars number plates "SWINGER" and "SWINGER2" and collectively dubbed the "Shaguars" that were portrayed by a 1961 Jaguar E-Type and a 2001 Jaguar XK8 convertible, with a Union Jack paint scheme. The Ministry of Defence creates two cars to transport Powers through time: a psychedelic rainbow painted 1999 Volkswagen "New Beetle" convertible in the second film, and a purple 1975 Cadillac Eldorado Fleetwood "pimpmobile" (number plate "SWNGR 3") in the third.


title: Austin Powers

text: In the second film, Felicity Shagwell drives a 1965 Chevrolet Corvette with an American flag paint scheme. In the third Nigel Powers has a 2001 Mini Cooper – able to travel underwater, and which bears the number plate "GR8 SHAG".


title: Austin Powers

text: HBO purchased the rights to produce an animated series based on the "Austin Powers" films in May 1999. Despite announcing plans for a thirteen episode season, HBO ultimately shelved the project.


title: Austin Powers

text: In October 2005, in an interview with "Entertainment Weekly", Mike Myers discussed the possibility of studio sources moving forward with a fourth film: "There is hope! We're all circling and talking to each other. I miss doing the characters."


title: Austin Powers

text: In May 2007, in an interview with IGN, "So no more "Austin Powers"?" was asked, and Myers replied, "No, no, there is a fully conceived idea for a fourth and I can just say that it's from Dr. Evil's point of view. So if you balanced how much of it was Austin with Dr. Evil, it's more about Dr. Evil than Austin". Also, in the audio commentary from the DVD release of "Austin Powers in Goldmember", Myers revealed that in the fourth film, Fat Bastard would return and regain the weight that he lost in "Goldmember".


title: Austin Powers

text: In May 2007, at the "Shrek the Third" premiere, Mike Myers announced that a fourth "Austin Powers" film was planned, but that it would focus more on Dr. Evil rather than Austin. He also said that he'd start work on it after he started work on "The Love Guru", which became a box office bomb. In February 2008, it was announced that Jay Roach would return as director. In April 2008, it was reported that Gisele Bündchen had been offered a role in the film.


title: Austin Powers

text: However, Seth Green, who played Scott Evil, stated that there was no script at the moment and that "Austin Powers 4" would be made if a script is written and approved. In June 2008, in an interview, when asked about another "Austin Powers" film, Myers stated, "I have an idea, and again it's one of those things that will emerge or it won't." In July 2008, Mike Myers stated that he had begun writing "Austin Powers 4", and that the plot is "really about Dr. Evil and his son."


title: Austin Powers

text: In March 2010, Jay Roach indicated to MTV that Myers is working on ideas for a fourth film. In August 2011, Mike Myers revealed he would return, and had begun writing a script for a fourth installment. In September 2013, when asked about the future of "Austin Powers", Myers answered "I'm still figuring that out." In September 2015, Verne Troyer expressed his desire to return as Mini-Me if he was asked to do so.


title: Austin Powers

text: In May 2016, Roach was asked about the fourth "Austin Powers" film during an interview with Larry King, and he stated the ideas for the fourth film that he and Myers have are good and interesting. In August 2016, in a telephone interview, Mike Myers stated "Everything is being negotiated and worked out and all that stuff" regarding the fourth installment of the "Austin Powers" film series.


title: Austin Powers

text: In April 2017, as the twentieth anniversary approached for "", Mike Myers claimed, "I would love to do another, but you just have to see". Two days later, Roach stated that a fourth film would only occur if Myers creates a good story for it. In May 2017, Troyer stated that Mini-Me would reveal that he can speak in the fourth movie. On April 5, 2018, Myers reprised his role as Dr. Evil on a segment of "The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon" complaining about having been dismissed from a Cabinet post in the Trump administration, raising speculation that a fourth film was in development. Following the death of Verne Troyer on April 21, 2018, questions have been raised about the potential for a fourth film without the character of Mini-Me, or with the part recast. Roach claimed in an interview that a fourth "Austin Powers" film may not be possible without Troyer.


title: Austin Powers

text: In May 2018, Myers reiterated his interest in making a fourth "Austin Powers", stating that it would be fun, also hinting that some tribute to Troyer might be included. In November 2018, Myers stated that the project's future is "looking good" with the script already written and that Austin Powers and Dr. Evil will return soon, citing his parenthood as the reason for how long the production has lasted and that Roach will most likely reprise his directorial duties.


title: Austin Powers

text: In January 2020, Jay Roach again indicated that he was interested in doing a fourth film. In February 2022, Myers told "The Today Show" he "would love to do" a fourth "Austin Powers" movie but could "neither confirm nor deny" whether it would be made.


title: Austin Powers

text: In October 2022, Mike Myers stated on the Tonight Show that he would "love" to make another Austin Powers film, citing parenting as the main reason as to why the film has not yet been made.


title: Kayleigh McEnany

text: Kayleigh McEnany (; born April 18, 1988) is an American conservative political commentator and author who served the administration of Donald Trump as the 33rd White House press secretary from April 2020 to January 2021.


title: Kayleigh McEnany

text: Early in the 2016 Republican Party presidential primaries, she was a critic of Donald Trump, but over time became known as one of his staunchest defenders. In 2017, she was appointed national spokesperson for the Republican National Committee. She worked for the Trump 2020 presidential campaign as national press secretary from 2019 to 2020 and again as senior advisor from October 2020 to January 2021.


title: Kayleigh McEnany

text: McEnany began her media career as a producer for "Huckabee" on Fox News. She later worked as a commentator on CNN. Following the Trump administration, she became an on-air contributor for Fox News and serves as a co-host of "Outnumbered".


title: Kayleigh McEnany

text: McEnany was born on April 18, 1988, in Tampa, Florida and was raised in Tampa. She is the daughter of commercial roofing company owner Michael and Leanne McEnany. McEnany attended the Academy of the Holy Names, a private Catholic preparatory school in Tampa. After graduating, she majored in international politics at Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service in Washington, D.C. and she studied abroad at St Edmund Hall, Oxford. While at Oxford, she was taught politics by future British Labour politician Nick Thomas-Symonds. After graduating from Georgetown, McEnany spent three years as a producer on the "Mike Huckabee Show".


title: Kayleigh McEnany

text: McEnany attended the University of Miami School of Law for one year before transferring to Harvard Law School after completing her first (1L) year at the University of Miami. At the Miami School of Law, McEnany was a recipient of the Bruce J. Winick Award for Excellence, a scholarship awarded to students in the top 1% of their class. She graduated from Harvard in 2016.


title: Kayleigh McEnany

text: As a college student, McEnany interned for several politicians, including Tom Gallagher, Adam Putnam and George W. Bush, and later worked in the White House Office of Communications, where she wrote media briefings.


title: Kayleigh McEnany

text: While in law school, McEnany appeared on CNN as a paid commentator. She supported Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election. However, in early 2015, before becoming a Trump supporter, McEnany was highly critical of him, declaring on CNN and Fox Business that "Donald Trump has shown himself to be a showman" and it was "unfortunate" and "inauthentic" to call him a Republican. McEnany called his comments about Mexican immigrants "racist". According to Michael Marcantonio, a fellow summer associate at a law firm, she began supporting Trump after accepting Marcantonio's advice, which he gave to her over cocktails. In an interview with the New York Times, Marcantonio recalled telling McEnany, "Donald Trump is going to be your nominee," and that if "a smart, young, blond Harvard graduate" wanted "to get on television and have a career as a political pundit, you would be wise to be an early backer."


title: Kayleigh McEnany

text: On August 5, 2017, McEnany left her position at CNN. The following day, she hosted a 90-second webcast, "Real News Update" on Trump's personal Facebook page. She praised Trump throughout the segment, saying she had brought the "real news" to the American people.


title: Kayleigh McEnany

text: Former employer Mike Huckabee has called her a "meticulous researcher" and "extraordinarily prepared." Her rapid occupational success was noted by Van Jones, CNN commentator and liberal activist who worked with her at CNN. "I'm not trying to defend the messaging, but what I hope people can acknowledge is there's very few people in either party who can accomplish what Kayleigh has accomplished in such a short time... People keep taking her lightly, and they keep regretting it."


title: Kayleigh McEnany

text: McEnany has been closely associated with the Republican Party since she was in college. She was critical of the Obama presidency, and in 2012 posted several tweets questioning Barack Obama's birthplace, echoing the "birther" conspiracy theorist movement. In 2012, McEnany tweeted about Obama's half-brother Malik Obama, who lives in Kenya: "How I Met Your Brother – Never mind, forgot he's still in that hut in Kenya".


title: Kayleigh McEnany

text: In 2017, she responded to claims it was hypocritical of Trump to visit his golf course while president by mistakenly claiming that Obama rushed off to a golf game after the 2002 beheading of Daniel Pearl. Obama was a state senator at the time of Pearl's murder. McEnany later apologized for the comment, noting that Obama went golfing after the 2014 murder of another journalist, James Foley, who was beheaded by ISIS in Syria. Obama, who was vacationing on Martha's Vineyard at the time, admitted that he should have "anticipated the optics" of golfing immediately after making a press statement on Foley's death.


title: Kayleigh McEnany

text: On August 7, 2017, the Republican National Committee (RNC) appointed McEnany as its national spokesperson. In 2017, as RNC spokeswoman, McEnany supported Trump amid a bipartisan backlash in response to his comments about a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in which he suggested that white supremacists and anti-racist counterprotesters shared blame for violence; in a tweet, McEnany wrote that the Republican Party supported Trump's "message of love and inclusiveness."


title: Kayleigh McEnany

text: In the weeks before her appointment as White House press secretary, McEnany praised Trump's handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, saying, "This president will always put America first, he will always protect American citizens. We will not see diseases like the coronavirus come here, we will not see terrorism, and isn't that refreshing when contrasting it with the awful presidency of Barack Obama?" The disease had been present in the United States for at least a month prior to McEnany's claim that the virus would not "come here"; in December 2020 "Politico" named McEnany's prediction one of "the most audacious, confident and spectacularly incorrect prognostications about the year". In March 2020, McEnany said Democrats were trying "to politicize" the coronavirus and that Democrats were almost "rooting for this outcome."


title: Kayleigh McEnany

text: In the weeks following, McEnany was criticized for her remarks. Author Grant Stern tweeted, "Kayleigh McEnany is coming to the White House with new 'alternative facts' about #coronavirus. The rest of the world calls them lies." McEnany responded that she was referring to Trump's travel ban.


title: Kayleigh McEnany

text: After Mark Meadows replaced Mick Mulvaney as White House chief of staff in April 2020, Meadows's first personnel change was hiring McEnany as White House press secretary on April 7, 2020, which was officially announced the next day. Stephanie Grisham, who had served in the role and as White House communications director since June 2019, became First Lady Melania Trump's chief of staff and spokesperson.


title: Kayleigh McEnany

text: Two months into her tenure, the Associated Press wrote of McEnany, she "has made clear from her first briefing that she's willing to defend her boss's view of himself as well as his most flagrant misstatements."


title: Kayleigh McEnany

text: In April 2020, McEnany defended Trump's assertion that the World Health Organization had shown a "clear bias towards China" and said that the WHO put Americans at risk by "repeating inaccurate claims peddled by China during the coronavirus pandemic" and "opposing the United States' life-saving travel restrictions."


title: Kayleigh McEnany

text: On May 1, 2020, as part of her first public press briefing and the first one by a White House press secretary in 417 days, McEnany was asked by an Associated Press reporter: "Will you pledge to never lie to us from that podium?" McEnany replied: "I will never lie to you. You have my word on that." On the subject of Trump's responses to the coronavirus pandemic, she claimed, "This president has always sided on the side of data". In response to allegations of Trump's sexual misconduct, McEnany said: "He has always told the truth." McEnany falsely claimed that the Mueller Report as part of the larger investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 Presidential election had resulted in a "complete and total exoneration of President Trump," despite the report reading "Accordingly, while this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him."


title: Kayleigh McEnany

text: Amid reports on May 8, 2020, that the White House was "shelving" the release of COVID-19 re-opening guidelines, McEnany said that the guidelines had not been approved by Robert Redfield, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Following Associated Press reports that Redfield had previously cleared the release of the guidance, Redfield addressed the issue personally, saying that the documents were still in "draft form" and had been released for "interagency review", not for public dissemination. That same week, Obama, in a private phone call with members of his former administration, described the Trump administration's response to the coronavirus crisis as "an absolute chaotic disaster". McEnany responded the next day by providing a statement to CNN claiming that, to the contrary, the "response has been unprecedented and saved American lives."


title: Kayleigh McEnany

text: In May 2020, McEnany defended Trump's false accusation that Joe Scarborough had a person murdered, offering no evidence in support of the accusation. The same month, McEnany defended claims that Trump made about the dangers of vote by mail, repeating his inaccurate claims that vote by mail has a "high propensity for voter fraud." McEnany herself has voted by mail 11 times in 10 years.


title: Kayleigh McEnany

text: In June 2020, she defended the decision by the Trump administration to forcibly remove peaceful protestors using smoke canisters, pepper balls, riot shields, batons, officers on horseback and rubber bullets so that Trump could stage a photo op in front of St. John's Episcopal Church, Lafayette Square in Washington. She likened Trump's action to that of Winston Churchill walking the streets to survey bomb damage during World War II. When General Jim Mattis, former secretary of defense in the Trump administration, condemned Trump's action, McEnany described Mattis' comments as "little more than a self-promotional stunt to appease the DC elite."


title: Kayleigh McEnany

text: On September 9, 2020, news agencies released the audio recordings of interviews with Trump that former "Washington Post" journalist Bob Woodward had conducted in February and March 2020 for his book "Rage", in which Trump acknowledged to Woodward that he was intentionally downplaying the severity of the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus, which CNN had obtained ahead of the book's September 15, 2020 release. In the wake of this development, McEnany falsely asserted, "The president never downplayed the virus." In fact, Trump repeatedly and publicly downplayed the risk of the virus and the severity of the pandemic, and in a recorded March 19, 2020 interview with Woodward said, "I wanted to always play it down. I still like playing it down, because I don't want to create a panic." In response to McEnany's comment, "Washington Post" media critic Erik Wemple wrote that she had sacrificed her credibility; while Joe Lockhart, who served as White House Press Secretary during the Clinton administration, wrote her answers confirmed her as a "state propagandist".


title: Kayleigh McEnany

text: On October 5, 2020, McEnany tested positive for COVID-19. Even though she had interacted with individuals who had been diagnosed with coronavirus days prior, McEnany on several occasions spoke with the press while not wearing a mask before she ultimately tested positive for the coronavirus. Among McEnany's staff members to also test positive for COVID-19 was Chad Gilmartin, the cousin of McEnany's husband.


title: Kayleigh McEnany

text: While ballots were still being counted on election day, McEnany made an early false declaration of victory for Trump. After Joe Biden won the election and Trump refused to concede, McEnany spread false claims of fraud in the 2020 election. On November 20, 2020, McEnany falsely claimed Trump was not given an "orderly transition of power". Previously in 2016, within two days of Trump's victory, his opponent Hillary Clinton conceded to Trump, while then-President Barack Obama had recognized Trump as president-elect and hosted him at the White House. Trump himself thanked Obama and his wife Michelle "for their gracious aid throughout this transition". Trump fired the leader of his transition team (Chris Christie), threw out months of transition planning, and rejected help from the Obama administration. McEnany's comment was stated while Trump himself was refusing to recognize Biden's victory as legitimate; Trump was also actively delaying the start of a transfer of power to president-elect Biden for two weeks.


title: Kayleigh McEnany

text: Following the 2021 storming of the United States Capitol, Randall Lane, writing for "Forbes", warned corporations against hiring McEnany or other people "who lied for Trump", stating that ""Forbes" will assume that everything your company or firm talks about is a lie. We're going to scrutinize, double-check, investigate with the same skepticism we'd approach a Trump tweet. Want to ensure the world's biggest business media brand approaches you as a potential funnel of disinformation? Then hire away."


title: Kayleigh McEnany

text: On March 2, 2021, McEnany joined Fox News as an on-air contributor. She was later named co-host of "Outnumbered", alongside Harris Faulkner and Emily Compagno.


title: Kayleigh McEnany

text: McEnany married Sean Gilmartin, a pitcher in Major League Baseball, in November 2017. The couple have one daughter who was born in November 2019. Due to a BRCA mutation that put her at high risk of developing breast cancer, McEnany underwent a preventive double mastectomy in 2018.


title: Vishal (actor)

text: Vishal Krishna Reddy (born 29 August 1977), also known as Vishal, is an Indian actor and film producer from Tamil cinema. The younger son of film producer G. K. Reddy, Vishal studied Visual Communications at Loyola College, Chennai. Best known for his roles in action films, he produces films under his production company, Vishal Film Factory.


title: Vishal (actor)

text: Vishal made an entrance into the film industry as an assistant director for Arjun. He then became an actor and played his first lead role in the romantic thriller "Chellamae" (2004), before acting in the action films "Sandakozhi", "Thimiru", "Thaamirabharani" and "Malaikottai". Vishal chose to create his own production studio and has since produced and worked on "Pandiya Naadu" (2013), "Naan Sigappu Manithan" (2014) and "Poojai" (2014).


title: Vishal (actor)

text: Vishal was elected as the General Secretary of the Nadigar Sangam in October 2015 after initiating a movement against the previous committee. He was expelled from Tamil Film Producers' Council (TFPC) for remarks against the council. Later in April 2017, he won the election as President of Tamil Film Producers Council.


title: Vishal (actor)

text: Vishal Krishna Reddy was born on 29 August 1977 into a Telugu family in Chennai, Tamil Nadu. His father GK Reddy is a businessman and a film producer for Telugu and Tamil films. His elder brother Vikram Krishna is also an actor and producer who has produced several of Vishal's films.


title: Vishal (actor)

text: Vishal did his schooling at Don Bosco Matriculation Higher Secondary School, Chennai. He was then graduated in visual communications from the Loyola College, Chennai.


title: Vishal (actor)

text: Vishal assisted actor-director Arjun Sarja in his venture "Vedham" (2001), and a producer spotted Vishal on the sets of the film and signed him to appear in an acting role in Gandhi Krishna's "Chellamae" (2004). Accepting the role, Vishal prepared by joining Koothu-P-Pattarai to hone his acting skills and played the protagonist role of Raghunandan, whose wife is kidnapped by her childhood friend. A critic described his performance is "apt" but "there was plenty left to hone". His next film was "Sandakozhi" (2005) with N. Linguswamy, who had previously worked with his father's production house as an assistant director. Vishal was described to have "improved from his "Chellamae" days" and "clicked as an action hero". Film journalists stated that he was "the fastest rising action hero" of the time. After a cameo as himself in Sasi's "Dishyum" (2006), he went on to appear in Tarun Gopi's action film "Thimiru" (2006). The film opened to mixed reviews with Vishal being praised for his intense performance with a critic calling his performance "the film's only strength and, to an extent, making up for the weak script and poor characterisation". The film became Vishal's third consecutive commercial success, and he began to emerge in Tamil films.


title: Vishal (actor)

text: His next film, the political action drama "Sivappathigaram" (2006), directed by Karu Pazhaniappan was a failure financially despite favourable reviews. His next film was released in January 2007, Hari's multi-starring family action drama "Thaamirabharani" (2007) and the film went on to gain considerable box office success, carrying good reports amidst other big budget releases. Later in the year, he appeared in Boopathy Pandian's "Malaikottai" (2007), a comedy entertainer. In his first full-length comic role, Vishal received mixed feedback for his portrayal from critics, with Rediff stating that he is "a far cry from the rather endearing young man in Sandakozhi", whilst describing his performance as "cringe-able". Behindwoods stated it as an "Average masala-mix entertainer". The film took a large opening and was declared a blockbuster, featuring in the top 10 at behindwoods box office. In the year 2008, for the first time, Vishal portrayed a police officer in "Sathyam", which became a commercial failure at the box office. Then both his films "Thoranai" (2009) and "Theeradha Vilaiyattu Pillai" (2010) were just average grossers. Additionally, the box-office duds, "Sathyam" and "Thoranai", both of which were bilingual in Tamil and Telugu, failed to establish his popularity in Telugu cinema.


title: Vishal (actor)

text: Vishal was then given the opportunity to feature in Bala's dark comedy "Avan Ivan" (2011), after being recommended to the director by his friend Arya. Portraying a village stage actor with a squint, Vishal had severe eye pain and headaches, and he also had a serious muscular injury on sets. The film opened to mixed reviews, though Vishal's performance won positive reviews. "Indiaglitz" stated that Vishal delivered an "award winning performance" and that his "mannerisms and body language give you goosebumps". The reviewer further cited that "Vishal's spontaneous response to his mentor's death in the movie is touching. His demonstration of "Navarasas" in front of actor Suriya will melt you in tears". Vishal played the role of a police officer in his following release "Vedi" (2011), directed by Prabhu Deva, which was declared an instant flop at the box office.


title: Vishal (actor)

text: In the 2013 film "Samar", Vishal played a forest trek guide. Behindwoods stated that he "rocks in the action sequences". Following a cameo role in "Theeya Velai Seiyyanum Kumaru", he starred in the action films "Pattathu Yaanai" and "Pandiya Naadu". The latter was Vishal's debut production venture, while the former was the film debut of Aishwarya Arjun, the daughter of Arjun Sarja. Vishal opted to produce and collaborate with Thiru for a third venture "Naan Sigappu Manithan" (2014), a revenge drama, in which his character had narcolepsy. To prepare for the lead role, Vishal read up and studied real life case studies of people with the disorder, citing that there were no references from cinema which he could watch and learn. Then he had acted under director Hari for the second time in "Poojai" (2014), which did somewhat good business at the box office. In 2015, he acted two films, namely, "Aambala" and "Paayum Puli".


title: Vishal (actor)

text: In 2016, he appeared in three movies; "Kathakali", "Marudhu" and "Kaththi Sandai". The first two were average grossers, while "Kaththi Sandai" became a flop at the box office. In January 2017, Vishal signed his debut Malayalam film, as the main antagonist in the Mohanlal-starrer "Villain", directed by B. Unnikrishnan. In September 2017, Vishal played a detective in "Thupparivaalan" directed by Mysskin which was loosely based on the British writer Arthur Conan Doyle's detective character, Sherlock Holmes. The film was a commercial success and was appreciated by audiences and critics. In 2018, Vishal had two major releases. The first one was "Irumbu Thirai" directed by newcomer P. S. Mithran which released in May 2018. And second was "Sandakozhi 2" released in October 2018 was written and directed by N. Linguswamy. A sequel to the successful "Sandakozhi" (2005), the film stars Vishal in his 25th film. The film turned out to be an average grosser. In 2019, he did one movie titled "Action" directed by Sundar C. The film received mixed reviews and was a box office failure. In 2021, he acted in the action thriller "Chakra" directed my newcomer M.S Anandan. The film which released on 19 February, received mixed reviews from critics and audience.


title: Vishal (actor)

text: He was elected as "President" of Tamil Film Producers Council election, which was held on 2 April 2017. Apart from this, Vishal is also a staunch advocate against online piracy since 2014, having started an anti-piracy cell.


title: Vishal (actor)

text: He made his television début in October 2018 as a host of "Sun Naam Oruvar", a talk show airing on Sun TV.


title: Vishal (actor)

text: Vishal filed his nomination as an independent candidate for the by-poll to Radhakrishnan Nagar constituency in Chennai, which fell vacant following Jayalalithaa's death in December 2017. But his nomination was rejected.


title: Vishal (actor)

text: Vishal was arrested by police in December 2018 when he tried to enter inside the Tamil Film Producers Council in T Nagar, Chennai by forcefully trying to break the lock. The council was locked by 300 film producers alleging that Vishal failed to fulfil his promises during the elections in 2015.


title: Vishal (actor)

text: Vishal made his debut as a playback singer in Madha Gaja Raja, an unreleased film directed by Sundar C, crapping up for the song My Dear Loveru.


title: Havana syndrome

text: Havana syndrome is an alleged set of medical symptoms with unknown causes experienced mostly abroad by U.S. government officials and military personnel. The symptoms range in severity from pain and ringing in the ears to cognitive difficulties and were first reported in 2016 by U.S. and Canadian embassy staff in Havana, Cuba. Beginning in 2017, more people, including U.S. intelligence and military personnel and their families, reported having these symptoms in other places, such as China, New Delhi, India, Europe, and Washington, D.C. The cause and validity of the illness have yet to be determined.


title: Havana syndrome

text: The U.S. Department of State, Department of Defense, and other federal entities have referred to the events as "Anomalous Health Incidents" (AHI), while Central Intelligence Agency director William Burns has publicly called them attacks. While there is no expert consensus on the syndrome's cause, an expert committee of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine concluded in December 2020 that microwave energy (specifically, directed pulsed RF energy) "appears to be the most plausible mechanism in explaining these cases among those that the committee considered", but that "each possible cause remains speculative". Other potential causes that have been proposed have included ultrasound, pesticides, or mass psychogenic illness.


title: Havana syndrome

text: The U.S. intelligence services have not reached a consensus on or a formal determination of the cause of Havana syndrome, though U.S. intelligence and government officials have expressed suspicions to the press that Russian military intelligence is responsible. In January 2022, the Central Intelligence Agency issued an interim assessment concluding that the syndrome is not the result of "a sustained global campaign by a hostile power". Foreign involvement was ruled out in 976 cases of the 1,000 reviewed. In February 2022, a panel of experts assembled by the Biden administration released an executive summary stating that stress or psychosomatic reactions could not explain some of the incidents of Havana syndrome it had reviewed, and that radio waves could have caused some of the injuries of the C.I.A. officers and diplomats. At roughly the same time, the State Department commissioned the JASON Advisory Group to investigate the cause. In February 2022, the State Department released the JASON report, which stated that it was unlikely that a directed energy attack had caused the health incidents.


title: Havana syndrome

text: In August 2017, reports began surfacing that American and Canadian diplomatic personnel in Cuba had experienced unusual, unexplained health problems dating to late 2016. As of June 2018, the number of American citizens experiencing symptoms was 26.


title: Havana syndrome

text: The original 21 events in Cuba were characterized as starting with strange grating noises coming from a specific direction. Some people experienced pressure, vibration, or a sensation comparable to driving a car with the window partly rolled down. These noises lasted from 20 seconds to 30 minutes and happened while the diplomats were either at home or in hotel rooms. Other people nearby (including family members and guests in neighboring rooms) did not experience the same symptoms.


title: Havana syndrome

text: Some U.S. embassy workers have experienced lasting health problems, including an unidentified diplomat who now needs a hearing aid. The U.S. State Department declared that the health problems were either the result of an attack or due to exposure to an unknown device and declared that it was not blaming the Cuban government and would not say who was to blame. Affected people described symptoms such as hearing loss, memory loss, and nausea. Speculation centered around a sonic weapon, with some researchers pointing to infrasound as a possible cause.


title: Havana syndrome

text: In August 2017, the United States expelled two Cuban diplomats in retaliation for perceived Cuban responsibility. The next month, the U.S. State Department stated that it was removing non-essential staff from the U.S. embassy and warned U.S. citizens not to travel to Cuba. In October 2017, President Donald Trump said he believed that Cuba was responsible for the occurrences, calling them a "very unusual attack".


title: Havana syndrome

text: In response to the incidents, the U.S. State Department announced in March 2018 that it would continue to staff its embassy in Havana at the minimum level required to perform "core diplomatic and consular functions"; the embassy had been operating under "ordered departure status" since September 2017, but the status was set to expire. This announcement served to extend the staff reductions indefinitely.


title: Havana syndrome

text: In January 2018, the Associated Press reported that a non-public FBI report found no evidence of an intentional sonic attack. A November 2018 report in the "New Yorker" found that the FBI's investigation into the incidents was stymied by conflict with the CIA and the State Department; the CIA was reluctant to reveal, even to other U.S. government agencies, the identities of affected officers because of concern about possible leaks. Federal rules on the privacy of employee medical records also hindered the investigation.


title: Havana syndrome

text: In January 2018, at the direction of Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, the State Department convened an accountability review board, which is "an internal State Department mechanism to review security incidents involving diplomatic personnel." Retired United States Ambassador to Libya Peter Bodde was chosen to lead the board.


title: Havana syndrome

text: In March 2018, MRI scans and other tests taken by a chief neurologist in Pittsburgh on an unspecified number of Canadian diplomats showed evidence of brain damage that mirrored the injuries some of their American counterparts had faced. In early 2018, Global Affairs Canada ended family postings to Cuba and withdrew all staff with families. Several of the Canadians who were affected in 2017 were reported to still be unable to resume their work due to the severity of their ailments. The lack of knowledge of the cause of Havana syndrome, , had made it challenging for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police to investigate.


title: Havana syndrome

text: In 2019, the Canadian government announced that it was reducing its embassy staff in Havana after a 14th Canadian diplomat reported symptoms of Havana syndrome in late December 2018. In February 2019, several Canadian diplomats sued the Canadian government, arguing that it failed to protect them or promptly address serious health concerns. The government has sought to dismiss the suit, arguing in November 2019 that it was not negligent and did not breach its duties to its employees. In court filings, the government acknowledged that several of the 14 plaintiffs in the suit had concussion-like symptoms but said that no definitive cause or medical diagnosis had been ascertained. In a November 2019 statement, Global Affairs Canada said, "We continue to investigate the potential causes of the unusual health symptoms."


title: Havana syndrome

text: After the incident was made public, the Cuban foreign minister accused the U.S. of lying about the incident and denied Cuban involvement in or knowledge of the cause of the health problems the diplomats experienced.


title: Havana syndrome

text: The Cuban government offered to cooperate with the U.S. in an investigation of the incidents. It employed about 2,000 scientists and law enforcement officers who interviewed 300 neighbors of diplomats, examined two hotels, and medically examined non-diplomats who could have been exposed. NBC reported that Cuban officials stated that they analyzed air and soil samples and considered a range of toxic chemicals. They also examined the possibility that electromagnetic waves were to blame, and even looked into whether insects could be the culprit, but found nothing they could link to the claimed medical symptoms. The FBI and Cuban authorities met to discuss the situation; the Cubans stated that the U.S. neither agreed to share the diplomats' medical records with Cuban authorities nor allowed Cuban investigators access to U.S. diplomats' homes to conduct tests. In 2021, a panel of 16 scientists affiliated with the Cuban Academy of Sciences and convened by the Cuban government reported that "the narrative of the 'mysterious syndrome' is not scientifically acceptable in any of its components." The panel addressed the microwave hypothesis directly, writing, "No known form of energy can selectively cause brain damage (with laser-like spatial accuracy) under the conditions described for the alleged incidents in Havana."


title: Havana syndrome

text: At the request of the U.S. government, University of Pennsylvania researchers examined 21 affected diplomats posted to Cuba, and the preliminary results were published in the "Journal of the American Medical Association" ("JAMA") in March 2018. The researchers found "no evidence of white matter tract abnormalities" in affected diplomats beyond what might be seen in a control group of the same age and described "a new syndrome in the diplomats that resembles persistent concussion." While some of those affected recovered swiftly, others had symptoms for months. The study concluded that "the diplomats appear to have sustained injury to widespread brain networks."


title: Havana syndrome

text: The editorial board of the journal "Cortex" published an editorial referring to the "JAMA" research's "gross methodological flaws" and registering concern that it had been published. In the board's view, "Allowing such confused and conflicting explanations of methodology and analysis to pass unchallenged is a slippery path for science, and dangerous for society at large".


title: Havana syndrome

text: In response to a December 2017 State Department request, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention conducted a "Cuba Unexplained Events Investigation." The two-year investigation of the medical records of 95 U.S. diplomats and family members in Havana who reported symptoms resulted in a final report, marked for official use only, dated December 2019.


title: Havana syndrome

text: In January 2021, both BuzzFeed News and George Washington University's National Security Archive obtained the report, pursuant to Freedom of Information Act requests. (Some material in the released report was redacted for medical privacy reasons.) The CDC developed a "case definition" of the Havana syndrome, consisting of a biphasic (two-stage) syndrome. The first phase of symptoms (sometimes closely after an auditory or sensory event) consisted of one or more of the following symptoms: head pressure, disorientation, nausea or headache, vestibular disturbance, or auditory or visual syndromes. The second phase of symptoms, occurring sometime later, consisted of cognitive deficits, vestibular disturbances, or both. The report concluded, "Of the 95 persons whose medical records CDC evaluated, 15 had illnesses that met the criteria for a presumptive case definition. CDC classified 31 others as possible cases and the remaining 49 as not likely to be a case." Two years later, six of the subjects in the CDC investigation were still being rehabilitated for their injuries, and four were still unable to return to work. The CDC decided not to conduct a retrospective case–control study because of the length of time between the event and the onset of symptoms, which could lead to recall and selection biases that "could generate misleading or obscured findings."


title: Havana syndrome

text: The CDC concluded, "The evaluations conducted thus far have not identified a mechanism of injury, process of exposure, effective treatment, or mitigating factor for the unexplained cluster of symptoms experienced by those stationed in Havana."


title: Havana syndrome

text: On February 1, 2022, a declassified US intelligence report (IC Experts Panel on Anomalous Health Incidents) called pulsed electromagnetic energy and ultrasound plausible causes and said that concealable devices exist that could produce the observed symptoms.


title: Havana syndrome

text: In 2018, Douglas H. Smith, the lead author of a University of Pennsylvania study of 21 affected diplomats in Havana published in "JAMA ", said in an interview that microwaves were "considered a main suspect" underlying the phenomenon. A 2018 study published in the journal "Neural Computation" by Beatrice Alexandra Golomb rejected the idea that a sonic attack was the source of the symptoms and concluded that the facts were consistent with pulsed radiofrequency/microwave radiation (RF/MW) exposure. Golomb wrote that (1) the nature of the noises the diplomats reported was consistent with sounds caused by pulsed RF/MW via the Frey effect; (2) the signs and symptoms the diplomats reported matched symptoms from RF/MW exposure (problems with sleep, cognition, vision, balance, speech; headaches; sensations of pressure or vibration; nosebleeds; brain injury and brain swelling); (3) "oxidative stress provides a documented mechanism of RF/MW injury compatible with reported signs and symptoms"; and (4) in the past, the U.S. embassy in Moscow was subject to a microwave beam called the Moscow Signal. The Moscow Signal was inferred to be a Soviet espionage technique that might have also had health effects. Neuroscientist Allan H. Frey, for whom the Frey effect is named, considers the microwave theory viable.


title: Havana syndrome

text: In December 2020, a study by an expert committee of the U.S. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, commissioned by the State Department, released its report, concluding, "Overall, directed pulsed RF energy ... appears to be the most plausible mechanism in explaining these cases among those that the committee considered" but that "each possible cause remains speculative" and that "the report should not be viewed as conclusive". Chaired by David Relman, the committee included Linda Birnbaum, Ronald Brookmeyer, Caroline Buckee, Joseph Fins, David A. Whelan, and others. The panel stated that a lack of information and direct evidence (such as medical testing data about affected persons) limited what it could conclude about explanations of the phenomenon. In a 2021 interview with NPR's Sarah McCammon, Relman said that the committee identified "microwave radiation that occurs in a pulsed or intermittent form" as "the most plausible" mechanism for the injuries, but that it could not confidently identify any cause given the lack of "direct evidence that this could explain the entire story for sure or even parts of it." Relman said the committee lacked information to assess "what the various sources of such pulsed microwave energy might be" but that the facts left the committee "with this very sort of disconcerting notion that it had been produced deliberately by other actors whose purposes we really weren't in a position to fathom." Relman said that "the bottom line is that this is still a perplexing story that still needs further investigation."


title: Havana syndrome

text: Multiple anecdotes from various Western diplomats stationed overseas, including in Russia, describe mysterious ailments during past decades that might be due to microwave devices. In 2014, an unclassified NSA report indicated a hostile country in the 1990s possessed a "high powered microwave system weapon that may have the ability to weaken, intimidate or kill an enemy over time and without leaving evidence."


title: Havana syndrome

text: Some scientists, including physicist Peter Zimmerman, bioengineers Kenneth R. Foster and Andrei G. Pakhomov, and UCLA neurologist Robert Baloh, consider the microwave hypothesis implausible; Baloh called the National Academies conclusion "science fiction". Cheryl Rofer, a former chemist at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, said that there were no microwave experts on the NAS committee and that "No evidence has been offered that such a weapon has been developed by any nation." Rofer also cited a 1978 study that found no adverse health effects from the Moscow Signal.


title: Havana syndrome

text: In 2021, a panel of 16 scientists affiliated with the Cuban Academy of Sciences and convened by the Cuban government addressed the microwave hypothesis, writing that "No known form of energy can selectively cause brain damage (with laser-like spatial accuracy) under the conditions described for the alleged incidents in Havana."


title: Havana syndrome

text: In March 2018, Kevin Fu and a team of computer scientists at the University of Michigan reported in a study that ultrasound—specifically, intermodulation distortion from multiple inaudible ultrasonic signals—from malfunctioning or improperly placed Cuban surveillance equipment could have been the origin of the reported sounds.


title: Havana syndrome

text: In 2017, some U.S. personnel in Havana made audio recordings during incidents associated with Havana syndrome, one of which was obtained by the Associated Press. In January 2019, biologists Alexander L. Stubbs of the University of California, Berkeley and Fernando Montealegre-Z of the University of Lincoln analyzed the recordings and concluded that the sound was caused by the calling song of the Indies short-tailed cricket ("Anurogryllus celerinictus") rather than a technological device. Stubbs and Montealegre-Z matched the song's "pulse repetition rate, power spectrum, pulse rate stability, and oscillations per pulse" to the recording. Stubbs and Montealegre wrote, "the causes of the health problems reported by embassy personnel are beyond the scope of this paper" and called for "more rigorous research into the source of these ailments, including the potential psychogenic effects, as well as possible physiological explanations unrelated to sonic attacks." This conclusion was comparable to a 2017 hypothesis from Cuban scientists that the sound on the same recording is from Jamaican field crickets.


title: Havana syndrome

text: In 2018, JASON, a group of physicists and scientists who advise the U.S. government, analyzed audio recordings from eight of the original 21 incidents of Havana syndrome and two cellphone videos taken by one patient from Cuba. It concluded that the sounds in the eight recordings were "most likely" caused by insects and that it was "highly unlikely" that microwaves or ultrasound beams were involved, because "No plausible single source of energy (neither radio/microwaves nor sonic) can produce "both" the recorded audio/video signals "and" the reported medical effects." The group determined with "high confidence" that the two videos were sounds from the Indies short-tailed cricket, and also noted a "low confidence" hypothesis that the noises may have been from a concrete vibrating machine with worn bearings. The report's findings were first reported by Reuters in July 2019. Parts of JASON's report were declassified in September 2021. While biomedical engineer Kenneth Foster (an opponent of the microwave theory) cited the findings as evidence against the theory, biomedical engineer James Lin (a proponent of the microwave theory) said that the recordings the JASON report analyzed could not represent actual cases of Havana syndrome, since typical sound recorders cannot record microwaves. The JASON report also concluded, "It cannot be ruled out that while the perceived sounds, while not harmful, are introduced by an adversary as deception so as to mask an entirely unrelated mode of causing illness."


title: Havana syndrome

text: A 2019 study commissioned by Global Affairs Canada of 23 exposed Canadian diplomats, completed in May 2019, found "clinical, imaging, and biochemical evidence consistent with the hypothesis" of overexposure to cholinesterase inhibitors (a class of neurotoxic pesticide) such as organophosphates (OPs) as a cause of brain injury; the embassies and other places in Cuba had been sprayed frequently as an anti-Zika virus mosquito control measure. The study concluded that other possible causes could not be ruled out.


title: Havana syndrome

text: The 2020 National Academies study found that it was unlikely that "acute high-level exposure to OPs and/or pyrethroids contributed" to the illnesses, due to a lack of evidence of exposures to those pesticides or clinical histories consistent with such exposure, but the study committee "could not rule out the possibility, although slight, that exposure to insecticides, particularly OPs, increased susceptibility to the triggering factor(s) that caused the Embassy personnel cases." The National Academies study committee also found it "highly unlikely" that an infectious disease (such as Zika virus, which was an epidemic in Cuba in 2016–17) caused the illnesses.


title: Havana syndrome

text: After the initial reports of the incidents in Havana, the FBI's Behavioral Analysis Unit visited the city and came to the assessment that the individuals were experiencing a mass psychogenic illness. The Behavioral Analysis Unit profilers did not speak to any of the affected people directly, instead relying on transcripts of previous interviews that the FBI had conducted with patients. The unit reviewed the patient histories compiled by the patients' neuropsychologists and other physicians, who had already ruled out mass psychogenic illness, noting that "many of the victims didn't know about the other people who were sick, and their bodies couldn't have feigned some of the symptoms they were exhibiting." In November 2018, a previously classified State Department report by the JASON advisory group concluded that while the cause of the condition was unknown, "psychogenic effects may serve to explain important components of the reported injuries."


title: Havana syndrome

text: Ragini Verma, the lead author of a University of Pennsylvania study published in "JAMA" in 2019 that found brain differences in diplomats, concluded that based on its findings, "a wholly psychogenic or psychosomatic cause was very unlikely." Verma added that she was unable to identify a cause based on brain imaging alone.


title: Havana syndrome

text: A March 2018 editorial in "JAMA" by two neurologists argued that a functional disorder such as persistent postural-perceptual dizziness ("a syndrome characterized primarily by chronic symptoms of dizziness and perceived unsteadiness, often triggered by acute or chronic vestibular disease, neurological or medical illness or psychological distress") could explain some of the symptoms the diplomats in Cuba experienced.


title: Havana syndrome

text: In a 2019 paper, Robert Bartholomew and Robert Baloh propose that the syndrome represents mass psychogenic illness rather than a "novel clinical entity". They cite the vagueness and inconsistency of symptoms as well as the circumstances they developed in (affected staff would have been under significant stress as the U.S. had just reopened its embassy in Cuba) as a cause. Bartholomew and Baloh co-authored a book, "Havana Syndrome: Mass Psychogenic Illness and the Real Story Behind the Embassy Mystery and Hysteria" (2020), arguing in support of their hypothesis.


title: Havana syndrome

text: The 2020 National Academies analysis appeared to show that psychological issues were not the likely cause of the injuries, but the different ways people were affected left open the possible influence of psychological and social factors. The report reads, "the likelihood of mass psychogenic illness as an explanation for patients' symptoms had to be established from sufficient evidence" and "could not be inferred merely by the absence of other causal mechanisms or the lack of definitive structural injuries". In its assessment of potential social and psychological causes, the committee notes the possibility of stress-based psychological responses, and that these were more likely to be triggered by potential threats attributed to human sources than other stressors. It concludes that these could not have caused the acute "audio-vestibular" symptoms some patients experienced, such as sudden unexplained sounds. The scope of the provided data limited the committee's ability to investigate psychological and social factors.


title: Havana syndrome

text: Beginning in late 2017, suspected attacks targeting U.S. intelligence personnel were reported in an expanding set of locations around the world, including Moscow, Russia; Tbilisi, Georgia; Poland; Taiwan; and Australia. Other reports came from Colombia, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, and Austria, among other countries.


title: Havana syndrome

text: The U.S. government has not released the number of affected persons, but media reporting indicated a total of 130 possible cases by the end of May 2021, rising to more than 200 possible cases by mid-September 2021. The cases variously affected CIA, U.S. military, and State Department personnel and their family members. Some reports, after investigation, were determined to be possibly related to Havana syndrome, while others were determined to be unrelated; BBC News reported in 2021 that "One former official reckons around half the cases reported by US officials are possibly linked to attacks by an adversary."


title: Havana syndrome

text: Starting in early 2018, U.S. diplomats in China began reporting symptoms consistent with Havana syndrome. The first such incident was reported by an American diplomat in China in April 2018 at the Guangzhou consulate, the largest U.S. consulate in China. The employee reported that he had been experiencing symptoms since late 2017. Several individuals were taken to the U.S. for medical examination. A USAID employee at the U.S. embassy in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, reported a different incident in September 2017; the employee's report was discounted by the U.S. State Department.


title: Havana syndrome

text: Answering questions from the House Foreign Affairs Committee in May 2018, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo testified that U.S. diplomatic staff in Guangzhou had reported symptoms "very similar" to, and "entirely consistent" with, those reported from Cuba. On June 6, 2018, "The New York Times" reported that at least two additional U.S. diplomats stationed at the Guangzhou consulate had been evacuated from China and reported that "it remains unclear whether the illnesses are the result of attacks at all. Other theories have included toxins, listening devices that accidentally emitted harmful sounds, or even mass hysteria." In June 2018, the State Department announced that a task force had been assembled to investigate the reports and expanded their health warning to all of mainland China amid reports some US diplomats outside of Guangzhou had experienced the same symptoms resembling a brain injury. The warning told anyone who experienced "unusual acute auditory or sensory phenomena accompanied by unusual sounds or piercing noises" to "not attempt to locate their source."


title: Havana syndrome

text: In 2019, a White House official reported experiencing debilitating symptoms while walking her dog in a Virginia suburb of Washington; the incident was publicly reported in 2020. In November 2020, a similar incident was reported on The Ellipse, a lawn adjacent to the south side of the White House. Both incidents were similar to those that were reported to have struck dozens of U.S. personnel overseas, including CIA and State Department personnel. Federal agencies investigated the incident at The Ellipse, and Defense Department officials briefed members of the Senate Armed Services Committee and House Armed Services Committee in April 2021. Investigators told members of Congress that they had not been able to determine the cause of the events or who was responsible.


title: Havana syndrome

text: In August 2021, it was reported that two American diplomats were evacuated from the U.S. Embassy in Hanoi, Vietnam, after incidents of Havana syndrome were reported. These reported cases also delayed Vice President Kamala Harris's visit to Vietnam.


title: Havana syndrome

text: In September 2021, a CIA officer traveling with chief William J. Burns reported symptoms consistent with those of Havana syndrome on a diplomatic visit to India.


title: Havana syndrome

text: In 2021, dozens of U.S. personnel stationed in Vienna, including diplomats, intelligence officials, and some children of U.S. employees, had Havana syndrome-like symptoms. The State Department confirmed in July 2021 that it was investigating the reports. The Austrian foreign ministry stated it was collaborating with American investigators. Aside from Havana, Vienna has reported the most incidents. While no suspects were named for the Vienna cases, it has been noted that Vienna was hosting indirect talks between the United States and Iran on reviving the 2015 Iran deal. In September 2021, the CIA station chief in Vienna (the top U.S. intelligence officer in the country) was recalled over concerns over his management; he had been criticized for not taking quicker action in response to the Havana syndrome cases at his post.


title: Havana syndrome

text: In the months preceding August 2021, cases of Havana syndrome were reported at the U.S. embassy in Berlin, Germany, including from two U.S. officials who sought medical treatment. Several new cases were reported at the embassy in October 2021.


title: Havana syndrome

text: In 2021, the CIA evacuated an intelligence officer serving in Serbia suspected of being a victim of the neurological attack.


title: Havana syndrome

text: Three White House staffers reported symptoms at the InterContinental London Park Lane in late May 2019.


title: Havana syndrome

text: One of the CIA officials with symptoms in Australia and Taiwan was one of the agency's top five-ranking officials. The Russian embassy in Australia dismissed reports of Russian operatives targeting CIA personnel in Australia.


title: Havana syndrome

text: In October 2021, it was reported that U.S. embassy personnel and their families in Bogota, Colombia, had developed symptoms consistent with Havana syndrome.


title: Havana syndrome

text: The U.S. State Department said in February 2021 that its ongoing investigation was "a high priority" for the department. Citing unnamed intelligence and government officials, "The New York Times" reported in July 2021 that the National Security Council, Central Intelligence Agency, and Director of National Intelligence established two outside panels, one to investigate potential causes and the other to develop defensive countermeasures for personnel protection; cleared external scientists will be permitted to view relevant classified intelligence in their investigations. In January 2022, the CIA issued a report on the interim findings of a comprehensive study of 1,000 cases. The report concludes that the majority of cases can be attributed to environmental causes, undiagnosed medical conditions or stress rather than a persistent global campaign by a foreign power. The CIA is still investigating two dozen cases that remain unexplained.


title: Havana syndrome

text: Many current and former U.S. officials think Russia was likely responsible for the alleged attacks, a suspicion shared by both Trump and Biden administration officials. This view was shared by CIA analysts on Russia, State Department officials, outside science experts, and several of the alleged victims. Russia has a history of researching, developing, and using weapons that cause brain injuries, such as the Cold War-era "Moscow Signal" targeting the American embassy in Moscow. A 2014 NSA report raised suspicions that Russia used a microwave weapon to target a person's living quarters, causing nervous system damage; and Russia has an interest in disrupting cooperation among the U.S., China, and Cuba. The U.S. diplomats stationed in China and Cuba who reported ailments were working to increase cooperation with those countries, and some CIA analysts voiced suspicion Russia thus sought to derail their work.


title: Havana syndrome

text: In May 2021, "Politico" reported that three current and former U.S. officials "with direct knowledge of the discussions" said that the U.S. government suspected that Russia's military intelligence agency, GRU, was behind alleged attacks, although the U.S. Intelligence Community have not "reached a consensus or made a formal determination." In May 2021, "The New Yorker" reported that the U.S. government's "working hypothesis" was that GRU agents "have been aiming microwave-radiation devices at U.S. officials to collect intelligence from their computers and cell phones, and that these devices can cause serious harm to the people they target." The U.S. government has not publicly accused Russia; U.S. intelligence officials privately call the events "attacks" but publicly call them "anomalous health incidents." According to two officials interviewed by "Politico", "While investigators have not determined definitively that these incidents are caused by a specific weapon, some believe any such device would be primarily transported by vehicle", and "Some could be small enough to fit into a large backpack, and an individual can be targeted from 500 to 1,000 yards away." James Lin of the University of Illinois, an expert on the biological effects of microwave energy, agreed that a Havana syndrome attack could be caused by a small apparatus that could fit in a van or SUV.


title: Havana syndrome

text: Within the U.S. government, analysts debated whether the alleged attacks reflected a deliberate attempt to cause injury or whether the reported symptoms were "a consequence of a high-tech attempt to steal classified information from phones and computers of U.S. officials."


title: Havana syndrome

text: A 2021 report in the "New Yorker" cited a number of incidents recounted by Mark Vandroff, who served as the senior director for defense policy at the National Security Council: "One of the most dramatic episodes involved a U.S. military officer stationed in a country with a large Russian presence. As the officer pulled his car into a busy intersection, he suddenly felt as though his head were going to explode. His two-year-old son, in a car seat in the back, started screaming. As the officer sped out of the intersection, the pressure in his head ceased, and his son went quiet. A remarkably similar incident was reported by a C.I.A. officer who was stationed in the same city, and who had no connection to the military officer."


title: Havana syndrome

text: In October 2020, the "New York Times" reported that U.S. diplomats and intelligence officers, including senior leaders, had clashed with Trump administration appointees, including CIA director Gina Haspel and State Department leaders, over the nature and causes of the suspected attacks. A "Times" investigation found that the State Department had "produced inconsistent assessments of patients and events, ignored outside medical diagnoses and withheld basic information from Congress." Despite the general view within the U.S. government that Russia was responsible, two U.S. officials told the "Times" that Haspel was not convinced of Russia's responsibility, or even whether an attack occurred.


title: Havana syndrome

text: A 2018 State Department report was declassified, and posted on the George Washington University's National Security Archive, after Freedom of Information Act litigation brought by the James Madison Project. The documents indicate that the State Department botched the handling of the initial reports. Peter Kornbluh of the National Security Archive noted that the 2018 report concluded that the department's "initial investigation assessment of what was going on" was marred by chaos, disorganization, and excessive secrecy. In 2021, sources familiar with the various ongoing investigations told CNN that a primary obstacle to progress by the U.S. government in investigating the syndrome was a lack of interagency coordination between the CIA, FBI, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and State Department, which conducted separate and "largely siloed" investigations. The limited coordination among the varying agencies was based in part on "the highly classified nature of some details and the privacy restrictions of health records, and that has hampered progress."


title: Havana syndrome

text: A U.S. Office of Special Counsel investigation resulted in an April 2020 determination that there was "a substantial likelihood of wrongdoing" by State Department leadership. Mark Lenzi, who was a State Department diplomatic security officer stationed in Guangzhou, accused the department of a "deliberate, high-level cover-up" and of failing to protect their employees. Marc Polymeropoulos, a 26-year CIA veteran, who retired in 2019, similarly felt betrayed by CIA leadership, accusing the agency of failing to respond appropriately to a vertigo-inducing incident in Moscow in December 2017 (Polymeropoulos said the event was an attack and "the most terrifying experience of my life", worse than experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan). Polymeropoulos fought with the CIA for years to obtain specialized medical treatment, after the agency cast doubt on the similarities between the symptoms he experienced and those experienced by the diplomats in Havana. Polymeropoulos was ultimately diagnosed at the U.S. government's Walter Reed Medical Center with traumatic brain injury; attorney Mark Zaid, who represented almost a dozen clients who had also become ill under similar circumstances, said that Polymeropoulos was the only one of his clients who had received treatment at Walter Reed, with others obtaining treatment only from personal doctors or academic medical centers.


title: Havana syndrome

text: Near the end of the Trump administration, the Defense Department established a task force to investigate reports of attacks on DoD personnel abroad. The DoD established the task force partly due to frustration over what DoD officials considered to be a sluggish and lackluster response by the CIA and Department of State. Christopher C. Miller, who was acting defense secretary at the time, said in 2021 that, "I knew CIA and Department of State were not taking this shit seriously and we wanted to shame them into it by establishing our task force." Miller said that he began to consider the reports of mysterious symptoms to be a high priority in December 2020, after he conducted an interview with a person with major combat experience who detailed symptoms.


title: Havana syndrome

text: In December 2020, the CIA established a task force to investigate. The agency set up the task force after continued reports of debilitating attacks against CIA officers in various places around the world. The CIA expanded its investigation under Director William Joseph Burns, who took office in 2021; Burns appointed a senior CIA officer who had previously led the manhunt for Osama bin Laden to lead the agency's investigation.


title: Havana syndrome

text: In March 2021, the State Department appointed Ambassador Pamela L. Spratlen, a career foreign service officer, to oversee the department task force charged with responding to the incidents. Six months later, Spratlen left her position as coordinator of the task force because she "reached the threshold of hours of labor" that she could perform as a retiree. Spratlen's resignation had been demanded by people angered by her handling of a conference call with affected employees. During the call with employees (in which Secretary of State Antony Blinken also took part), Spratlen did not take a position on whether the psychogenic causes were the cause of the syndrome, a response that affected diplomats called "invalidating". In November 2021, Blinken appointed two senior U.S. diplomats to oversee the department's internal Health Incident Response Task Force: career foreign service officer Ambassador Jonathan Moore, as overall coordinator and retired Ambassador Margaret Uyehara.


title: Havana syndrome

text: The Senate Intelligence Committee leadership (chairman Mark Warner and vice chairman Marco Rubio) said in 2021 that it was working with Burns and the CIA on connection with the investigation, saying, "We have already held fact finding hearings on these debilitating attacks, many of which result in medically confirmed cases of Traumatic Brain Injury, and will do more." In May 2021, "Politico" reported that intelligence officials had recently told Congress that the investigation had expanded to include all 18 federal intelligence agencies and had focused "on the potential involvement of GRU, the Russian spy agency".


title: Havana syndrome

text: In September 2021, CIA Deputy Director David S. Cohen said that the investigation had "gotten closer" to making a determination, "but not close enough to make the analytic judgment that people are waiting for."


title: Havana syndrome

text: The BBC wrote the syndrome has "a real impact on the country's ability to operate overseas", reporting that one official called the deciphering of the cause "the most difficult intelligence challenge they have ever faced."


title: Havana syndrome

text: After the reports of the incident at The Ellipse nearby the White House in Washington, Defense Department investigators briefed members of Congress, even though it occurred within the U.S.; this was because the DoD investigation was more advanced than the FBI or the intelligence community investigations.


title: Havana syndrome

text: In January 2022, the Central Intelligence Agency issued an interim assessment concluding that the syndrome is not the result of "a sustained global campaign by a hostile power" and that the majority of cases could be explained by natural causes, although it couldn't rule out foreign involvement in approximately 24 cases, many of those from Havana.


title: Havana syndrome

text: In 2021, the State Department commissioned the JASON Advisory Group, an outside panel, to perform a comprehensive investigation. It tasked JASON to consider all available data and evaluate mechanisms' ability to produce the reported effects. The State Department released unclassified portions of the JASON report in February 2022.


title: Havana syndrome

text: On the first question, the report found that 80-90% of the incidents could be easily explained by everyday occurrences or other unrelated factors. For the 10-20% that could not be easily explained, JASON was not able to perform a statistical analysis due to lack of data on a comparable background population, small numbers, and generally low data quality.


title: Havana syndrome

text: On the second question, the report examined mechanisms related to electromagnetic energy (all frequencies, from RF to ionizing) and acoustic energy (infrasound, audible, and ultrasound). Ionizing radiation and acoustic energy were easily ruled out, as was RF energy at frequencies less than 500 MHZ or greater than 30 GHz. This left the region of RF energy in the 500 MHz to 3 GHz range, which was not easily ruled out.


title: Havana syndrome

text: Within this range, the report examined several factors derived from the incident reports as a whole, but focusing on the 10-20% of the incidents not easily explainable by everyday causes. These factors include the ability to create an RF beam that can: be focused to a degree consistent with the incident reports; penetrate a building; physiologically affect a human (to include the Frey effect); deliver sufficient power; and be transmitted from an antenna that would not be easily noticed. Considering all these factors, the report concluded that RF energy between 500 MHz and 30 GHz cannot be conclusively ruled out, but is "highly unlikely" to be the cause of the incidents.


title: Havana syndrome

text: In response to Havana syndrome, U.S. Senator Susan Collins introduced a bill (S. 1828), co-sponsored by a bipartisan group of nine other senators, that would close a loophole in the Federal Employees' Compensation Act that would normally not cover damage to organs such as the brain and heart. The Helping American Victims Afflicted by Neurological Attacks (HAVANA) Act authorized the CIA Director and the Secretary of State to provide financial support for personnel with brain injuries. The bill passed the House on a 427–0 vote, passed the Senate by unanimous consent, and was signed into law by President Joe Biden on October 8, 2021, becoming Public Law No. 117-46. An appropriation for the funding authorized by the HAVANA Act has not been passed, but has been included in drafts of a Defense Department appropriations bill.


title: Havana syndrome

text: The National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2022, passed by Congress in December 2021, included a section directing the president to designate a senior official as "anomalous health incidents interagency coordinator" to oversee efforts across the federal government and to coordinate with the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy; required relevant federal agencies to designate a specific high-level "anomalous health incident agency coordination lead"; and directed agencies to develop guidance to employees considered to be at risk of exposure.


title: Havana syndrome

text: Media coverage of Havana syndrome has been criticized for what some allege is a conspiratorial tone or journalists' unwillingness to question official explanations. In "Jacobin Magazine", Branko Marcetic wrote, "anti-Cuban hawks, using the establishment press as their megaphone, have baselessly and incessantly claimed that the illness was actually the result of 'attacks' carried out by Washington's geopolitical adversaries, and using a mysterious, never invented microwave weapon". In January 2022, Ryan Cooper wrote in "The Week" that there is "shame on the great many journalists and members of Congress who stoked inflammatory, implausible claims about magic Russian ray guns". Robert Bartholomew, a medical sociologist specializing in mass psychogenic illness, has dismissed "60 Minutes" reports of a "smoking gun" connecting Havana syndrome to a foreign power or technology: "there is only smoke and mirrors generated by bad science and poor journalism". In an interview with NPR, "The New Republic"s Natalie Shure said it was a "red flag" as to its credibility that "this story was being almost exclusively pushed by national security reporters and not by people who report on health topics".


title: Romain Grosjean

text: Romain David Jeremie Grosjean (; born 17 April 1986) is a Swiss-French professional racing driver, competing under the French flag in the NTT IndyCar Series, driving the No. 28 Honda for Andretti Autosport. Grosjean had previously spent nine full-time seasons in Formula One for a variety of teams, picking up 10 podiums, all with Lotus.