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Québec City seems like a delightfully European-styled destination that is only a nine-hour drive from here. Montreal, officially Montréal, is even closer, only six hours or so. The old cities there are filled with beautiful stone buildings that speak of some five centuries of North American history, a unique culture that is a French-Canadian and English mix, lively street scenes and shops, museums, sports and scrumptious restaurant food.

I can attest to all that because I attended a press convention that was held in Canada this fall, and a friend and I drove there and back. By the way, the road trip is a scenic joy as we traveled along the Molly Stark Trail amid the Green Mountains through Vermont and back on the Adirondack Northway. The only way it could have been better is if the leaves had been turning. As it was, the trees were at their lushest, the highways were clear and the weather was perfect — in the 70s with low humidity and azure blue sky.

I was thrilled that the local residents could understand my French and even more so that I could understand theirs. I haven’t tried to speak French since I was last in Paris, a while ago. I discovered that the French Canadians speak more slowly than the Parisians generally, so communication of at least a rudimentary nature was mildly possible. I certainly understood how much they dislike President Trump, which they told us often enough after they discovered we were visiting Americans.

Quebec City, referred to that way to distinguish it from the larger Province of Quebec, is located both above and below cliffs that line the northern bank of the wide St. Lawrence River. The Upper Town, home of the now-famous Château Frontenac, was where the elite among the early French settlers lived, including the clergy and government officials. Merchants and craftsmen lived in the Lower Town along the river. The strategic location of the city permitted the French to repel both British and American invaders for more than a century and enabled trade to flourish among New France until Wolfe and de Montcalm fought on the Plains of Abraham in 1759 and the British won. The Quebec Act of 1774 allowed the French to continue to speak French and to practice Catholicism, and by keeping the French satisfied probably kept them from joining the American Revolution. To this day, road signs are in French although children learn English from second grade on and are bilingual.

After a couple of days, we made the three-hour drive to Montreal and the location of the convention, still enjoying glorious weather. I keep marveling at the weather, knowing that of the original 28 men who accompanied Samuel de Champlain from France in 1608, 20 died from the harsh first winter.

The Island of Montreal was considered, in the early days of settlement in the mid-17th century, to be only an outpost for fur trading. Over the centuries, however, it has become one of the world’s largest primarily French-speaking cities after Paris and the second largest city in Canada — only Toronto is larger. The Port of Montreal is one of the world’s major inland ports, served by the St. Lawrence Seaway. It is a city of skyscrapers, festivals and considerable diversity, and it too has marvelous restaurants, along with the cultural and entertainment offerings one would expect. I only got a short tour of Old Montreal and some time in the art museum, where there was a good exhibit on Picasso and African art, because in Montreal I had to work. I enjoyed the meetings and learned some things there that our newspapers will be telling you about in subsequent issues, also on our website.

Our return on Sunday afternoon took us an hour to cross the border compared with fewer than three minutes on the way into Quebec on a weekday. We left our northern neighbor, however, with a strong urge to revisit soon.

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After living in our new house in Charlotte, North Carolina, for a few weeks, we were delighted to receive an invitation to a block party to meet our neighbors.

Up to that point, we’d only seen and spoken with one neighbor. She and her family welcomed us to the area, offered an air-conditioning reference and shared the garbage pickup schedule.

The morning of the upcoming gathering, my wife and I took a walk through the neighborhood. We admired the landscaping and architecture of nearby homes. We moved off the sidewalk as runners passed us. We trotted up one lawn to clear space for a biker whose steering wheel seemed to be pulling left and right.

Most of the people in cars waved as they passed, a regular occurrence here, even when they didn’t know us.

My wife believes I alert the canines in the area that I am a “dog person.” A golden retriever and a black Labrador spotted me from across the street and stared, causing their owner to stop and wait as they watched us disappear up the block.

A friendly man with a small dog stopped and chatted. He asked if we were residents and if we were attending the block party that evening. When we told him we moved here with our kids, he asked what brought us down.

“Work,” we said.

“Oh,” he said, turning to me. “Did you get a job with one of the banks?”

“No, my wife did,” I replied, directing his attention to her.

He was embarrassed and immediately apologized for assuming I had landed a job that required us to relocate. We reassured him it was fine and we kept walking.

I am proud of my wife and her professional accomplishments. I also recognize, even in a world where people regularly discuss equal opportunity, that we are still far from situations in which people can’t assume anything about the roles husbands and wives play when they meet a couple.

Later that evening, with our children in tow, we walked the few blocks to the party, waving politely at a man who almost certainly carried a beer the same way 20 years ago when he was in college, although his clothing, like ours, was probably a few sizes smaller. Maybe that’s an unfair assumption, too?

When we arrived on a tree-lined cul-de-sac, we noticed that most of the children were considerably younger than our pair, who snarled about an early exit.

After urging them to stay, we made some selections in the crowd and broke the social ice. Consistent with our experience since our arrival, we found people who came originally from Long Island, New York and New Jersey.

We chatted with a proud father, who pointed to his high school senior and proclaimed her the best athlete in her entire school.

“You must be in public relations,” I said.

He and his daughter laughed.

“That guy over there,” he said, pointing to a house.

“Yes?” I replied.

“He is a neurosurgeon who works with football players. His attends games and he does concussion protocol.”

“Really?” I asked.

“The players are supposed to say ‘spaghetti’ when they see him after a hard hit. They get hit so hard that they say things like ‘ham’ or ‘bologna’ because they can’t remember the first concussion word,” he offered.

Our children, despite their initial disappointment, found contemporaries that night and are cellphone buddies with the kids on the block. We received restaurant recommendations and local service provider referrals, while we also will recognize a few of the people who exchange pleasant waves on and off the block.

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It is disconcerting when the medical community reverses course. They seem to do that every decade or so, as with the purported value of vitamin C, estrogen and so forth. The latest about face, in case you haven’t yet heard, is on the matter of taking baby aspirin. For years we have been urged to take a baby aspirin each day to ward off all sorts of ills: heart attacks, strokes, dementia, colorectal cancers and who knows what else. Those tiny pills that can dissolve in seconds against the roof of one’s mouth, or be popped into it, seemed capable of miracles.

Now, with a shot heard truly around the world, an Australian research team at Monash University in Melbourne concluded that not only may aspirin not help, it may in some cases actually harm. The results of their study, which included more than 19,000 people over 4.7 years, were published in three articles this past Sunday in the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine and summarized by The New York Times on Monday, and by just about all other major media.

The study included whites 70 and older, and blacks and Hispanics 65 and older. Each took 100 milligrams — slightly more than the 81 milligrams of a baby aspirin — or a placebo each day. While doing so did not lower their risks of diseases, it did increase “the risk of significant bleeding in the digestive tract, brain or other sites that required transfusions or admission to the hospital,” according to The Times.

So what does all that mean, especially for those already at risk for the conditions aspirin was supposed to protect against?

I am going to quote from The Times very carefully here because this can get confusing due to mixed messages. “Although there is good evidence that aspirin can help people who have already had heart attacks or strokes, or who have a high risk that they will occur, the drug’s value is actually not so clear for people with less risk, especially older ones,” wrote reporter Denise Grady.

So can aspirin prevent cardiovascular events in people with diabetes, for example, or is the benefit outweighed by the risk of major bleeding? Does dose matter in that heavier people might require more aspirin to be prophylactive?

Here’s what the study tells us: Healthy older people should not begin taking aspirin. This will no doubt disappoint Bayer, St. Joseph and others who manufacture the drug. But those who have already been using it regularly should not quit based on these findings, according to Dr. John McNeil, leader of the Australian study. Rather they should talk with their doctors first because the new findings do not apply to those who have already had heart attacks or strokes, which involve blood clots. Aspirin is known to inhibit clotting.

The name of this study is Aspree and it was funded by the National Institute on Aging, along with the National Cancer Institute, Monash University and the Australian government. Bayer supplied the aspirin and placebos but had no other role, according to The Times.

The study focuses on preventive medicine, especially how to keep older people healthy longer. It included 16,703 people from Australia and 2,411 from the United States, starting in 2010. Serious bleeding occurred in 3.8 percent of the aspirin group as opposed to 2.7 percent in the placebo group.

McNeil does suggest the possibility that aspirin’s protective effect against colorectal cancers might still exist but not show up for a longer time span than the study. The Times article does go on to say that the good doctor, who is 71 and specializes in epidemiology and preventive medicine, does not himself take aspirin.

Don’t know what to do? As they say in the commercials, consult your doctor.

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The emails, text messages and calls came from all over the country. In the days leading up to Hurricane Florence’s arrival in North Carolina, friends and family shared good wishes for my family, who had moved to the Tar Heel State during the summer.

Preparing for the storm, we were under the impression that we were leaving the typical path of hurricanes when we moved this far west to Charlotte, which is more than 200 miles from the coast.

As the tone and urgency to prepare for the hurricane from meteorologists and politicians reached a peak, people lined up outside supermarkets, waiting to park their cars and navigate their overflowing carts through crowded aisles for their list of must-haves.

Clearly, water and bread were on every list, as the shelves at the 24-hour supermarket didn’t have a drop of bottled water. The only remaining bread was a cranberry concoction that sat on an otherwise bare shelf, examined closely perhaps by a desperate shopper and discarded at a rakish angle, a lone bread crumb telling the tale of the hurricane hurry.

Gas stations brought the same crowds, as drivers were as anxious as they would be on Long Island to gather fuel before trucks might be delayed and gas lines could grow.

People often referred to 1989, when Hurricane Hugo ripped through Charlotte.

Two days before the hurricane reached the area, the public schools closed despite the clear skies and the relatively calm winds. Several of the schools transformed into shelters for residents of the city and for those fleeing from points further east.

The day before the storm, a local bank teller told me about a nearby store that received a new water shipment. The parking lot for this rare find was as empty as the shelves were full of fresh water.

On the day of the hurricane, the forecast for the area called for squalls and heavy rains through much of the day. We stared outside, judging how far the trees bent over and how hard the sheets of rain were blown into our windows. Did we dare go out, especially when we didn’t know areas of local flooding all that well?

I called the local bagel store, where the man who answered the phone said the store planned to remain open through the afternoon.

We looked at trees that provide shade for us in a typical day and are homes for all manner of songbirds to see if we could figure out which of our arboreal friends were the most dangerous — and vulnerable — in the storm.

Eager to get fresh food and to leave the house before it was impossible, we drove around a few downed branches to the store, where we made the mistake of shopping when we were hungry and in provision mode.

When our teenage children awoke, we triumphantly presented the food. They seemed mildly impressed.

We still had electricity until Sunday afternoon, up until the time when we learned that schools would be closed for another day, as trees were removed from the area and power companies restored energy.

The calls and emails from outside the state continued to come in, as supportive friends continued to check to see how we were doing.

Even as other areas of the state dealt with unprecedented flooding, strong winds and tornadoes, we considered ourselves fortunate only to have lost a few trees and power for a day.

As with the response to Hurricane Sandy, our new neighbors in Charlotte offered advice. We may have moved to a fresh environment, but we were heartened by the support from up close and afar in the face of nature’s fury.

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When done drinking a bottled water or soda, we usually make a conscious effort to get it into a recycling bin. No further thought given, our good deed is done. We’ve recycled the plastic bottle rather than throwing it out to sit in a landfill.

The photos released that clearly show the Town of Brookhaven’s Green Stream Recycling facility was nearly buried in mountains of collected recyclables from the residents of Brookhaven, Smithtown and Huntington townships this August are shocking. It should serve as an alarming wake-up call.

This is a direct result of China implementing its National Sword policy to ban the import of recycled plastics. The visual impact of recyclables piling up like trash, and learning some items are now being sent to the landfill, have led us to the conclusion this is an issue that requires careful thought and attention.

We, and we’re sure many of our readers, have lived with the presumption our recycled plastic bottles, aluminum cans and used paper were sorted, cleaned and reformed into reusable materials locally. However, we were blissfully unaware that China imported nearly half of the world’s recyclables to turn into raw goods through its manufacturing economy.

Now, with changing international trade policy, shipping our recyclables — or honestly, still household garbage — halfway around the world is no longer an option. Suffolk County’s townships are struggling to figure out a new way to handle the piles of debris. Finding a new market for these recycled raw materials will pose an obvious challenge. Striking a balance of recycling items beneficial from a fiscal and economic viewpoint while weighing environmental impact is a challenge on the horizon as well.

One of Brookhaven’s recycling staff suggested Suffolk residents need to be more discerning. Get back to the basics of checking plastic bottles for a number inside a triangular arrow on the bottom and rinse all containers out first. It will help improve the value of the recycled material we are trying to sell in a drastically reduced global market.

It’s a good first step. But we need take it one step further.

The most direct way we, as individuals, can help provide a solution to the problem is to cut back on our dependency on one-time use items. It’s been said for years, but we truly need to start regularly grabbing a refillable water bottle rather than a disposable. Think about taking up the “hipster” trend of using Mason jars to store food. Go back to old-fashioned, but traditional Pyrex to store leftovers instead of limited-use thin plastic containers.

These small changes may seem hard at first, but we have proof it’s possible. Sure, every Suffolk resident balked at the idea of paying 5 cents for a plastic bag at retail stores when the policy was implemented in January. In less than a year, it’s seemed to have had a dramatic effect in changing behaviors. Many shoppers now simply carry their own reusable canvas and plastic bags.

Permanent change is necessary if we don’t want to be buried up to our necks in trash on Long Island. Smithtown Supervisor Ed Wehrheim (R) has predicted a “garbage crisis” within the next seven to eight years as Brookhaven looks to close its landfill. Let’s be part of the solution, and not the problem. Let’s focus on using reusable products, not recyclable or disposable.

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I didn’t see a horrifying and preventable accident this morning. I didn’t see a little girl, let’s call her Erica, on her way to her first week of school.

Erica, who, in our story, is 10 years old, wants to be a veterinarian, and has pictures of animals all over her room. She begged her parents so long for a kitten that they relented. They saw how well she took care of the kitten, putting drops in her eyes when she needed them, making sure she got the correct shots and even holding her kitten in the office when they had to draw blood to test for feline leukemia, which, fortunately, her kitten didn’t have.

Two years after she got her kitten, Erica continued to ask for additional animals, adding a fish, a rabbit and a hamster to her collection. Each morning, Erica wakes up and checks on all the animals in her little zoo, well, that’s what her father calls it, to see how they’re doing.

Her mother is convinced that the animals respond to her voice, moving closer to the edge of the cage or to the door when they hear her coming. When mother leaves to pick up Erica from school, the animals become restless.

I didn’t see Erica walking with her best friend Jenna. Like Erica, Jenna has a dream. She wants to pitch for the United States in softball in the Olympics. Jenna is much taller than her best friend and has an incredible arm. Jenna hopes the Olympics decides to have softball when she’s old enough and strong enough to play. Jenna thinks bringing a gold medal to her father, who is in the Marines and has traveled the world protecting other people, would be the greatest accomplishment she could ever achieve.

I didn’t see a man, whom I’ll call Bob and who lives only four blocks from Erica and Jenna, put on his carefully pressed light-blue shirt with the matching tie that morning. I didn’t witness him kissing his wife Alicia, the way he does every morning before he rushes off to his important job. I didn’t see him climb into his sleek SUV and back quickly out of his driveway on the dead-end block he and Alicia chose more than a dozen years earlier.

I didn’t see Bob get the first indication from his iPhone 7 that he had several messages. I didn’t witness Bob rolling his eyes at the first few messages. I didn’t see him drive quickly toward the crosswalk where Erica and Jenna were walking. The girls had slowed down in the crosswalk because Jenna pointed out a deer she could see across the street in a backyard. Jenna knew Erica kept an animal diary and she was always on the lookout for anything her friend could include in her cherished book.

I didn’t see Bob — his attention diverted by a phone he had to extend to see clearly — roll too quickly into the crosswalk, sending both girls flying. I didn’t see the ambulances racing to the scene, the parents with heavy hearts getting the unimaginable phone calls, and the doctors doing everything they could to fix Jenna’s battered right arm — her pitching arm.

I didn’t see it because it didn’t happen. What I did see, however, was a man in an SUV, driving way too quickly through a crosswalk, staring at his phone instead of looking out for Erica, Jenna and everyone else’s children on his way to work.

It’s an old message that we should repeat every year: “School is open, drive carefully.”

This Column is reprinted from September 14, 2017 issue.

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When we have visitors, we like to show off our neighborhoods. We take our guests to the beaches to admire the beautiful shoreline and we bring them to our villages to enjoy restaurants and shops. But some stores have been forced to close largely because so much shopping now takes place on the internet.

The owners and managers of stores that remain have learned that they must do more than in the past to attract customers. That is true of malls, department stores and especially smaller retail shops. To compete with the convenient internet, they have to offer an appealing experience for the consumer to visit them.

We are proud of our downtowns and want to publicize their efforts to attract business, especially for their best season before the holidays. To provide a local shopping event and a fun experience, we have arranged a private holiday treat at the Bates House opposite the Emma Clark Library in Setauket. Hometown stores and services from Huntington, Cold Spring Harbor, Northport, Smithtown, St. James, Stony Brook, Setauket-East Setauket, Port Jefferson, Port Jefferson Station, Mount Sinai, Miller Place, Rocky Point, Sound Beach, Shoreham, Wading River, Centereach, Selden and Lake Grove will feature their offerings at this charming venue for our local residents. Those who come out to enjoy this showcase will find a discount of 20 percent for some products and services.

Shoppers will be exposed to neighbors and friends as they sample community gatherings. Business owners will look to demonstrate what’s new for the holidays, from products or services to gift certificates and one-time discounts.

To make the occasion more delightful, there will be dessert bites from Elegant Eating and prosecco wine provided by TBR News Media/Times Beacon Record as a treat for shoppers, who will attend free.

Those businesses who are participating will enjoy a discounted rate at the gala in addition to their advertising in our holiday book, “Time for Giving.” They will also have advertising on our internet website and social media, including Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Furthermore, we will have spot interviews with each exhibitor and streaming live video throughout the event on Facebook on Tuesday, Nov. 13, from 5:30-8:30 pm. For further information, please turn to the large ad in our Arts & Lifestyles section in the center of the newspapers. also see our website and social media.

We will be proud to feature our private holiday shopping experience and hope you will, too. Please join us.

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When voters head to booths Thursday to participate in several statewide primaries, it is unlikely that the race for a judicial seat presiding over Suffolk County’s Surrogate’s Court will be at the top of their minds. We understand. The governor, lieutenant governor and attorney general races are likely what will drive primary voters to the polls, and deservedly so, as those are high-profile positions with juicy political implications for those who track things like the shifting nuclei of both parties.

So for those who haven’t paid close attention to what’s going on in a judicial race for a court most people probably never heard of, there’s a few things we think voters should know.

Tara Scully and Theresa Whelan are set to square off in the Democratic primary Sept. 13. Scully, a registered Republican, has already gotten the nod to secure that party line in the general election, meaning if she wins the Democratic primary, her name will appear next to both major political parties come November. Whelan, on the other hand, is an actual Democrat, though Newsday has reported that based on a deal cut by party bosses, if she wins the primary she’ll also be granted the Conservative Party line in the general election. Have we lost you yet? To summarize, on November’s general election ballot either a Republican will have both major lines or a Democrat will be listed as both a Democrat and a Conservative.

To try to get to the bottom of this mess, we invited the candidates in for a discussion with the TBR News Media editorial staff Sept. 6. While we are not endorsing a candidate, we have some thoughts we’d like to share anyway.

We admire what Scully did — stepping up and answering a call for a candidate unshackled by predetermined deals. She was able to earn enough petition signatures in a short window of time to run on both major party lines. However, if the result is she is representing both Democrats and Republicans on the ballot in November, it’s difficult to argue that voters still have a fair choice.

And while Whelan is a Democrat seeking a nod from her own party, rewarding backroom dealing designed to circumvent the will of voters is not a practice that should be encouraged either.

Having said all of that, after being in a room with the candidates for an hour, a few things became very clear. Both candidates are running with their hearts in the right place. They each expressed a desire to preside over a court that requires a touch of empathy and compassion, with fairness being of the utmost importance and politics divorced from the job. We also love to see political races featuring two accomplished and qualified women. Each has served as president of the Women’s Bar Association in addition to a litany of other impressive resume lines. Both seem to realize as well that they are essentially — no pun intended — surrogates having the political baggage marring this race imposed upon them. The discussion was respectful, truthful and honest, and each expressed that she had nothing bad to say about the other personally.

Regardless of the outcome of this race, we hope what voters glean from it is yet another reminder that citizen vigilance is not just important for a healthy democracy, but in reality, it’s the only thing keeping it alive. Research candidates. Figure out what these people stand for before you enter a voting booth or be prepared to live with the consequences.

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Newspaper publishers, editors and staff members across the country — especially weeklies operating on tight budgets — are breathing sighs of relief.

Last week the United States International Trade Commission overturned President Donald Trump’s decision to impose tariffs on Canadian newsprint, and we couldn’t be happier. The tariffs that the U.S. began charging this year caused many newspapers in the country to cut staff or paper sizes — in some cases both — to absorb the rise in newsprint costs. Other publications closed their doors as the additional expense was the breaking point for many outlets, making it impossible to continue operating in an environment already riddled with challenges in a changing industry.

The overturning of this tariff, besides creating a sigh of relief, has demonstrated the balance of power in our country at work.

Many have expressed fear about how much power a president may have or think he has, but our forefathers were visionaries. Declaring their independence from England, they knew a monarchy wouldn’t work in the U.S. All levels of government, from federal down to local, are designed with checks and balances in place in the form of executive, legislative and judicial branches. The president may want something to happen — in this case to impose a tariff — but that doesn’t mean that senators, congressmen, judges and federal agencies have to agree with him. And if they don’t, they have the power to make sure that a bill or an edict doesn’t go forward or remain in place.

Speaking of our Founding Fathers, they ensured the U.S. Constitution contained an amendment to aid in protection of the free press. It was written to allow journalists to fairly report on events and happenings without government interference. This enables reporters the freedom and ability to keep a close eye on what elected officials are up to.

Imagine if weekly, in most cases local, newspapers needed to continue to absorb the newsprint tariff. We presume many more would suffer, and as each one folded, regional and national outlets would be left to try to pick up the slack jumping into areas local news reporters know inside and out. Or worse: No one would pick up the slack.

If the press runs into an issue like this again — government decisions directly impacting our ability to do our jobs effectively — we as an industry have shown there is strength in numbers. In a show of unity, Aug. 16, hundreds of papers in the U.S. published similar
editorials voicing displeasure over the president’s disrespectful treatment of members of the press dating back to his campaign. The goal was to make it clear that the press wasn’t the enemy of the people.

As your local press, we are thrilled to continue to serve you in the years to come.

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Question: Put together some sci-fi, add a bit of spy thriller and what have you got? Answer: The latest hypothesis for what caused the symptoms and illnesses of our diplomatic representatives in Cuba and then in China. The Cuban incident caused a serious rift in the newly mellowed relationship between Cuba and the United States. Now scientists are suggesting that microwaves might be the weapons.

It seems that weapons emitting microwave radiation, not the short waves that come from our kitchen microwave ovens or connect our cellphones to antennae towers, have been considered by military specialists for mind control since the Cold War. These invisible beams can transmit painfully loud booms and even spoken words into people’s heads, according to an astonishing story by William J. Broad on the front page of last Sunday’s New York Times. Now Douglas H. Smith, director of the Center for Brain Injury and Repair at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia and the lead author of a recent study of 21 affected diplomats from Cuba, pointed to this possible cause of the brain injuries.

The Frey effect, named after American biologist Allan H. Frey, occurs when microwaves cause the brain to “hear” ordinary sounds, like loud noises, ringing and even human voices. These can be the result of stealth attacks with sonic weapons.

Jason, a secretive group of elite scientists that, according to The Times, helps the federal government assess new threats to national security, has been called in to figure out the cause of the symptoms. While the group has not issued any explanations, nor has the FBI, it is certainly studying the possibility of microwaves being the agents. Frey, 83, who lives near Washington, agrees. He even thinks that a group of Cubans aligned with Russia, their longtime ally, might have launched such an attack. “It’s a possibility … a perfectly viable explanation,” to disrupt a closer United States-Cuban relationship.

Microwaves, a form of electromagnetic radiation, are everywhere and are generally seen as harmless. However, when tightly focused, as when dish antennas turn the disorganized rays into concentrated beams, they can cause even deaf people to hear false sounds. Frey, in effect, founded a new field of study on the neural impact of radiation waves. He realized that the human head, because of its dimensions, is a good antenna for picking up microwave signals. The temporal lobes, beneath the temples, are where nerve signals from the outer and inner ear are processed. The effect is now called radio-frequency hearing.

Others took note. The Soviets built labs with armed guards to study the neural impact of microwaves and envisioned arms that they called psychophysical or psychotronic. These sounds, the Defense Intelligence Agency warned, could disrupt military or diplomatic personnel.

The U.S. Air Force jumped in to research how to beam comprehensible speech into the heads of enemies. The Navy sought to paralyze with the beams. Russia, China and European nations know how to make such weapons today. The weapon might look like an innocuous satellite dish and could fire beams over relatively short distances. We do know that Russian President Vladimir Putin resurrected “work on psychoactive arms” as recently ago as 2012, according to The Times.

There is still no definitive explanation for the sickness of diplomatic personnel in Cuban and subsequently China, but suspicions of microwave radiation remain high on the list. The problem in pinpointing them is the stealth.

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