SOURCE: The Times DATE: 23 April 1990
Italian UFO

Rome - Thousands of Italians, including four pilots, saw a giant fireball
and huge mass of blinding, white light speeding silently across the sky at
the weekend one of Italy's most impressive UFO sightings.

(c) Times Newspapers Ltd. 1990


SOURCE: The Times DATE: 19 April 1990
Baffling rise in close encounters of the Hungarian kind; UFOs
By Gabriel Ronay

IN THIS spring of hope and democratic renewal, the thoughts of Hungarians appear to be turning to UFOs. The number and variety of sightings of unidentified flying objects has forced the state-run Urania Observatory to
set up a special unit for the logging of reports, among them one fairly
close encounter of the third kind.
According to the Centre for the Gathering of UFO Phenomena, opened in
January in the northern town of Eger, some of the hundreds of reported UFO sightings follow well-known patterns. These include high-flying planes,
Earth satellites, meteorites, meteorological balloons, and bright stars mistaken for UFOs. But others do not fit these well-explored sources of UFO mania. Several of the baffling sightings, some involving Hungarian Army personnel, have been found by the Centre to be more than optical illusions
and worthy of scientific investigation.
Mrs Judit Vass, of the Centre, singled out a series of inexplicable
events, involving UFO sightings and an apparent encounter with giant extra-terrestrial creatures, at Tarnaszentmaria army barracks. These
continued for about a month and were duly logged by the Army.
According to the testimony of the entire unit, the UFO intrusion began on
the night of October 20 last year with an eerie noise which increased in
volume every 20 seconds or so. Then one of the guards noticed three shiny
round objects preceded by a beam of light. After a while these disappeared
over the forest behind the barracks.
On November 20, soldiers on guard duty noticed a cloud of red mist in the
sky with curious flashing lights inside it, followed by a UFO, shaped like
the planet Saturn, which floated over the barracks and disappeared over the forest. Two of the guards reported that they were illuminated briefly with
a powerful beam of light which made them sick. Later that night Private
Lajos Dioszegi spotted 10ft tall figures in the forest clearing facing the barracks. ``They were moving as if they were chess pieces,'' he stated.
``All the animals in the barracks pigs, sheep and dogs became frantic.''
Mrs Vass said that among the many sightings awaiting evaluation was the report of a driver from the village of Lajosmizse who suddenly became aware
of a ``flying light phenomenon'' going parallel with his car, then above
it. It was so powerful it illuminated a 50-yard stretch either side of the road. When he came to a bend he braked, but his car continued on the road
at the same speed and cornered at a 90-degree angle without skidding. The driver felt that ``some external power'' kept his car on the road as he had lost control. It lasted for another 200 yards then ceased.
Mrs Vass said that, while there may well be perfectly rational
explanations for some of the reports, ``we cannot ignore the inexplicable phenomena reported to us''.
It is a curious coincidence that the number of UFO sightings in the
Soviet Union in recent years appeared to increase as the country's economic
and political problems mounted. But most Hungarians seem to be looking to
the International Monetary Fund for salvation, not to extra-terrestrial
beings.

(c) Times Newspapers Ltd. 1990


SOURCE: The Times DATE: 16 August 1991
Storm in a saucer;Leading Article

Oscar Wilde once remarked that a map of the world which did not contain
Utopia was not worth glancing at. Whatever made him think that Utopia was
to be found on this planet, or even in this finite universe? For
intelligence capable of defeating the second law of thermodynamics, man
must look to outer space. Fortunately, that need involve no more than a
journey to Sheffield.
The International UFO Congress, which assembled there yesterday,
proclaims itself the scientific heart of a growth industry. Gone are the
days when politely veiled derision greeted Sir Eric Gairy, erstwhile prime minister of Grenada, when he brought this important subject to the
attention of the United Nations. In Belgium, where not a week has gone by
for the past 18 months without a sighting, the Belgian air force has been scrambled on nine occasions with the full approval of its
commander-in-chief. No less a figure than President Gorbachev now insists
that ``the phenomenon does exist and must be treated seriously''.
Or so Soviet newspapers report; and if he really intends to run for
popular election, Mr Gorbachev would be insane to issue a denial. Ever
since 1989, when a UFO was reported over Voronezh, aliens seem to have been massing in force in the Soviet Union. The media bristle with advice to
women, considered more likely to be abducted than men. The Soviet Academy
of Sciences, which would surely have no truck with mere hysteria, has
launched a new journal, Social Sciences and Modernity, which promises to publish ``dialogues with the Cosmic Mind''.
The coincidence of UFO sightings and the collapse of communism is not confined to the Soviet Union. So persistent are sightings in Hungary, where
an entire army unit testified last year to the appearance at its barracks
in Tarnaszentmaria of a Saturn-shaped UFO inhabited by 10-foot-tall beings, that the Urania observatory has set up a special unit to log reports. In Mongolia, nomads are meeting them everywhere.
Sociologists say that the current craze for the supernatural in the decommunising world is part of a quest for some new faith which may either
be KGB disinformation or put about by the aliens themselves. For it is
apparent that the Kremlin's last, best hope of retaining superpower status
is an alliance with extraterrestrial forces. This gives a new dimension to Smiley country. What credence should be attached to geological and meteorological ``explanations'', never mind attempts to attribute these phenomena to meteorites, earth satellites or even weather balloons? Have innocents in Wiltshire, who report that the makers of crop circles speak Sumerian, unwittingly uncovered the KGB's extraterrestrial spy-ring?
As usual, the Americans have been the first to break the conspiracy of silence. A new book has at last provided the only convincing explanation of
the Kennedy assassination: he was about to spill the beans on UFOs. Has the editor of Florida Home and Garden who told the UFO congress about her
abduction by aliens performed a public service? Is it high time for debate
on UFOs as a vital issue of national security to enter the public arena? Perhaps...not.

(c) Times Newspapers Ltd. 1991


SOURCE: The Times DATE: 04 April 1991
Professor brings the UFO down to earth;John Earnshaw

UNIDENTIFIED flying objects are bunk, a physicist from the Queen's
University Belfast told a meeting of the Royal Astronomical Society in
Armagh last night.
John Earnshaw said that 90 per cent of all UFO sightings could easily be explained. Some were astronomical objects such as the Moon, Venus, meteors, halos around the Sun and Moon, and mirages. Aircraft and weather balloons
were also culprits.
The other 10 per cent, he said, fell into three categories; hoaxes;
things that people do not remember properly; and uncommon natural
phenomena. There was no need to invent beings from outer space to explain
any of them. Professor Earnshaw spoke as the latest reports of UFOs came
from Maracaibo, Venezuela, where five glowing objects were sighted on
Tuesday.
If such objects were really extraterrestrials, Professor Earnshaw said,
it was hard to imagine how they would reach Earth. The nearest planets that could harbour life lay far beyond the Sun.

(c) Times Newspapers Ltd. 1991


SOURCE: The Times DATE: 16 August 1991
Extraterrestrial scoop comes down to earth
Peter Davenport

THE invitation could not have been clearer: ``Press cards to be shown and
no one from the Sport newspapers will be allowed entrance to the press conference,'' it said.
As an exercise in censorship, it was probably understandable. A
publication that specialises in such exclusives as the sighting of a
missing second world war bomber on the Moon is not the sort of journal to
be welcomed warmly among a gathering of those who take the world of UFOs
and visitations by alien creatures very seriously.
On the other hand, the editor of Florida Home and Garden found herself
the centre of attention at the press conference to launch the Sixth International UFO Congress, which is being held in the down-to-earth city
of Sheffield this weekend.
For once, Ms Kathryn Howard found herself on the other side of the
notebook. Twenty-two years after an experience in which she claims to have
been abducted by aliens and transported high above the Earth in a
spacecraft, she had finally, she said, decided the time was right to go
public with her story.
Ms Howard, sometime singer and yoga teacher, said yesterday that her experience happened in 1969 near a small village in southern Sweden, where
she was then living. She recalled being inside an object ``like a large
beer barrel, itself inside a larger vessel'', restrained by her wrists and ankles and able to view the Earth through a circular window beneath her
feet.
Since then, she had seen what may have been alien figures, 10ft high silhouettes, three times. It had all left her with a greater feeling for
the human race, she said, as well as the power to heal.
But why is she presenting her story now? ``Well, I feel the timing is
right, and I feel a trust in the people around me here, and I feel safe and secure in telling it.''
Ms Howard is undoubtedly a coup for the organisers of the congress, which will have more than 260 international delegates and speakers, covering all aspects of ``Ufology'', from sightings of flying saucers and the creation
of corn circles to alleged abductions and visitations by aliens.
However, staging a conference on UFOs in the traditional news ``silly season'' of August may not be the wisest of moves. Readers of the Sport newspapers may well be denied coverage of the conference, but it remains to
be seen how the readership of Florida Home and Garden receives its editor's ``out of this world'' exclusive.

(c) Times Newspapers Ltd. 1991

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