Just Testing Again...
UK UFO NW
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U K / / // ___/ / / / 16th June 2000
/ / // / / / / N E T W O R K Issue 106 - Part 1
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The United Kingdom UFO Network - a free electronic magazine with
subscribers in 58 countries.
In this issue:
Editorial
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United Kingdom News
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[UK 1] - X-citement for motorists who love cult TV show
[UK 2] - A Meteorite Worth Its Salt
[UK 3] - Guard Jim Gets An Eyeful Of UFO
[UK 4] - Susan Hiller's Witness
[UK 5] - MoD Officials Refused To Release UFO Documents
[UK 6] - I'm No Fruitcake - Just Aware
[UK 7] - Close Encounters Have Phones Buzzing
[UK 8] - Revealed - Britain's 1950s flying saucer
[UK 9] - Thrilled By Mystery In The Sky
World News
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[W 1] - My Close Encounter Of The Blurred Kind
[W 2] - Pilot Close Encounter
[W 3] - Laser Gun Zaps Missile
[W 4] - UFO Theorists Gain Support Abroad, But Repression At Home
[W 5] - US Planned One Big Nuclear Blast For Mankind
[W 6] - UFO Photo Still Tantalizes
[W 7] - New Search For Aliens
[W 8] - Pentagon Denies Using Space Aliens
[W 9] - Secret 'UFO base' Revealed
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Editorial
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The world turns, but nothing much seems to change. I've been away for
a while, and now that I've returned everything seems to be pretty much
as I left it. There's hasn't been an announcement by the governments
of the Earth revealing an alien presence. No undeniable proof of alien
presence has turned up. Of course there was the disappointment of the
Mars Face, which was revealed to be nothing more than a trick of the
light, and the loss of the Mars PROBE NAME . All part of the ongoing
government cover-up depending on your point of view or whatever
commercial interests you're trying to protect.
The other night I caught the majority of a glossy US UFO documentary.
As all these things do, it left you with more questions than it did
answers and you couldn't help but suspect that the only criteria for
selecting the footage used was the number of adjectives that you could
attach to it! Everything seemed to be astounding, remarkable or
incredible. There was no time for interviews with witnesses, analysis
or any comment or detail about the time or conditions. Still, we're
not meant to ask such things are we. Believe or disbelieve, there's no
middle ground.
If you know of any ground breaking event that I may have missed then
let me know. E-mail me at UKu...@greenmen.demon.co.uk.
-Doug.
United Kingdom News
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[UK 1]******
X-citement For Motorists Who Love Cult TV Show
Source: Ananova
Date: 11 June, 2000
Fans of cult TV series X Files will be able to make the most of the
next set of special registrations due to go on sale soon.
The Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency is offering special X plates
from July 10.
X Files aficionados will be able to buy X15 UFO which will be on sale
for £499.
Followers of Chelsea Football Club might want to go for X1 CFC which
is being offered for £999.
However, Citroen fans wanting to personalise their Xsara or Saxo
models will have to wait for X5 ARA and X5 AXO as these will be sold
later at auction by DVLA.
"X is the latest in a long line of new prefixes that will capture the
public's imagination," said Byron Roberts, marketing manager for DVLA
sale of marks.
[UK 2]******
A Meteorite Worth Its Salt
Source: BBC News Online
Date: Thursday, 8 June, 2000, 17:46 GMT 18:46 UK
By BBC News Online science editor Dr David Whitehouse
Salt crystals found within the "Zag" meteorite may be among the oldest
materials found in the Solar System according to British scientists.
The age of the salt crystals could force a reappraisal of the
timescale for the origin of our Solar System.
It is possible that hospitable conditions for life might have arisen
earlier than previously thought. The researchers report their findings
in journal Science.
Using radioisotope dating, scientists at the University of Manchester
and the Natural History Museum in London, have determined that the
salt crystals probably formed within about two million years of the
solar system's birth.
If this is correct, it means that the dust, gas, and ice swirling
around the new-born Sun clumped together into rocky fragments far more
quickly than researchers had assumed.
These fragments were the parent bodies for meteorites like Zag and are
believed to be the building blocks for asteroids and planets as well.
Radioactive decay
Dr James Whitby and colleagues suggest that Zag's parent body grew
rapidly into a rocky mass containing water and radioactive elements.
The elements decay produced enough heat to melt any ice within the
rock and caused the liquid to evaporate altogether.
The salt crystals were formed during the evaporation process, similar
to the way salt forms when sea water evaporates on Earth.
The Zag meteorite, which fell in Morocco in 1998, was the second
meteorite found to contain salt crystals. Like those in the Monahans
meteorite the crystals contained microscopic droplets of water, the
key ingredient for life.
Accurate dating of salt crystals in the Monahans meteorite suggest
that the crystals might be some of the oldest materials in the Solar
System, but the dating method used is less precise than the one used
by Whitby and his colleagues.
It is estimated that the salt crystals in the Zag meteorite formed
about two million years after the birth of the Solar System some 4.57
billion years ago. It suggests that that liquid water was expelled its
parent body soon after it had been formed.
Until the discovery of salt in Monahans and Zag, the oldest materials
in the Solar System were thought to be chondrules, glassy spheres that
make up much of the mass of primitive meteorites.
[UK 3]******
Guard Jim Gets An Eyeful Of UFO
Source:This is Gloucestershire (www.thisisgloucestershire.co.uk)
Date: 7th June, 2000
Sky-gazing security guard Jim Brace is convinced he saw an enormous
UFO and will not change his mind even if people make fun of him.
The 29-year-old was on patrol at the Unipart depot in South Littleton,
near Evesham, just before midnight on Monday when he saw a huge object
in the sky.
He then watched it for the best part of an hour.
Mr Brace, who said he did not believe in UFOs until the incident,
said: "It was partly cloudy and partly clear. This thing just
gradually appeared. It looked like a plate, with small domes dotted
all over it.
"Apart from ringing the police and my firm about it, I watched it the
whole time.
"It was going round in circles every five minutes, although you could
only see it clearly for 20 seconds each time."
PC Tom Iddon said Evesham police would look into the matter.
He said: "We will keep an open mind but it may have been an
advertising air balloon which I believe was in the area at the time."
Mr Brace said he was sure it was nothing like a balloon, lights from a
laser show or a plane.
He said: "I've never seen anything like it and probably never will
again.
"They could put me in a strait-jacket but I know what I saw and I
won't change my mind for anything.
"It was massive and impossible to put a size on it. There was also no
noise coming from it."
Have you seen a UFO? Tell your story on our Open Forum bulletin board
or send a letter to the editor .
[UK 4]******
Susan Hiller's Witness
Source: Guardian Unlimited (www.guardianunlimited.co.uk)
Date: Thursday May 25, 2000
Art
The Chapel, London
Jonathan Jones
In Artangel's latest commission Susan Hiller fills a disused chapel
near London's Westway with the sounds of people describing UFO
encounters. The effect is strange, of course, but also familiar as you
climb a spiral staircase to the installation - just as you did with
Douglas Gordon's Artangel piece - and enter the kind of dilapidated
space Iain Sinclair might inhabit with a dead scholar. Artangel
specialises in quirky spaces, but it would be good to see one of its
commissions in a McDonalds or a car park.
Meanwhile, we get Hiller's collection of hundreds of eyewitness
accounts of UFOs landing in fields in Buckinghamshire, hovering over
Sydney or buzzing around villages in the Philippines. Entering the
upper room of the chapel you see a multitude of little loudspeakers
hanging on wires. A babble of voices talk at once, muttering like the
voices of the dead or the legion of the damned. It is called Witness,
but the sounds are blurred in this scary hive of noise, which is
cinematic in its creation of atmosphere but also glib in a Hollywood
way; we are encouraged not to listen to the details but to soak up the
background hum. Put your ear to a speaker and an Australian is
describing something odd he and his mates encountered. Leave him, the
hum gets louder, and a girl from Spain is telling an equally eerie
story. Are these actual witnesses or actors?
In the fictive space Hiller has created there is an echo of Plato's
cave where people watch shadows on the wall mistaking them for
reality. The little round loudspeakers might have doubled as flying
saucers in Plan 9 From Outer Space, an effect heightened when you see
their shadows on the floor. These shadows are like the remote
experience of the witnesses; something that can only be known at
second hand.
The sheer quantity of voices is unsettling. There is conviction in
numbers. But what is missing from Witness is attention to detail. In
Hiller's rightly celebrated collection From the Freud Museum (1991-6)
she precisely noted the tangle of historical and personal meaning in
even the most trivial thing. Here that web gives way to a fog of sound
and light. It's impressive, in a highly aestheticised way. For
hardcore Hiller go and see From the Freud Museum at Tate Modern.
Meanwhile, it may be time for Artangel to get less aesthetic, more
tacky. It is time for Plan 9 - yes, Plan 9
At the Chapel, London W10 (020-7336 6803), till June 25.
[UK 5]******
MoD Officials Refused To Release UFO Documents
Source: Ananova
Date: 25 May, 2000
Government officials who refused to release information about UFOs
have been criticised by a Parliamentary watchdog.
The case was investigated by ombudsman Michael Buckley, who persuaded
Ministry of Defence officials to change their mind. The man making the
request for information agreed to pay for the cost of collating the
information.
Mr Buckley investigated a total of five complaints in all Government
departments about the failure to release documents. He said the number
remained low, but he felt there were still cases where harmless
information was wrongly withheld.
Campaigners lobbying for greater openness said his comments proved the
Government's Freedom of Information Bill, which is currently before
Parliament, would continue a culture of unnecessary secrecy.
Mr Buckley's report found Home Office officials had wrongly withheld
sections of The Internet Detective, a guide to on-line crime for
criminal investigators.
Sections that had already been released to the press were censored, he
said, although it had been right to withhold those parts that had not
already been published.
Mr Buckley felt the MoD was right to withhold information about
nuclear capabilities, security and intelligence matters, but should
have issued less sensitive material.
The Maritime and Coastguard Agency wrongly refused to release a
surveyor's report on a vessel used to recover buoys, he found.
The Charity Commission was right to withhold information on an animal
welfare charity because the request was too vague and some details
would have constituted an invasion of privacy.
But the Commission could have been more helpful, Mr Buckley said.
[UK 6]******
I'm No Fruitcake - Just Aware
Source: Grimsby Evening Telegraph (www.thisisgrimsby.co.uk)
Date: April 14, 2000
The Telegraph has been inundated with sightings of strange,
unexplained phenomena in the past few weeks.
One reader claimed he had seen nine unidentified flying objects in the
last 25 years - all in Grimsby. A Tetney woman told how she had been
abducted by aliens.
She and others were not making the experiences up, UFO investigator
for the Grimsby area, Adrian Cross, told Telegraph Social Affairs
Reporter Olinka Koster.
Grimsby and the surrounding area is a hot spot for UFO sightings.
One hot spot is an area of Scotland surrounding Bonnybridge, near
Falkirk; another seems to be in Wiltshire and it appears North East
Lincolnshire is yet another.
And in the last 10 years, there has also been an increased number of
sightings in and around Grimsby.
Adrian Cross, a musical director for P&O Cruises, voluntarily
investigates sightings in the area - and is keen to point out that
although he believes in aliens he is no fruitcake.
The married 51-year-old's deep interest in UFOs was sparked when he
himself saw what he could only explain as a UFO.
"It was December 18, 1992 and I was with a friend in the States when
we stopped off at the Kennedy Space Center and saw this thing, this
object," Mr Cross explained.
"It was metallic, grey and it came out of the sky from the right at
the speed of a light aircraft. It had a strange contrail which was
very turbulent. It had no wings and before we knew what had happened
it shot off towards the horizon and was there within four seconds."
The pair contacted NASA but there had been no reports of light
aircraft going down. Later, when he contacted Quest International - a
UFO investigatory body based in Grassington, North Yorkshire, which
also publishes UFO Magazine - he was told what was significant was the
90 degree manoeuvre the object had performed.
He was later asked whether he would like to become more closely
involved, and since 1993, has been an investigator for Quest
International for the Grimsby area.
It was Mr Cross who investigated the case of the Tetney woman Elaine
King, who told the Telegraph she had been abducted by aliens.
And he believes her claims are completely genuine.
"It seems there are reported sightings locally and nationally all the
time," said Mr Cross. "Certainly over the last few years there have
been increased sightings in the area, and now Elaine has come forward
with memories of an abduction."
When Mr Cross went to see Mrs King, she drew pictures of the
spaceship's construction and told how one alien, apparently female,
seemed to express concern for her.
"It is typical in that she has been aware of these abductions since
she was a child," he said.
"She has described the occupants and the interior of the craft. She
also mentioned having seen a bearded gentleman who appeared to be laid
on a table with four wires entering his chest and stomach.
"I will now type her memories up and send them to my director of
investigations, Tony Dodd, who takes a great deal of interest in cases
like this.
"Mrs King has helped enormously. She is one of thousands of isolated
individuals being subjected to the phenomenon worldwide.
"Of the cases I have investigated they have all been genuine," he
continued. "The main reason people don't come forward is because they
are afraid of ridicule."
The investigator believes the truth is going to come out very soon.
He says authorities across the world know a lot more than they are
letting on about UFOs and their activities, and information will have
to be released soon.
"The authorities know what is going on but they seem to be reluctant
to release the full information into the public domain."
He said famous astronauts had observed UFOs during their NASA
missions. The former head of the MoD's UFO desk at Whitehall, Nick
Pope, went public about the UFO phenomenon because the evidence was
"so overwhelming".
But what could be their motives, if these aliens exist?
"There seems to be a breeding programme going on by the aliens; I know
this might sound like I'm in cloud cuckoo land but it seems we have
been identified by them as a race with particularly suitable genetic
material that they need," said Mr Cross.
"Why they need it is not known."
The investigator revealed one case, the details of which are only
emerging now.
An American woman says she was impregnated by an alien in 1978 and her
daughter, now 22, is showing some exceptional abilities, he said.
"A lot of things are coming out now. This seems to be the beginning of
a whole sea change in this subject. I wouldn't be surprised if an
announcement was imminent."
He added: "I'm no fruitcake. I just do this voluntarily. Really, it is
a matter of conscience.
"It is just standing up and being counted. It is to do with
contributing my little bit to the overall picture. One day all this
information will be made public."
[UK 7]******
Close Encounters Have Phones Buzzing
Source: Grimsby Evening Telegraph (www.thisisgrimsby.co.uk)
Date: April 10, 2000
By Joe Lumley
UFO mania has hit North East Lincolnshire as readers have flooded the
telephone lines of the Grimsby Telegraph with sightings of strange and
unexplainable phenomenons.
Writer Tony Downing claims to have seen at least nine UFOs in the last
25 years, all above Grimsby.
One was a dark shape which made no sound and emitted a beam of light
at Mr Downing and his wife before vanishing.
Cliff and Margaret Blyth, of Corn Mews, Cleethorpes, got the shock of
their lives when an unidentified red ball hurtled towards their house
and passed through Mr Blyth's body.
Mrs Blyth was on the telephone when her husband shouted to at her to
look through the window.
''I left the phone dangling as I saw a two-inch red ball of fire come
through the window and pass through my husband's chest.
"We immediately lifted his shirt to see if it had left a mark, but
there was nothing there - we daren't tell anyone at first, it was very
frightening.
People will think we're mad but there was nothing in the sky and not a
soul around." Mr Blyth (68) said: "I'm too old to be scared, it didn't
hurt but we both saw it and my wife never drinks."
Elaine Reid's husband thought she was "cuckoo" after she told him she
had seen a "bright light travelling really slowly across the sky down
the Humber" when she put her washing out last Friday.
Elaine, (pictured) of Princes Road, Cleethorpes, described the object
as "round and as big as an aeresol".
She said: ''My husband told me I was seeing things and that I should
forget about it. At first I thought it was a helicopter but it
vanished so quickly that it couldn't have been.''
Another reader, who wanted to remain anonymous, saw a "really bright
light" hovering above Blundell Park.
He said: "It was like a comet, it was so quick it couldn't have been
an aeroplane or a helicopter. It vanished in a split second. It was
travelling at a height between 3,000 to 5,000 feet - I can't describe
it, I've never seen anything like it."
On September 22, 1956, the RAF station in Manby logged and observed -
through telescope and radar - an 80ft in diameter UFO hovering at
54,000 ft over Cleethorpes.
Hundreds of strollers also witnessed the alien prescence in the resort
for over an hour before jet fighters went to investigate.
A GRANDMOTHER from Humberston who first saw a UFO 40 years ago thought
her husband was "Havana" laugh when he claimed to have seen an alien
prescence in the form of a giant silver cigar. The couple, both aged
63, of Lidgard Road, were leaving the Leas of Waltham School at
7.30pm, when John Ramsden spotted something spooky in the sky above
the fishermen's cottages last Thursday. Dorothy Ramsden, who saw a UFO
in Daubney Street 40 years ago, said: "We were just about to get into
the car when my husband said he'd seen an Unidentified Flying Object.
At first I thought he was my pulling my leg but then I saw this lovely
silver object with a pinky glow hovering in the sky." John Ramsden, a
self proclaimed sceptic who refuses to watch sci-fi on television,
said: "When I first spotted it I thought what the hell is that? It was
fascinating, we just stared at it in amazement for around six minutes
and I could see it from as far away as Toll Bar School." The couple,
who were not frightened by the experience, described the object as
hovering at an angle without moving. "I used to laugh about people
claiming to have seen UFO's but its different when you see one
yourself", said Mr Ramsden. "Who can say what it was?" A former
production supervisor at Faroe Seafoods, Mr Ramsden added: "I don't
see why we should be the only species - people used to think the world
was flat."
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