‘Like a drill going into my eye’: why the mystery over Havana syndrome refuses to die

Dozens of CIA officers have been afflicted by debilitating symptoms over the past decade. Are they the result of ‘mass hysteria’? Or are they from attacks with an energy weapon and, if so, who is responsible? And has there been a cover-up?

Shortly after 1am one night in April 2019, a CIA officer on a work trip to London was jolted awake in his hotel room by the most intense head pain he had ever experienced. His body was soaked with sweat and he felt like his eyes were spinning in their sockets. He manoeuvred his way out of bed, hoping to make it to the bathroom to vomit, but found his sense of balance had deserted him. Eventually, he fell back into a fitful, shallow sleep.

The next day, arriving at the work meeting he had travelled for, the officer found he could not remember the names of colleagues in the room, people he knew well. As the meeting got under way, he could barely follow the discussion. Initially, he chalked it up to a terrible – if rather odd – case of food poisoning. But over subsequent weeks, worrying symptoms persisted: brain fog, loss of balance and increasingly harsh tinnitus.

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Germany arrests former domestic intelligence chief over alleged spying

August Hanning served as president of Federal Intelligence Service from 1998 to 2005

Germany’s federal prosecutor’s office has said a former domestic intelligence chief was arrested on Tuesday on espionage allegations.

August Hanning was president of the Federal Intelligence Service (BND) from December 1998 to November 2005.

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California woman arrested and accused of spying on Taiwan president’s son for China

The FBI ⁠arrested Wanying Zhang, also known as Heather, at Los Angeles International Airport before she left for China, the agency said

US authorities arrested a California ⁠woman on ​Sunday, accusing her of spying on the son of Taiwan’s president at the behest of Chinese officials, the FBI said.

The FBI ⁠arrested Wanying Zhang, also known as Heather, at Los Angeles International Airport on Sunday before her planned departure to China, the agency said in a ⁠statement. Authorities charged Zhang, 34, of Irvine, California, with acting as an unregistered foreign agent.

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Tech in cars can be used to snoop on you, Dutch spy chiefs warn

Hostile states could access cameras, microphones or GPS, says intelligence agency amid concerns over Chinese imports

Drivers have been warned that the smart features built into modern cars such as microphones, cameras and GPS trackers could be used by hostile states to spy on them.

The Dutch General Intelligence and Security Service (AIVD) called for “awareness of espionage risks around modern vehicles”, including microphones that can by switched on remotely to listen to conversations.

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MI5 China alert will send chill through UK’s cash-strapped universities

Institutions have for years turned to China for funding opportunities but national security concerns are mounting

The security alert issued by MI5 regarding a Chinese state-owned conglomerate accused of conducting espionage in the UK reveals the extent to which British intelligence remains concerned about Beijing’s influence, and risks casting a shadow over UK-China cooperation at a time when the bilateral relationship is enjoying a revival.

The UK’s domestic security service on Wednesday warned researchers and academics to cease work with the China Academy of General Technology (CAGT), an organisation MI5 described as a “significant threat”.

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Russia could attack a Nato country within months, Danish intelligence says

Warning comes hours after Poland says fire at Starlink satellite station was ‘act of sabotage’

Russia could launch a limited military attack against a Nato country in the coming months, Danish intelligence said, in one of the starkest warnings yet by western security services.

In a report published on Thursday, the Danish defence intelligence service warned of a “low but growing risk” that Russia could launch long-range strikes on Nato infrastructure supporting Ukraine, or carry out a limited incursion into a neighbouring country with a small number of troops, potentially operating without insignia.

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Europe weighs solutions to curtail Russia’s growing hybrid warfare

Governments now moving faster to impose costs on Moscow for its increasing attacks over support for Ukraine

Russia’s suspected sabotage campaign across Europe appears to be gathering pace again, confronting governments with a problem they have struggled to solve since the start of the war in Ukraine: how to impose a meaningful cost on Moscow for attacks that remain deliberately below the threshold of conventional war.

Over the past month alone, an explosives-laden drone was discovered next to a Ukrainian cargo plane at Germany’s Leipzig airport, Poland has faced suspected acts of sabotage, and a string of unexplained explosions and fires have hit defence facilities supplying Ukraine across Europe.

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Gun stash in German forest believed to be linked to Russia, say reports

Germany seeking to extradite suspect from Romania over guns it is feared could have been used ⁠in assassinations

Germany is seeking to extradite a suspect from Romania over the discovery of an underground stash of weapons in a forest near Berlin that German media reports have linked to Russian intelligence.

Two weeks after German authorities found a drone carrying explosives at Leipzig airport, the interior minister, Alexander Dobrindt, confirmed federal prosecutors had opened an investigation related to the secret cache of guns “on suspicion of preparing a serious act of violence that threatens national security”.

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The Bond effect? How MI6 fascinates spy watchers around the world

Britain’s spooks take quiet satisfaction from survey ranking Secret Intelligence Service Europe’s top espionage agency

MI6 has the swagger of James Bond; its French equivalent, DGSE, the complexities of the television drama Le Bureau. The film and TV shows may be fictional, but a survey run by a French magazine that placed the British spy agency above the French as No 1 across all of Europe this week is not.

L’Express, a news weekly, conducted a Eurovision-style poll of 60 current and former spies from across the continent, plus the CIA and Israel’s Mossad. Each was asked to rank their top five foreign intelligence agencies, in secret, naturally enough. MI6 was first with 251 points ahead of DGSE on 169, with other agencies trailing behind.

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MI6 is top European foreign intelligence service, peer review finds

UK’s Secret Intelligence Service praised for playing long game and having ‘a taste for dirty tricks’

MI6 has been ranked as the most powerful foreign intelligence service in Europe ahead of France and the Netherlands, according to a peer review.

The British intelligence agency scored 251 points in the research and was commended for its expertise in recruiting high-level informants and penetrating the ruling elites in Russia, China, Iran and Turkey, according to the review by 60 professionals from 25 countries.

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Japan admits growing need to counter espionage after Russian ‘den of spies’ report

Issue must be addressed with ‘even greater rigour’, says government spokesman, after New York Times report on how it has become a spy hub for Vladimir Putin

Japan has said it recognised the need to counter foreign intelligence better after the New York Times reported that Russia had turned the country into a “den of spies” and key source of weapons components.

The newspaper, in an investigation published on Sunday, reported that thanks to “weak espionage laws”, Moscow was using Japan as a key hub for intelligence gathering and procurement of dual-use technology needed for its war in Ukraine.

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Spyware used against MEP investigating Pegasus abuses, report finds

Researchers say Stelios Kouloglou’s device was compromised after he joined European parliamentary committee

NSO Group’s hacking software was repeatedly used against a member of the European parliament while he was conducting an investigation of spyware abuses in Europe, according to a new report.

Researchers at the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto said they could not attribute the attacks against Stelios Kouloglou to any particular government operator of Pegasus spyware. But their investigation found the attack against the Greek now-former MEP bore the hallmarks of a previous hacking campaign against exiled Russian and Belarusian journalists in Europe.

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Ex-CIA official accused of stealing $40m in gold bars reportedly created fake spy program

David Rush, who was arrested in May, stole millions from US government through ‘special access program’, officials say

A former executive intelligence agent who is accused of stealing more than $40m in gold bars from the CIA reportedly created a fake spy program to siphon money, the latest on his fraudulent activity, the Washington Post first reported.

David Rush, who was a senior-level employee of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) for 17 years, was arrested in May after FBI agents discovered Rush had taken 303 bullion bars, each about 2.2lbs, dozens of luxury watches, and more than $2m in foreign currency from his government office.

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Russia is targeting UK’s infrastructure and democracy, GCHQ head to say

Anne Keast-Butler will also warn of narrowing window to stay ahead of China in ‘new era of radical uncertainty’

Russia is relentlessly targeting Britain’s infrastructure and democracy while there is only a narrowing technological window to stay ahead of a fast-developing China, the head of the spy agency GCHQ will warn in a lecture on Wednesday.

Anne Keast-Butler, giving an inaugural annual lecture, will say that the UK is caught in a “new era of radical uncertainty” and that “the risk of miscalculation” is as high as she has ever seen it as hacker attacks from the two states continue.

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Hong Kong dissident Nathan Law on China spies in UK: ‘We’re not surprised’

Law says conviction of two men for spying raises serious concerns about how they accessed sensitive information

Nathan Law, an exiled leader of the Hong Kong student protest who lives with a £100,000 bounty on his head from the Chinese authorities, was not surprised to discover a spy ring had photographed him entering the Oxford Union for an evening debate in November 2023.

The conviction at the Old Bailey of Chi Leung “Peter” Wai, 38, and Chung Biu “Bill” Yuen, 65, for assisting a foreign intelligence service, was a sobering first – no Chinese spies had been convicted in British criminal history before Thursday – but the details that came out in the nine-week trial mainly served to confirm his suspicions.

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Two men first in British history to be found guilty of spying for China

Chi Leung Wai and Chung Biu Yuen convicted over surveillance of dissidents in ‘shadow policing’ operation

A UK Border Force officer and Hong Kong trade official based in London have been found guilty of spying for China and surveilling dissidents through a “shadow policing” operation.

Chi Leung “Peter” Wai, 38, and Chung Biu Yuen, 65, also known as Bill, were found guilty at the Old Bailey of assisting a foreign intelligence service, making them the first people in British history to be convicted of spying for China.

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Austria expels three Russian embassy staff after ‘forest of antennae’ discovered

Austrian foreign minister says Russian diplomatic mission in Vienna was being used for illicit collection of data

Austria has expelled three Russian embassy staff on suspicion of spying after determining that a “forest of antennae” on the diplomatic mission in Vienna, Europe’s espionage capital since the cold war, was being be used for illicit data collection.

“It is unacceptable that diplomatic immunity be used to commit espionage,” Austria’s foreign minister, Beate Meinl-Reisinger, said on Monday. She added that the three embassy staff – whose expulsions bring the number of Russian diplomats sent home by Vienna to 14 since 2020 – had already left the country.

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Two people arrested after trying to enter UK nuclear submarine base

Man and woman, one of whom is understood to be Iranian, held after asking to enter sensitive military site

Two people have been arrested, one of whom is understood to be Iranian, after they tried to enter the Faslane nuclear submarine base in Scotland in what may have been an attempt at espionage.

A man, 34, and a woman, 31, were detained by Police Scotland after they had asked to enter one of Britain’s most sensitive military sites late on Thursday afternoon. The base is home to the UK’s Trident submarines and not open to the public.

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Bahrain to argue at UK supreme court it has immunity from surveillance claims

Gulf nation is accused of placing monitoring software on computers of two dissidents living in London

Bahrain is to tell the UK’s supreme court that it enjoys sovereign immunity from claims it placed surveillance software on the computers of two dissidents when they were living in London.

The Gulf country has lost the sovereign immunity claim both in the high court and court of appeal, and a decision to take the case further to the supreme court shows how important it is to the country’s reputation.

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Watch out for online contact with Chinese spies, UK defence minister warns public

After MI5 issues China espionage alert to parliament, Luke Pollard says message should be heeded by all citizens

Ordinary UK citizens need to watch out for online contact with Chinese spies, the defence minister has said, after MI5 issued an espionage alert to parliament.

Luke Pollard said a warning given to parliamentarians on Tuesday that China was attempting to recruit individuals with access to sensitive information should also be heeded by the public at large.

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