THE UFO CHRONICLES


nam et ipsa scientia potestas est
- Knowledge is Power -

     Dozens of people throughout Tenerife jammed the 112 emergency hotline on the night of January 10, all claiming to have witnessed something strange in the sky: a ball of fire flying through the sky in the direction of Gran Canaria trailing a green light.

One man who contacted the local media told how he had been driving along the TF-1 autopista when he was startled to see what he described as a small shining object cross the sky at high speed and vanish. The vision had lasted just a matter of seconds, he said.

When consulted the Canary Astrophysics Institute said such phenomenon are relatively frequent but go largely unnoticed because people rarely look up at the sky.

The most probable explanation for the “fireball” was that it was a piece of meteorite or space junk burning up as it entered the earth’s atmosphere.
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See Also: Fireball Lights Up South Florida Sky

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      The most famous UFO incident is a purported crash near Roswell, N.M., in July 1947. Many books have been written and movies made about the incident — some fictionalized, some with a basis in reality.

It all began earlier that summer, on June 24, when pilot Kenneth Arnold reported seeing disk- or saucer-shaped objects flying at high speed near Mount Rainier in Washington . In the days thereafter, hundreds of reports of “flying saucers” appeared in newspapers across the country.

During the first week of July, rancher William “Mack” Brazel discovered a large amount of unusual debris scattered over his ranch, about 75 miles northwest of Roswell. Neighbors told him about the “flying disk” phenomenon and suggested he go to Roswell to report his find.

Brazel informed the Roswell sheriff that he may have found a flying disk, and the sheriff then contacted the Air Force base in Roswell. The base commander sent two intelligence officers to investigate. The officers went with Brazel to his ranch and retrieved some of the debris, part of which was flown to Wright Field in Dayton, Ohio, home of the Army Air Force’s aeronautical research labs.

In a book written years later about the incident, one witness says Langley Air Force Base served as a secret storage depot for some of the Roswell evidence.

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See Also: The Mystery With The UFO Story

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     . . .Fabulous UFOs

Another thing Great Falls is known for is UFOs. Really.

The online encyclopedia Wikipedia says a 16mm film taken by Nicolas Mariana at Legion Park "remains one of the strongest cases supporting the existence of UFOs ever captured on film. Since then, over 100 other UFO sightings have been made in Great Falls, making it one of the most active locations for UFO sightings in North America."

Visit en.wikipedia.org for the full listing.

Mariana, a Selectrics baseball manager, happened to be at the ballpark when he filmed the unusual scene. Mariana later accused the Air Force of cutting out his best closeup footage of two flying objects before returning it to him. Air Force officials denied any wrongdoing.

What to plug

Great Falls clearly would not want to tout its past shantytowns, or the fact some TV people don't want to work here. But why not promote the city as a UFO capital?

Roswell, N.M., has snagged lots of tourists with aggressive, if wacky, promotions of its town as a purported landing spot for a flying saucer after World War II.

Earth to Great Falls: A UFO Museum in the Electric City is the least we could do.

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See Also: “Like Two Dimes in the Sky - The Great Falls Flying Saucer Film and the Cold War in Montana"

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     **A group of men went fishing as was their custom every afternoon, but this time they caught a surprise. When they set it on the ground, it began to walk**

     A group of Paraguayan fishermen had quite a surprise when they pulled two green fish out of the San Rafael stream in Asuncion's Zevallos Cue district. One of the specimens had hands and feet.

Their surprise was even greater when they noticed that the specimen began walking toward the water after having been set down on the ground, according to Paraguay's El Popular newspaper.

"It's too much. Seeing such things frightens me. We grabbed the net and brought it home, but we don't know what it is," said one of the protagonists of the story to the neighboring country's newspaper.

* (Translation (c) 2005, Scott Corrales, IHU. Special thanks to Jose Martínez Echevarría, ArgusPR)

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See Also: The Creature of Tagua Tagua Lagoon

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     An alert reader brought it to our attention that the picture associated with this story has been seen before. See "Comments":


     The following just in from Christian Quintero at Planeta UFO in Argentina:

"While the news item did exist and originally appeared in the Paraguayan media http://tinyurl.com/cz9pr, the photograph accompanying the INFOBAE note has nothing to do with the fish allgedly recovered from an embankment near Colonia Navidad.

"This image, along with several others, formed part of a chain of e-mails that went around the world depicting fish that supposedly washed up on beaches as a result of the Asian tsunami. You can read about this at http://tinyurl.com/8eecb.

"The fish that appears in the Infobae photograph is a long-nosed Chimaera from the Rhinochimeridae group http://tinyurl.com/ayajj. These are deep-water fish, distantly related to sharks, who employ their "noses" to dig up the sea floor and detect small prey. As can be imagined, it is rather unlikely that a deep water fish would have appeared in an embankment of a landlocked country.

"Furthermore, there are several species of freshwater lunged fish that have fins adapted to drag themselves along land when the puddles and small ponds the occupy become dessicated. Some can even climb trees if the need arises."

* (translation (c) 2006, S. Corrales, IHU. Special thanks to Christian Quintero)

     The top climate scientist at NASA says the Bush administration has tried to stop him from speaking out since he gave a lecture last month calling for prompt reductions in emissions of greenhouse gases linked to global warming.

The scientist, James E. Hansen, longtime director of the agency's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, said in an interview that officials at NASA headquarters had ordered the public affairs staff to review his coming lectures, papers, postings on the Goddard Web site and requests for interviews from journalists.

Dr. Hansen said he would ignore the restrictions. "They feel their job is to be this censor of information going out to the public," he said.

Dean Acosta, deputy assistant administrator for public affairs at the space agency, said there was no effort to silence Dr. Hansen. "That's not the way we operate here at NASA," Mr. Acosta said. "We promote openness and we speak with the facts."

He said the restrictions on Dr. Hansen applied to all National Aeronautics and Space Administration personnel. He added that government scientists were free to discuss scientific findings, but that policy statements should be left to policy makers and appointed spokesmen.

Mr. Acosta said other reasons for requiring press officers to review interview requests were to have an orderly flow of information out of a sprawling agency and to avoid surprises. "This is not about any individual or any issue like global warming," he said. "It's about coordination."

Dr. Hansen strongly disagreed with this characterization, saying such procedures had already prevented the public from fully grasping recent findings about climate change that point to risks ahead.

"Communicating with the public seems to be essential," he said, "because public concern is probably the only thing capable of overcoming the special interests that have obfuscated the topic."

Dr. Hansen, 63, a physicist who joined the space agency in 1967, directs efforts to simulate the global climate on computers at the Goddard Institute in Morningside Heights in Manhattan.

Since 1988, he has been issuing public warnings about the long-term threat from heat-trapping emissions, dominated by carbon dioxide, that are an unavoidable byproduct of burning coal, oil and other fossil fuels. He has had run-ins with politicians or their appointees in various administrations, including budget watchers in the first Bush administration and Vice President Al Gore.

In 2001, Dr. Hansen was invited twice to brief Vice President Dick Cheney and other cabinet members on climate change. White House officials were interested in his findings showing that cleaning up soot, which also warms the atmosphere, was an effective and far easier first step than curbing carbon dioxide.

He fell out of favor with the White House in 2004 after giving a speech at the University of Iowa before the presidential election, in which he complained that government climate scientists were being muzzled and said he planned to vote for Senator John Kerry.

But Dr. Hansen said that nothing in 30 years equaled the push made since early December to keep him from publicly discussing what he says are clear-cut dangers from further delay in curbing carbon dioxide.

In several interviews with The New York Times in recent days, Dr. Hansen said it would be irresponsible not to speak out, particularly because NASA's mission statement includes the phrase "to understand and protect our home planet."

He said he was particularly incensed that the directives had come through telephone conversations and not through formal channels, leaving no significant trails of documents.

Dr. Hansen's supervisor, Franco Einaudi, said there had been no official "order or pressure to say shut Jim up." But Dr. Einaudi added, "That doesn't mean I like this kind of pressure being applied."

The fresh efforts to quiet him, Dr. Hansen said, began in a series of calls after a lecture he gave on Dec. 6 at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco. In the talk, he said that significant emission cuts could be achieved with existing technologies, particularly in the case of motor vehicles, and that without leadership by the United States, climate change would eventually leave the earth "a different planet."

The administration's policy is to use voluntary measures to slow, but not reverse, the growth of emissions.

After that speech and the release of data by Dr. Hansen on Dec. 15 showing that 2005 was probably the warmest year in at least a century, officials at the headquarters of the space agency repeatedly phoned public affairs officers, who relayed the warning to Dr. Hansen that there would be "dire consequences" if such statements continued, those officers and Dr. Hansen said in interviews.

Among the restrictions, according to Dr. Hansen and an internal draft memorandum he provided to The Times, was that his supervisors could stand in for him in any news media interviews.

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See Also:Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed against NASA

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     SAN JOSE, California (AP) -- G. Scott Hubbard, who has led a NASA research center since 2002 and investigated the space shuttle Columbia tragedy, is stepping down to accept a position with an organization that studies the possibility of life beyond Earth, he said Monday.

Hubbard, 57, will occupy the Carl Sagan Chair for the Study of Life in the Universe at the SETI Institute, effective February 15.

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See Also: Shostak Responds to Recent "SETI Politics" Article

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     One of the last original witnesses to The Roswell Incident has died.

Dee Proctor, about 65, passed away 1/22/06 apparently from a heart attack on his way from the Corona, N.M. area to a hospital in Ruidoso, N.M.

Dee was the 7 year old boy with Mac Brazel who came across the incident.

See Also: Radio Announcer of Roswell Incident Has Passed Away at 88

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      NASA scientists said Thursday they have launched a new study on climate change using a special aircraft that will enter the high troposphere - the lowest level of the earth's atmosphere - in the tropics.

Paul Newman, one of the NASA project's coordinators, said the researchers will look at atmospheric contamination and how the ozone layer is changing.

The US $8 million project involves 140 scientists from the United States and 30 from Costa Rica, Newman told a news conference in San José. The study, conducted from a NASA office at the Juan Santamaría International (San José) airport, started Jan. 14 and will end Feb. 12.

During that time, the WB-57F plane will make 12 trips into the high tropical troposphere, which has barely been studied and is believed to have suffered the largest impact from climate change, officials said.

The plane can fly at an altitude of 60,000 feet and has 29 instruments to measure atmospheric conditions.

NASA scientist Eric Jensen said the agency is also interested in investigating the properties of clouds at high altitude, which are thin and have temperatures as low as 194 Fahrenheit below zero.

Could the NASA announcement yesterday be the answer to the UFO sighting last Friday (Jan. 13), an event that captured the attention of all as they looked up in the afternoon sky and still a source of belief by many.


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See Also: UFO Photographed Over San Jose, Costa Rica - Stirs Fear in Some Observers

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     More than five years ago, retired United Airline Capt. Ray Lahr began his FOIA (Freedom Of Information Act) petition to discover why TWA Flight 800 blew up on the night of July 17, 1996, off the coast of Long Island.

     The powers that be at the Central Intelligence Agency may have thought they could stall Lahr until he just gave up or died trying. If so, they didn't know the man. Capt. Lahr is as fixed on the truth as Capt. Ahab was fixed on his whale.

     Last week, Lahr and his attorney, John Clarke of Washington, D.C., filed an amended complaint in a U.S. District Court in California against the CIA, the National Transportation Safety Board, and now the much-in-the-news National Security Agency. In so doing, Lahr has left his adversaries increasingly little room to maneuver, and Lahr's is but one of three, active TWA Flight 800 suits making its way through the federal courts.

     From the beginning, Lahr has focused his attack on the most vulnerable point of the government defense – what he calls "the zoom-climb scenario." The FBI first publicly advanced this scenario in November 1997, 16 months after the crash. To negate the stubborn testimony of some 270 FBI eyewitnesses who had sworn they saw a flaming, smoke-trailing, zigzagging object ascend, arc over and destroy TWA Flight 800 off the coast of Long Island, the FBI showed a video prepared by the CIA.

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See Also: Alleged UFO/Plane Collision Case Solved

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     On Thursday, January 5, 2006, a fleet of spheres was recorded over Madrid, Spain.

     The witness, identifying herself only as "Fortuna", mentioned that she was taking a walk in Madrid's northwestern section, photographing the landscape and some of the contrails left by passing airliners.

     "The sun was behind me and I was looking north. I saw an airliner go by and suddenly I saw a group of elongated things coming in from the East. At first I thought the airliner itself had ejected something, but then I concentrated my gaze on them and forgot about the aircraft.

     "I had the sensation that they [the unknown objects] were elongated objects flying in formation. There was a large number of them and I thought they could be birds, only to realize that this was not the case -- they were small brillant spheres that blinked and flew in two separate groups, heading west.

     "They were not flying in a straight line, only making very small movements. I was stunned. It all took place very quickly, no more than a minute elapsed from the moment I saw them until I stopped seeing them.

     "Both groups traveled swiftly and at a near distance; it could be clearly seen that they flew together."


* (Translation (c) 2005, Scott Corrales, IHU. Special thanks to Ana Luisa Cid and Pablo Dessy)

* SOURCE: www.analuisacid.com

See Also: INTENSE UFO ACTIVITY OVER MEXICO

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     Maussan: "There's proof, I wasn't taken"

     Jose Alonso Herrera denies that he and his friend asked for money and accuse Carlos Trejo of slandering them.

     According to a written instrument sent to MILENIO by Jaime Maussan, radioactivity was found at the site where three youths recorded a seemingly non-human being on March 20, 2005 using a cell phone.

     The text says that astronomer and physicist Jorge Guerrero stated that the discovery was astounding and inexplicable, since there is no reason to justify the existence of radiation in Fraccionamiento del parque. Measurements taken with specialized equipment detected the presence of radiation not deemed hazardous, but merely as "dark matter".

     "I wonder it was me who was hoodwinked or you, dear friends of Milenio."

     The text goes on: present at the site where the youths who participated in the video's recording, Jose Alonso Herrera and David Espada.

     Maussan points out that great expectations have emerged around the so-called Merida Alien. However, this has allowed some like Jorge Moreno or Sergio Valdez Diaz of "Misterios de Merida" magazine to slam the researchers. "According to Moreno and Valdez, the video is only a prank by a young man who donned a carnival mask, which they state was admitted by not one buy all of the youth's participating in the event."

     Maussan says that Valdez Diaz told Daniel Barquet, a reporter for MILENIO, that the youths had mocked Maussan because they wanted to "get some dough" out of him and also because they wanted to pull the wool over his eyes. In stating this fact, notes the journalist, neither Barquet nor Valdez exhibit a single shred of proof or authoritative evidence.

     He goes on: Herrera and Espada state that Valdez Diaz's declarations are false, and accuse Moreno of having offered money to minors to admit their part in the prank.

     "The video reached me accidentally, after having circulated for months among teenage cell phones. I was never asked for money, and I have never offered it."

     Maussan says that the video has been analyzed by experts and that it has been established without a doubt that no animation is involved, although they admit that it could be something else, either a prank or a legitimate video.

     In the early hours of March 20, two young men from Yucatan, Jose Alonso Herrera and David Espadas, filmed strange figures using a cell phone, a recording they later disseminated through e-mail. They were then contacted by ufologist Jaime Maussan, who asked them for the film, to which they agreed, as he promised to investigate it. However, a man named Carlos Trejo came to Merida a few days ago with the intention of discrediting Maussan and the video fans.

     The story given by Alonso Herrera, 17, is that he and his friends make daily recordings in different places, as would any young men with a cell phone. "We shot several videos that day and nothing had happened," said Herrera, who said over the phone: "Then suddenly this happened." In other words, the controversial images of alleged aliens -- as published by reporter Daniel Barquet in MILENIO yesterday -- hidden behind a street lamp.

     -- Then it's not true that the images are fake, or that you were playing a prank, or that you asked for money?

     No, not at all. on the contrary. We resorted to Maussan because we lack the mans, but Carlos Trejo is putting us in a bad light. All of this is due to a problem between Trejo and Maussan.

     The story of the alleged aliens also came from a local paper, according to Herrera, the author of the recording, who is uncomfortable with the stories that are circulating. "They only publish accusations and that seems unfair to me," he insists. At no time are they referred to by name, but he and his friend feel attacked, "because they say that we had a mask and we hid behind a street lamp."

     Herrera says that at no time did they ask for money in exchange for the images. "The papers said that our sister had a mask and who knows what else. But haven't made any statements. The problem is that the papers here made them up on their own."

     -- How did the video come [into Maussan's possession]?

     We showed them to people here, and suddenly it was going from one cell phone to the next until a a chain was formed. And they day that Maussan came to make his presentation here, I have no idea who told him about the video. He came to see us and we told him about it.

     The Merida International Airport control tower received at least 75 UFO reports last year. Jorge Moreno Gonzalez, director of the Centro de investigación de Fenómenos Paranormales, said that tower personnel received at least 75 UFO reports over the last 12 months, but most of them were dismissed due to a lack of evidence or by being notoriously fake. Only 8 are still under investigation. Regarding the Fraccionamiento del Parque case, in which a group of teenagers admitted to creating a prank about an alleged alien in order to be able to mock Jaime Maussan and other researchers, Jorge Moreno Gonzalez, one of the best-known ufologists in the Yucatan, stated that he also received the alleged evidence and that his team of researchers looked into the case, but the result was the same as others: "The teenager who used the mask to play a prank on his friend no longer wants to discuss the subject. He's scared, as are his parents."

* Translation (c) 2006. Scott Corrales
Institute of Hispanic Ufology (IHU)

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See Also: MEXICO: YUCATAN ALIENS MOCK RESEARCHER

See Also: Close Encounter at Mérida?

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     They mocked Jaime Maussan in Mérida, Yucatan, and alleged aliens disclosed it was all a prank.

     Last week, the ufologist presented evidence of alien life in Mérida, which circulated over the Internet and show an alleged alien concealed behind a light post.

     Authors of the "jape" disclosed that they did it merely to "to mock" Maussan and try to "get some dough" out of him. The prank, which "even passed the analysis with special equipment", was made with a mask that one of the participants purchased during last year's carnival in Yucatan's capital city. The alien evidence was broadcast by Televisa during the last episode of the Otro Rollo program, hosted by Adal Ramones.

     After the end of this program, the prank made with a supermarket mask became, for some ufologists "further proof" that aliens are on Earth and that one of them appeared in Fraccionamiento del Parque in eastern Merida.

     The recording, presented by Maussan as a world exclusive, is of poor quality and was made with cell phone. The pranksters claim that they made it "in order to make a good amount of money from the sale of that material", but are now afraid and undecided about disclosing the truth or maintaining the hoax.

     "The events are fake. There is no such alien," said Sergio Valdez Diaz, member of the Centro de Investigacion de Fenomenos Paranormales, a group dedicated to studying such events.

     Two re-enactments have already been made in Merida using camcorders and cell phones similar to the one employed in making the recording, yielding elements that dismiss [its credibility].

     "We engaged in this event shortly after the events, before Maussan came to listen to their story. It's not true that alien vanished behind the lightpost, since it is large enough for a young man to conceal himself. The alleged entity's long arm, which touches the young man, is a visual effect. It was said that contact took place when the boy went to fetch the ball, but the ball was on the left and the post was on the right," stated Valdez Diaz, who met with the authors of the prank, all minors.

     Accoridng to Valdez Diaz, "all of the youths involved were aware of the deception but decided to maintain it, partly because they hoped to obtain money through their hoax."

     "Now this teenager is frightened by the scope of the events and by the visits from people wanting to interview him. He no longer wants to speak with anyone. His companions did not tell the truth because, as they said, they hoped that Maussan would pay them a good amount of money for the recording and could "have a good laugh" at his expense," he concluded.

* (Translation (c) 2006. Scott Corrales, Institute of Hispanic Ufology (IHU). Special thanks to Christian Quintero, Planeta UFO)

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See Also: Close Encounter at Mérida?

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     UFO experts are investigating the sighting of a strange object in the clouds above South Cheshire.

     Concerned eye-witnesses reported seeing a weird flashing light in the skies above Crewe.

     The incident comes as Ministry of Defence figures show that there as been at least three significant unexplained reports of UFOs in Cheshire in the past three years.

     Mike Soper, of Oxford-based Contact International UFO Research, has been investigating the latest incident.

     He said: 'There was a sighting of a yellow flashing light which seemed to be hovering over North Crewe.

     'It was observed for a few minutes before it went out of view. The interesting thing is that it was a yellow light, which was flashing at a much faster frequency than the automated collision lights which are normally seen flashing on planes.

     'I have checked with Manchester Airport and Scottish Aviation which are both in line with Crewe and there was nothing in the sky over the town at that time.

     'The lights on planes are either white, red, or green. They are required to be those colours, they are never yellow.

     The incident, which took place at 5am on the morning of Saturday, January 7, followed the sighting of another bright light in the Stafford-shire town of Stone.

     Mr Soper added: 'The second sighting at Stone was much later in the day at around 6.20pm.

     'A remarkable light was seen over the town until about 7.40pm. It seemed to be circling around overhead, and was like a hazy blur. We thought it could have been a laser show at Alton Towers.

     Have you seen a UFO in the skies of South Cheshire? If so, please let us know.

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     SAN JOSE - When uncertainty still lingers in the air over the arrival of a giant tsunami, that later never appeared and was initially reported by commercial airliner pilots flying over the Central American Pacific Coast on Wednesday the 11th, hundreds of residents of [the Costa Rican] capital were witnesses to a new inexplicable phenomenon at noon on Friday.

     Initial information on the Tsunami's existence emerged from Honduras, but a journalistic account in Costa Rica's La Nacion, indicated that an airliner pilot who took off from Juan Santamaria airport on his way to Ecuador, also reported the phenomenon to the terminal area's control tower.

     "Telenoticias", Channel 7's news report in Costa Rica, presented on Thursday the recording in which the pilot can be heard informing the tower as to the apparent tsunami.

     Emergency prevention and relief authroities from the various Central American countries, after consulting with scientific institutions linked to the case, dismissed the existence of a wave or any earthquake in the high seas that could have caused it. So what did the pilots see?


     According to reports appearing in the Saturday editions of Costa Rican newspapers "Extra" and "Al Dia", the sighting of an alleged UFO caused a commotion among pedestrians and prompted the mobilization of reporters, photographers and camerament from various branches of media, who were mostly on their lunch hour.

     "It was a luminous point that stood out in the clear blue skies and moved very slowly."

     Word spread rapidly that a strange object was in the skies and within minutes, streetcorners were filled with people who strained to see the mysterious dot that no one could identify," according to part of "Diario Extra"'s information.

     According to the information, the phenomenon was seen for over an hour and Costa Rican scientists have no explanation.


     "As it turned out," added the paper, "they were three white lights moving slowly in the sky, one of them near San Jose's Central Park, another over the Jimenez Institute and the last one by the old Radio Monumental facilities." All of these locations are in the Costa Rican capital's business district.

     The object was discovered because many people were looking skyward, after news programs presented UFO images taken that very same week, said "Extra".

     "Al Dia" on the other hand, cited the statments of atmospheric physicist Walter Fernandez, whoclaimed that the spectacle was "caused by one of the balloons employed in Costa Rica for a series of atmospheric expriments and measurements." These balloons are launched at 6 am, 12 noon, 6 pm and 12 midnight.

     But Alexander Cordoba, an official with the Costa Rica National Meteorological Institute in charge of launching said balloons from the Juan Santamaria Airport, located in Alajuela Province, explained that the wind pushes them westward "making it very hard for the balloons to appear over San Jose."

     Airport control tower staff at Juan Santamaria and Tobias Bolanos (airports), the latter located in Pavas, to the west of the city, claimed not having picked up any anomalies on radar or reports on the subject.

     Despite the fact that the radio version of "Revista Informativa Nicaragua Hoy" was not transmitted on Friday to make way for Nicaragua's professional baseball series, many people phoned the newsroom and Radio Cucu to say that they had witnessed the phenomenon and requesting information about ti.

* SOURCE: Nicaragua Hoy

* (Translation (c) 2006 Scott Corrales, IHU. Special thanks to Christian Quintero, Planeta UFO)

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See Also:UFO Photographed Over San Jose, Costa Rica - Stirs Fear in Some Observers

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     The casual recording of an alleged close encounter of the third kind in a street of Fraccionamiento del Parque has transformed the lives of families in Merida's broad Oriente sector, who on the one hand seek financial gain from the arrival of national and international groups linked with extraterrestrial research and on the other, have modified their lives to avoid becoming the victims of alien beings.

     "Now I shut my doors at nine at night and do not let my children go out after hours for any reason whatsoever," said a fearful Marycarmen Avila Ordonez, who lives in Pacabtun.

     Cristo Rey parish, the axis of this district's spiritual life, says that it has no reports on this event and that if there are any, they have not affected the religious life of that community. "We always receive reports of strange events immediately, such as the apparition of the Virgin some 8 years ago, but we have no reports of encounters between residents and aliens," said Carmen Zel Chuc, parish secretary.

     The event became widely known when the recording reached the hands of Jaime Maussan, who broadcast it on his television show. The recording spread immediately from cell phone to cell phone, over the Internet, and as no other, went on to become the most widely transmitted throughout the Yucatan, relegating to second place the recording made by a young sales assistant at a downtown department store, who stripped naked for her boyfriend in front of the camera phone...a recording he chose to disseminate over the internet.

     The video's main protagonist is David Espadas Dzib, 18, a computer student at Conalep and having residence at [...] in that district.

     The young man says that on the eve of the spring equinox at 2:30 a.m. on March 20th, he was playing with his friends only a few steps away from his house when the ball fell near a street lamp.

     One of the boys, Jose Herrera, was trying out his new camcorder-equipped cell phone that day.

     At the moment when the ball falls near the CFE street lamp and David runs to pick it up, he shouts that something touched him. His friends rush to his aid and at that time an unknown silhouette peers out from behind the street lamp. The boys run away screaming.

     "It wasn't until the next day that we checked out José's recording and saw that I was touched by a strange creature. We agreed to say nothing because we would be accused of being insane or pranksters. The fear didn't let me sleep for two days and my crew didn't return to that alley for two months," says David.

     His neighbor Wendy Lopez Manzanero says that when she learned of the recording, she decided to never walk along that alley again.

     "I didn't believe in those things, but the boys that suffered that strange experience are very sincere," says Carmen Dehesa Uribe, a local who claims to be the niece of author German Dehesa.Her niece Naine Peraza Solis says she's afraid to play with her friends at night.

     Frightened neighbors aside, the young men involved in this event first suffered the mockery of other boys and some neighbors, and later, the disenchantment of being famous without any profit.

     "Will we get something in exchange for the interview? Jaime Maussan asked me not to grant interviews without his permission. Everyone's getting rich at my expense--sensationalist magazines, radio and TV shows, and I haven't gotten a single peso," complains David.

     He points out that when the video displaying the alleged encounter passed through the first inspections by specialists in ufology, Maussan promised him part of the earnings from the sale of the recording to a Japanese TV network. He took him to hold lectures and conferences on the subject. "All I've gotten is laughed at."

* (Translation (c) 2006, Scott Corrales, IHU. Special thanks to Carlos Martinez)

See Also: ARGENTINA: NEW UFO CASE REPORTED IN VICTORIA

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Remember the creepy stories about flying saucers and little men from outer space? Dorothy Kilgallen has run into a new one in London. Here is her dispatch to the New York Journal-American on what a British official thinks about those "little fellows."


     London, May 22 - British scientists and airmen, after examining the wreckage of a mysterious "flying ship," are convinced that these strange aerial objects are not optical illusions or Soviet
inventions, but actually are flying saucers which originate on another planet.

     The source of my information is a British official of cabinet rank who prefers to remain unidentified.

     "We believe, on the basis of our inquiries thus far, that the 'saucers' were staffed by small men - probably under four feet tall," my informant told me today.

     "It's frightening but there is no denying the flying saucers come from another planet."

     This official quoted scientists as saying a flying ship of this type could not have been constructed on earth.

     The British government, I learned, is withholding an official report on the "flying saucer" examination at this time, possibly because it does not wish to frighten the public.

     When my husband, Richard Kollmer (Broadway producer and radio commentator) and I arrived here for a brief vacation, I had no premonition that I would be catapulting myself into the controversy over whether flying saucers are real or imaginary.

     In the United States, all kinds of explanations have been advanced.

     But no responsible official of the U.S. Air Force has yet intimated the mysterious flying ships had actually vaulted from outer space.

See Also: Blast From The Past - August 3, 1957:
Boy Sees Flying Saucer Land!

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     A UFO sighting galvanized the attention of hundreds of onlookers at noon yesterday, causing commotion in the city's downtown area.

     It was a point of light that stood out in the blue skies and moved very slowly. Word spread very quickly that there was a