British UFO sightings spiked when blockbusters released

Lemon-headed aliens, scrambled fighter jets and mysterious lights over a cemetery were among details of some 800 UFO sightings released by British authorities.

But another intriguing finding to emerge from the 1981-1996 archives was a surge in reports at the time of UFO-related blockbusters such as 1996's Independence Day, not to mention the British television run of The X-Files.

Among the most striking accounts released by the Ministry of Defence (MoD) is that of two boys who reported being spoken to by an alien with a lemon-shaped head, who appeared before them in a field on May 4, 1995.

"We want you, come with us," said the alien's voice, according to a police report filed after the youngsters, who seemed "agitated and distressed," recounted their experiences.

"They stated the object was about four houses high in the sky and about forty foot away from them," said the report, adding that when officers went to check two days later, they found only a farmer spraying his crops.

In another account bound to excite ufologists, a former armed forces chief urged authorities to take more seriously a report by US Air Force (USAF) staff near an airbase in eastern England.

The individuals "reported seeing a strange glowing object in the forest," said a report by a US air force commander, recounting what three of his staff told him of the incident, early on the morning of December 27, 1980.

"It illuminated the entire forest with a white light. The object itself had a pulsing red light on top and a bank of blue lights underneath. The object was hovering or on legs. As the patrolmen approached the object, it manoeuvred through the trees and disappeared."

Then there is the report of how, between November 1989 and April 1990, the Belgian air force scrambled F-16 fighter jets to investigate a series of UFO sightings - and reportedly "locked on" to them with their radars.

"The mystery remains unresolved," wrote General Wilfried de Brouwer, Chief of Operations, Belgian Air Staff, adding that despite being sceptical, "the evidence was remarkable."

One of the spookiest incidents occurred in the early hours of July 15, 1996, when a UFO was spotted hovering over a cemetery in Widnes, northwest England, before firing burning laser beams into the ground.

Cynics would note that the man involved was heading home from a night out at the time - possibly in a similar mental state to two revellers who claimed to have seen a UFO hovering over the jazz tent at the 1994 Glastonbury Festival.

And sceptics will also point to a more general trend made clear by the latest archives.

In 1995 there were 117 UFO sightings reported to authorities, but this spiked to 609 in 1996, according to the MoD reports, released after a three-year project with the National Archives.

"It's evident there is some connection between newspaper stories, TV programs and films about alien visitors and the numbers of UFO sightings reported," said UFO expert and journalism lecturer David Clarke.

"Aside from 1996, one of the busiest years for UFO sightings reported to the MoD over the past half century was 1978 - the year Close Encounters of the Third Kind was released," added Clarke.

Shadow Hair, Mr Extreme and the not-really-super heroes

Shadow Hare and Dark Guardian ... just two of the masked men and women seeking to fight for justice and the American way.

It's certainly not a bird, or a speeding bullet, or a plane. It looks more like a guy in a silly lycra outfit.

Wearing masks and the full superhero get-up, a band of "real life superheroes" are patrolling the world's cities trying to clean up the streets.

So claim the comic book-like crime-fighters, a loose association of costumed do-gooders who say they are taking up the fight for justice for ordinary people.

Boasting names like Dark Guardian, Citizen Prime, and Green Scorpion, the mainly US-based characters say they need to wear outfits to protect their identities from the evil-doers they attack.

Most have MySpace pages where they reveal the philosophy of their superheroism.

Florida superhero Amazonia wrote why she was prompted to strap on the black Zorro-like mask and defend her city, Ocala:

"I finally had enough of seeing the gangs terrorizing the downtown section of my city. They would mug, beat and otherwise harass senior citizens and women.

"So I took up the mantle of Firebird and set out to do what I could to help others."

Many of the superheroes say they are armed with weapons such as stun guns, which can be legally carried in the US.

"Shadow Hare", a 1.7 metre, slight-of-stature 21-year-old Cincinnati resident who carries handcuffs, a stun-gun and pepper spray, boasts: "I've stopped many evil doers ... such as drug dealers, muggers, rapists, and crazy hobos with pipes."

Many of the superheroes' good deeds are of a civic nature - such as volunteering with charities or feeding the homeless.

But some make more bolder claims of actual crime-fighting.

Shadow Hare said he dislocated his shoulder two years ago while helping a woman who was being attacked.

He also said he was working with a San Diego-based superhero called Mr Extreme to "track down a rapist".

On his MySpace page, Dark Guardian writes of the moment he saw two men with baseball bats waiting to beat someone up outside their house late at night.

"I park across the street from them. I wait and watch them. I make sure they see me so they know someone is watching, soon after they leave.

"I didn't have to go and fight two guys with bats to stop a crime. I just made my presence known and they decided to stop what they were trying to do."

On another occasion he writes of confronting a deranged man trashing a store.

"I stood in front of him and made sure everyone got out of the store. I tried talking him down. The store had already called the cops.

"Once the police came he cooperated and was hauled away. If he came at me or anyone else this story would end differently and I would have been in court myself because I had my knife at the ready.

"Glad it ended the way it did."

Some superheroes also formed together under different banners to tackle crimes in unison, such as the Allegiance of Heroes.

One such group, titled the Justice Society Of Justice, claims to offer "twice the JUSTICE as the leading competitors!".

An online "Superhero Registry" lists members of the "the Real-Life Superhero community", outlining their speciality (for example public service or crime-fighting), where they patrol, whether their identity is secret and if their status as a superhero has been confirmed.

The website states the superheroes are not just role-playing, but that this is "a movement among ordinary people to make the world a better place in an extraordinary way".

"There are always those who will take something less seriously, but the Real-Life Superhero community is generally composed of sincere, well meaning people who have finally decided to go out and make a difference."

The heroes wear costumes to inspire others, protect their privacy, and "conceal vulnerabilities in one's protective gear", the site says.

People can also make their own submissions to be added to the registry but acceptance usually requires evidence of heroic activities through "media documentation of such activities, or testimonials from established Real-Life Superheroes".

On his MySpace page, superhero Dark Guardian also writes of the weight of expectation on real superheroes.

"What I got most out of being a Real Life Superhero is living up to the name. I have to be the living embodiment of a superhero. With that comes great responsibility.

"I have walked away from being a Real Life Superhero before , but I couldn't give it up. It is who I am. It is what I believe in.

"And it will help change the world."

But police appear not to have warmed to the idea.

"We expect people to report crime to the police and not put themselves in jeopardy," New York Police Department spokesman Deputy Police Commissioner Paul Browne said in an article about the "superheroes" last year.

http://www.smh.com.au/world/shadow-hair-mr-extreme-and-the-notreallysuper-heroes-20090504-asau.html?page=-1

US pilot ordered to shoot down UFO over Norwich

A FORMER fighter pilot has told how he was ordered to shoot down a UFO the size of an aircraft carrier over England 50 years ago.

The encounter over Norwich is detailed in one of 19 files declassified by Britain's Ministry of Defence and released by the National Archives yesterday.

RAF controllers told US pilot Milton Torres to "lock on" and launch all 24 of his rockets over the city, The Sun reports.

As the 26-year-old US Air Force lieutenant came within seconds of firing at the alien intruder - the size of an aircraft carrier on his radar - it vanished at 16,000km/h.

Mr Torres, then based at RAF Manston in Kent, told The Sun: "It was some kind of alien snooping over England. I guess we’ll never know what it was".

Speaking publicly about the incident for the first time, he said he was ordered late one night in 1957 to scramble in his F-86D Sabre fighter to attack a "bogey" hovering above Norfolk.

"I was told I would be firing a complete salvo, all 24 rockets. I was pumped up - this was the sort of thing that happened before a war," he told the paper.

He had the UFO on his radar and closed in at almost 1125km/h before the shape disappeared off his screen in a flash.

Mr Torres, now 77, said: "I was smoking, as fast as I could go. This thing had a different propulsion system. It was not an airplane."

He said he was visited afterwards by a sinister security official and warned not to tell anyone.

The files also reveal an incident in which a commercial jet almost collided with a UFO as it began its descent into London's Heathrow airport in 1991.

The captain of Alitalia Flight AZ 284 saw something alarming overhead before the missile-shaped object suddenly veered across the airliner's path.

He shouted "look out!" as he attempted to avert a mid-air collision 22,000ft above the Kent countryside, the Daily Mail newspaper reports.

The object then disappeared.

.. more info

Empty dwellings in a city desperate for places to live

IN ITS obsession with property prices and housing affordability, Sydney has overlooked a startling fact: the city is awash with empty buildings.

The number of unoccupied residential dwellings in Sydney counted by census workers in 2006 was 122,211, with the highest number found in the inner city. That does not include the thousands of empty warehouses, pubs, churches and shops.

"It's an amazing figure, isn't it? It begs analysis," said Col James, the director of the Ian Buchan Fell Housing Research Centre, in the University of Sydney's architecture faculty. The number was up from 97,889 a decade ago.

"The numbers would be swelling now there are more mortgage defaulters," he said. "There are empty properties all over the place if you know how to look for them."

Some belong to people whose development applications are languishing with councils. Other owners are saving up to renovate.

Hundreds of houses are lying vacant while children who inherited them fight over property rights. Hundreds more become orphan homes after the death of owners with no next of kin.

"Some properties are probably vacant for very good reasons but there are others that are left deliberately vacant," Mr James said. "Property developers get distinct advantages from the Commonwealth Government like negative gearing to alleviate their tax bill.

"They also get a rental subsidy if they say, 'We will make this property available for the rental market.' But they pocket the subsidy, saying, 'We tried to rent it but we couldn't' and then they don't get the hassle of tenants."

The Sydney property magnates Isaac and Susan Wakil are wealthy enough not to need rental subsidies or tenants.

The elderly Vaucluse couple, arts patrons and former darlings of the social pages, have accumulated 15 properties across Pyrmont and the city centre, a portfolio estimated to be worth more than $75 million.

All their buildings and land are vacant, except for the Harris Street headquarters of their company, Citilease - and the ground floor of that is empty.

The Wakils' cream Rolls-Royce can be seen most days parked in the driveway of Citilease but the reclusive couple declined to speak to the Herald for this story.

Mrs Wakil, who was born in the then Romanian province of Bessarabia in 1932, told the Herald in 1961 she still remembered her father being dragged to a Siberian gulag for being a capitalist land owner when she was seven.

After imprisonment in a Soviet concentration camp, her mother died and the young Susan and her aunt escaped to Australia. Her father migrated here after his release.

The Baghdad-born Mr Wakil is rarely seen in public; neighbours, real estate agents and buyers speak of negotiating only with Mrs Wakil.

The Wakils' Griffiths Teas building in Wentworth Avenue is empty but for the telltale signs of squatters past: old sleeping bags, empty longneck bottles, and rubbish.

The heritage listing limits redevelopment opportunities but that has not stopped the offers.

"We were interested in having that building for a boutique hotel conversion," said Paul Fischmann, the chief executive of the Eight Hotels Group, which owns the Diamant Hotel in Potts Point. "The answer we got back was that it wasn't worth her while."

Their other properties include the neighbouring Key College House, several terraces in Pyrmont and an empty corner shop on Harris Street.

"On average, we get about one inquiry a week, mostly from developers who say 'What's the story with this vacant block?"' said Patricia Kho, of Elders Pyrmont. "There are a fair few serious developers who have said that, given the opportunity to purchase, they would go in."

Ms Kho said the Wakils' hoard of vacant properties was a mystery. "It's a question a lot of agents in the area don't know the answer to.

"I know it's a family holding and they don't need to sell. These are properties they bought a long time ago that have been paid off. It will cost them money to do it up and rent it out so they are just sitting on the land value."

One of their most obviously vacant properties is the Terminus Hotel on Harris Street, Pyrmont. Ancient beer ads adorn the hotel's exterior. Its sign is covered with vines, and wooden boards cover broken windows.

"It's been empty for more than 15 years," said Mickie Quick, a co-founder of the squatter's group Squatspace. "We got inside once and changed the locks but we only lasted a few weeks. It was one of the scariest evictions I had ever had. Two hired guns came in with sledgehammers in the night."

Dianne Tipping, the owner of Tattersalls Hotel in Rozelle, said many of the city's empty buildings were former pubs awaiting redevelopment applications. Pubs are among the oldest buildings in Sydney and many need a lot of work.

"The Tattersalls was built in 1879 and really had nothing much done on it since then except a few lean-tos put on," she said. "So [two years ago] I decided to bite the bullet and close it down."

It has been vacant since. She had to wait for her development application to be approved by Leichhardt Council and for her architect to return from maternity leave. Her pub will be refurbished and reopened.

Every year about 1200 vacant houses fall into the hands of the Public Trustee, Peter Whitehead, because people die without leaving a will or heir. "Or sometimes people go missing and leave their houses uninhabited," he said.

Public Trustee staff search vacant properties for wills and seek next of kin in Australia and overseas. If no heirs are found, properties are sold and proceeds go to the state.

"All that can take an incredible amount of time, during which the property is often sitting there vacant," Mr Whitehead said.

Mr James said this was wasteful. He wants councils and insurers to charge higher rates for vacant properties to promote more efficient use of space and to encourage owners to allow squatters, artists, students and the homeless to live in their buildings.

"You get the property development industry bleating about how they need to produce 1000 dwellings a week to meet housing demand," he said. "I say to them, "Well, guys, there's 120,000 houses out there you are not doing anything with."

.. from smh

Mysteries of computer from 65BC are solved

A 2,000-year-old mechanical computer salvaged from a Roman shipwreck has astounded scientists who have finally unravelled the secrets of how the sophisticated device works.

The machine was lost among cargo in 65BC when the ship carrying it sank in 42m of water off the coast of the Greek island of Antikythera. By chance, in 1900, a sponge diver called Elias Stadiatos discovered the wreck and recovered statues and other artifacts from the site.

The machine first came to light when an archaeologist working on the recovered objects noticed that a lump of rock had a gear wheel embedded in it. Closer inspection of material brought up from the stricken ship subsequently revealed 80 pieces of gear wheels, dials, clock-like hands and a wooden and bronze casing bearing ancient Greek inscriptions.

Since its discovery, scientists have been trying to reconstruct the device, which is now known to be an astronomical calendar capable of tracking with remarkable precision the position of the sun, several heavenly bodies and the phases of the moon. Experts believe it to be the earliest-known device to use gear wheels and by far the most sophisticated object to be found from the ancient and medieval periods.

Using modern computer x-ray tomography and high resolution surface scanning, a team led by Mike Edmunds and Tony Freeth at Cardiff University peered inside fragments of the crust-encased mechanism and read the faintest inscriptions that once covered the outer casing of the machine.

Detailed imaging of the mechanism suggests it dates back to 150-100 BC and had 37 gear wheels enabling it to follow the movements of the moon and the sun through the zodiac, predict eclipses and even recreate the irregular orbit of the moon. The motion, known as the first lunar anomaly, was developed by the astronomer Hipparcus of Rhodes in the 2nd century BC, and he may have been consulted in the machine's construction, the scientists speculate.

Remarkably, scans showed the device uses a differential gear, which was previously believed to have been invented in the 16th century. The level of miniaturisation and complexity of its parts is comparable to that of 18th century clocks.

Some researchers believe the machine, known as the Antikythera Mechanism, may have been among other treasure looted from Rhodes that was en route to Rome for a celebration staged by Julius Caesar.

One of the remaining mysteries is why the Greek technology invented for the machine seemed to disappear. No other civilisation is believed to have created anything as complex for another 1,000 years.

One explanation could be that bronze was often recycled in the period the device was made, so many artefacts from that time have long ago been melted down and erased from the archaelogical record. The fateful sinking of the ship carrying the Antikythera Mechanism may have inadvertently preserved it.

"This device is extraordinary, the only thing of its kind," said Professor Edmunds. "The astronomy is exactly right ... in terms of historic and scarcity value, I have to regard this mechanism as being more valuable than the Mona Lisa."

The research, which appears in the journal Nature today, was carried out with scientists at the National Archaeological Museum of Athens where the mechanism is held and the universities of Athens and Thessaloniki.

found on the guardian.co.uk

Roof fall death still a mystery

POLICE have been unable to explain how a man who died in a fall from the roof of a three-storey building got there, an inquest heard yesterday.

Adam Cecil, 27, was found in the driveway in front of his apartment building in Cronulla on August 3, 2005.

The inquest was told he had fallen 20m but police said they were baffled as to how he had climbed on to the roof.

A search of his home failed to find any ladders or ropes, or any scuff marks to prove he had climbed to his roof or balcony.

Adding to the mystery, no bones were broken in the fall, and a text message was found to have been sent from his mobile 20 minutes after he fell.

Police initially treated the death as suspicious but concluded otherwise after speaking to family and learning of the discovery of an apparent suicide note.

found here

Slusho

I touched a UFO: ex-air force pilot

A group of former pilots who have recounted seeing strange phenomena in the sky has demanded the US government reopen an investigation into UFOs.

Several pilots offered dramatic accounts of witnessing UFOs - including a transparent flying disc and a triangular craft with mysterious markings - as they insisted their questions needed to be taken seriously more than 30 years after the US file was closed.

"We want the US government to stop perpetuating the myth that all UFOs can be explained away in down-to-earth, conventional terms," said Fife Symington, former governor of Arizona and air force pilot who says he saw a UFO in 1997.

"Instead our country needs to reopen its official investigation that it shut down in 1969," Symington said.

"We believe that for reasons of both national security and flight safety, every country should make an effort to identify any object in its airspace," said a statement from the 19 former pilots and government officials from around the world.

The subject of UFOs came up in a recent debate among US presidential candidates, with Democrat Dennis Kucinich saying he once saw a UFO - making him the object of ridicule and jokes by late night television comedians.

Sceptics say UFO sightings are merely aircraft, satellites or meteors re-entering the Earth's atmosphere.

But the retired pilots spoke to a sympathetic audience of UFO "believers" who heard them recall their encounters with seemingly other-worldly objects appearing out of the sky.

"Nothing in my training prepared me for what we were witnessing," said James Penniston, a retired US Air Force pilot, as he described seeing and touching a UFO when he was stationed at a British air base in Woodbridge.

He said he saw an inexplicable triangular craft in a clearing in the woods with "blue and yellow lights swirling around the exterior".

The UFO was "warm to the touch and felt like metal," Penniston said. One side of the craft had pictorial symbols and "the largest symbol was a triangle, which was centred in the middle of the others," he said.

Then after 45 minutes the light from the object "began to intensify" and it then "shot off at an unbelievable speed" before 80 Air Force personnel, he said. "In my logbook, I wrote 'speed: impossible'."

Rodrigo Bravo from Chile's air force said UFOs needed to be studied but lamented that the media often belittle the sightings.

"Sadly the UFO subject has been contaminated with false information, out of touch with reality, provided by unqualified people to the media," Bravo said.

"One of our most important civil aviation cases occurred in 1988, showing that unidentified flying objects can be a danger for air operations," he said.

"A Boeing 737 pilot on a final approach to the runway at the Puerto Montt airport suddenly encountered a large white light surrounded by green and red."

The pilot took a sharp turn to avoid a collision, according to Bravo.

The panel included a former Iranian fighter pilot, Parviz Jafari, who said in 1976 he tried in vain to fire from his jet at an "object which was flashing with intense red, green, orange and blue light" over Tehran.

But when he approached, "my weapons jammed and my radio communications garbled".

A former Air France captain, Jean-Charles Duboc, said in 1994 he and his crew saw "a huge flying disc" near Paris with a diameter of about 300 metres that left no sign on radar.

The disc "became transparent and disappeared in about 10 to 20 seconds," Duboc said.

The former pilot said like other major airlines Air France was mindful of its image and it was difficult to raise the subject of UFOs.

A former official with the Federal Aviation Administration, John Callahan, said government agencies discourage inquiries into UFOs.

"'Who believes in UFOs?' is the kind of attitude of the FAA all the time," he said.

"However, when I asked the CIA person: 'What do you think it was,' he responded 'a UFO'."

When Callahan suggested the government tell Americans about a UFO, the CIA official allegedly told him: "'No way, if we were to tell the American public there are UFOs they would panic."'

from smh

Unearthing Sydney's underground bar scene

The City of Sydney council will investigate mapping the central business district's network of underground retail arcades in search of hidden spots suitable for small bars.

"Unlike most cities, we have an absolute labyrinth of underground shopping arcades but they basically pull the shutters down after the 5pm commuter exit. There's an opportunity to activate those places after dark," said Jeff Lewis, a spokesman for the Lord Mayor, Clover Moore.

Mr Lewis pointed to the arcade that joined Town Hall station to Pitt Street Mall, the link from the corner of Liverpool and Elizabeth streets to Museum station and Park Street, and a stretch from York Street to Wynyard to Hunter Connection to Pitt Street. "Who knows what's down there. I know Wynyard had a number of levels they used for storage and there's a whole World War II storage area under [St James]," he said.

Andrew Dodds, a bar reviewer from the website Where is the Pub?, remembers Wynyard's Hunter Arcade packed full of drinking spots in the '90s. "That building had about eight or nine if you counted them. There was the 747 bar where the windows and seats were styled like you were inside an aeroplane. The Porthole was fairly small but the Jungle Bar was a reasonable size," he said.

Mr Dodds said he was more pub patron than bar fly but welcomed the liquor licensing reforms proposed this week. "If the pubs had listened more to what the people wanted rather than just the pokie punters, then they wouldn't find themselves in this situation," he said.

The former Hunter Arcade bars, owned by the nearby Menzies Hotel, were closed in the early '90s after the Menzies' owners decided to focus on the hotel. "I do remember the Jungle Bar was a very hot R'n'R bar during the Vietnam years," said one long-standing Menzies worker, who asked not to be named.

A City of Sydney councillor, John McInerney, said he would rather have a tipple in the sunshine than underground but said "there are a few little nooks and crannies in that area that are left over from warehouses and funny little subdivisions running down to Darling Harbour".

Cr McInerney also pointed to the underground public toilets at Hyde Park, Wynyard and Macquarie Place that were filled in when the former lord mayor, Frank Sartor, was in office. "Something I would like to do is unfill them and put them back as some other use. The designs were very nice," Cr McInerney said.

He also floated the idea of bars in disused train tunnels at St James station. But a spokesman from the Australian Rail Historical Society, Graham Thurling, said public access to the tunnels was banned after September 11, 2001. "Those tunnels are heritage protected and they won't even let you do tours since the terrorist thing came up," Mr Thurling said.

found on smh

interactive tour of Dante's inferno

via Presurfer

New Loch Ness Monster footage?