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By KEVIN BURWICK
The Mutual UFO Network says that UFO sightings have gone up considerably in 2020, but why has this occurred?
UFO sightings have surged in 2020, leaving many to wonder if the year will end with an alien invasion. 2020 has kept the world on its toes since January. The pandemic has claimed over a million lives globally, and forced people to stay home. Which leaves more time for staring up at the sky. The 5G conspiracy theories popped up shortly after the pandemic set in, along with a crop of Japanese Murder Hornets and Soviet nuclear cannibal ants. Would aliens really be out of the question for 2020?
MUFON, aka the Mutual UFO Network, which is run by 4,000 volunteers around the world, has been investigating UFO sightings for decades. Tom Maher is the Minnesota Director of MUFON and he claims that there have been 99 UFO sightings this year in Minnesota alone, which doesn't seem like much. However, when compared to the 1,226 sightings in the past 20 years, that number looks a lot more significant. Maher had this to say.
"Whenever we get a case that is reported, we are always kind of looking at that, is there a nuts and bolts phenomenon here or is it something else... We have people with a scientific background, people with a military background, and your average person who has their daily job."
In the last two decades, 2015 had the most sightings at 114 in Minnesota. "A couple months back we peaked at 18 to 20 a month but that was Elon Musk and he was lunching the SpaceX satellites," Tom Maher says. But, why are all of these sightings happening in 2020? As it turns out, the pandemic may play a huge role in the recent uptick of UFO sightings.
Thaddeus LaCoursiere, a Planetarium Educator at the Bell Museum in St Paul believes that quarantine is to blame for all of the 2020 UFO sightings. "Sorry to say I don't think its aliens," he said. "The most solid answer is; for the last few months we've been stuck at home, we've been spending more time outside, we've been seeing things you don't see if you are stuck inside an office all day." LaCoursiere continued, "As long as people have been around looking at the sky trying to understand what we are seeing, we've been cataloging it, we've been telling stories and it's such a powerful thing to see. It connects us to something so much more."
As a whole, UFO sightings are up 51% globally in 2020 when compared to 2019. Many of the sightings end up being drones, planes, or satellites, which are quickly proven. However, the United States government recently declassified videos which showed military pilots coming into contact with UFOs and having no idea what they saw. In August of this year, the Pentagon announced a task force to study "unexplained aerial phenomena," aka UAP. In New York, UFO sightings are also up from 2019 and some are claiming that they have been feeling weird heat sensations when observing these UFOs. Will 2020 be the year that the aliens finally reveal themselves? We only have a few more weeks of the year to find out. Fox 9 News was the first to report on the uptick in UFO sightings.
By EDWARD BROWNE
PRINCE PHILIP is so interested in UFO sightings and alien theories that he has collected books on the subject for decades, according to reports.
It has been revealed the Duke spent last summer reading The Halt Perspective – a 2016 book by retired US Air Force Colonel Charles Halt and ex-West Midlands detective John Hanson. It details British UFO sightings including the Rendlesham Forest incident.
The Sun claims Prince Philip's private secretary Brigadier Archie Miller-Bakewell wrote a letter to Mr Hanson, in which he stated the book would be “read with close interest over the summer”.
The secretary also referenced another book called ‘Haunted Skies: The Encyclopaedia of British UFOs’ also by Mr Hanson.
Brigadier Miller-Bakewell reportedly said that book would “make a most welcome addition to his library”.
The ‘Rendlesham Forest incident’ to which The Halt Perspective makes reference is considered to be one of the most famous UFO sightings in Britain.
A documentary on it, titled Codename Rendlesham, investigates reports by US airmen who claimed to have seen a UFO in the Suffolk forest in December of 1980.
The story goes that multiple US Air Force personnel, based at RAF Woodbridge at the time, decided to investigate “lights” they spotted in the trees nearby.
According to reports, officers claims to have spotted a triangular spacecraft there.
A website dedicated to the incident states Col. Halt’s team also took radiation readings at the site of the supposed UFO landing.
Ian Ridpath, an astronomer, claims to have had telephone discussions with the UK’s National Radiological Protection Board.
He said that the figures cited by Col. Halt in a memo of 0.05 to 0.1 milliroentgens were “simply background levels of radiation”.
Colonel Halt even told the BBC in 2015 that he had obtained new statements from radar operators at RAF Bentwaters that corroborate his claims.
Colonel Halt, then 75, said radar staff spotted an object pass through their 60-mile radar scope within “two or three seconds”, suggesting it was travelling at “thousands of miles an hour”.
He said it then headed to the forest where he and his colleagues were.
The Government, however, suggested at the time that reported light sightings were simply due to witnesses seeing light shining from the nearby Orfordness lighthouse.
The Ministry of Defence told the BBC it no longer dealt with reports of UFOs.
In other news, Prince Philip and the Queen marked their 73rd wedding anniversary last week.
To celebrate the occasion, the two royals released a photograph of the two of them opening up a card sent to them by the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge’s children.
The Queen married Prince Philip on November 20 1947. The Queen, now 94, was 21 at the time.
By Bianca Myrtil
We can’t get over the fact the U.S. government had to change UFO to UAP. UFOs gained too much of a joke connotation from pop culture. Instead of calling those mysterious spaceship-looking things in the sky unidentified flying objects, the government refers to them as unidentified aerial phenomena. (Unmanned aerial vehicles is another terminology used for UFOs, although it can also refer to things like drones.)
As recently as this August, the Department of Defense (DoD) approved the creation of an Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force (UAPTF) whose primary objective is to investigate sightings of UAPs. That’s right. Better think twice about jokingly claiming you’ve sighted a UFO. You might end up with Big Brother on your tail.
At the moment, President Donald Trump is threatening to veto a bill that would give the public more access to government information about UFOs. Many are wondering what the deal is. Is Trump potentially leaving us hanging about UFOs in order to protect national security, or is he in cahoots with the aliens to keep their secrets?
Trump & UFO info: Does he not want us to know?
UFO enthusiasts everywhere have their panties in a wad because of Trump’s threat to veto the 2021 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). This move would prevent them from learning some long sought-after information about the mysterious visitors in our sky.
The truth is, Trump’s threat to veto the bill has nothing to do with withholding top secret UFO information. At the very least, that’s not what his administration says it’s about. The National Defense Authorization Act is a bill that’s passed annually in the U.S. to set the policies and budget of the U.S. Military.
As many know, Trump is all about strengthening the U.S. Military. What he’s not about is renaming every single military base named after a Confederate leader. Controversy over the tearing down of monuments and name changes of schools and streets has been going on for a while.
Many feel it’s inappropriate to honor those who were in favor of slavery by allowing any tributes to them to remain. Others, like Trump, feel it’s unreasonable to tear down every vestige of confederate residue because large portions of the country’s history would be torn down with it.
In an attempt to take a stand regarding this matter, Trump has delivered the ultimatum that unless lawmakers remove the amendment that includes renaming military bases he will veto the entire NDAA bill. Of course, with it would go the appropriations for the UAPTF. Thus, bye-bye UFO info, we’ll see you in a couple years maybe.
The Pentagon’s loose lips about UFOs
Essentially, June’s Intelligence Authorization Act (IAA) allocated some funds toward the Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force (UAPTF) for 2021. This language was included in the NDAA that Trump is threatening to veto. If Trump does indeed end up vetoing the bill, Congress won’t be able to produce a new version before the deadline. This move would stall the act that has made so many UFO buffs hopeful.
You may be wondering why the potential NDAA would even make people hopeful the government will disclose intelligence on UFOs or aliens to the public. The feds have a history of being pretty tight-lipped about the matter. What makes people think they’ll be disclosing information all of a sudden?
Well, in April of 2020 the Pentagon released coveted footage of UFO activity to the public. Videos leaked in 2004 and 2015 were finally confirmed to be true. One of them had footage of a Navy pilot exclaiming as they caught sight of a UFO while flying.
The DoD explained they were “releasing the videos in order to clear up any misconceptions by the public on whether or not the footage that has been circulating was real, or whether or not there is more to the videos. The aerial phenomena observed in the videos remain characterized as ‘unidentified’.”
In truth, the government sees UAP as much more likely to be the intelligence-seeking devices of hostile nations than evidence of strange green men. It seems the Pentagon has chosen to be more transparent about UFOs to downplay the alien life aspect and instead encourage the public to think of it as their duty to report any sightings for national security purposes.
Acting chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Marco Rubio, had this to say about the government’s mission to investigate UFOs: “The bottom line is that if there are things flying over your military bases and you don’t know what they are because they’re not yours, and they exhibit – potentially – technologies that you don’t have at your own disposal, that to me is a national security risk and one we should be looking into.”
Government operations concerning UFOs used to be very covert operations, but Big Brother is clearly trying a new tact. The re-establishment of an organization devoted to “detect, analyze, and catalog UAPs that could potentially pose a threat to U.S. national security”, combined with their recent divulgence of UAP intel, shows we could be in for a few surprises.
Hopefully, Trump’s ultimatum doesn’t get in the way of any planned UFO reveals. For now, all we can do is dream about alien life with movies like Proximity and speculate about their existence with documentaries like The Phenomenon. Oh yeah, and you should probably hope no foreign government is planning the demise of your country by spying on it with aerial vehicles.
By Dean Wilkins
SCRAMBLING for a pen and paper, PC Alan Godfrey desperately tried to sketch out the vast, hulking vessel that loomed in front of him - until he was suddenly engulfed by a dazzling white light.
When he came to, the young policeman found himself 100 yards down the Yorkshire country lane in his patrol car as the mysterious object vanished in his rear view mirror.
The incredible story, which made headlines around the world 40 years ago, earned the small market town of Todmorden the title of Britain’s UFO hotspot and continues to obsess investigators to this day.
“I have never claimed that I was abducted,” PC Godfrey, now 73, tells Sun Online from his home in Todmorden.
“But everything up until the bright white light and afterwards, when I was on the other side, I’ll believe it until the end.”
Here, we step inside the bizarre saga of the UK’s most famous UFO case and talk to some of the world’s leading investigators about what really might have happened that fateful day.
A sketch of the UFO which PC Godfrey drew at the time
From 'marauding cows' to UFO horror
During the early hours of November 29, 1980, PC Godfrey was out patrolling the Pennines in the pouring rain following reports that a herd of cows was on the loose.
By 5am, with no sight of the marauding group, PC Godfrey headed into Todmorden town centre for one last sweep before clocking off.
He passed a bus shuttling morning workers, saw no sign of trouble and decided to go for one last look for “those bloody cows”.
PC Godfrey passed another bobby on foot patrol, who declined his offer of a lift.
“How I wish he would’ve said yes, it would’ve been priceless to have another officer witness what was about to happen,” he says.
He then drove past his police station and was about to turn right on to the estate when something caught his eye several hundred yards up the road.
“If only I’d had a mobile phone on me at the time so I could record what I saw, it would’ve been a lot easier than 40 years of trying to explain it," recalls PC Godfrey.
“I thought it was a bus at first, but I remembered I’d already passed the early morning service, and as I got nearer it very clearly looked nothing like a bus.
“It was completely blocking the main road. A huge metal object hanging in the air about five feet off the ground.
“It was diamond shaped, about 20ft wide and 14ft high with what appeared to be dark paneling across the upper top third - my headlights were shining off the side and if I’d gotten out of the car and thrown a brick at it, it would’ve gone 'bang'.
“The whole bottom half was spinning in an anti-clockwise direction, which was kicking up leaves and dirt beneath it.
“I just sat there in awe, staring at it.
“Next, my training and five years on the force kicked in.
“I put my blue flashing lights on, flipped on the hazards and attempted to radio the control room.”
Both PC Godfrey’s personal and in-car radio sets could not establish contact, so he pulled out a sketchpad and pencil, a common practice for officers used to responding to traffic collisions at the time.
But as he drew the remarkable object, a brilliant white light suddenly flashed, blinding him in an instant.
As the flash gradually subsided, he realised he was no longer sat sketching the object. Instead, he was back driving along Burnley Road.
'Tickly electric' feeling
“I was about 100 yards on the other side of where the thing had been hovering,” he claims.
“There was a strange tickly electric feeling about the place.
“I turned around and went back to the spot the object was hovering. The road surface beneath it was bone dry - everything else was glistening from the earlier downpour.
“In the dry patch, leaves, twigs and small branches lay in a swirled pattern. It was very peculiar.”
Terrified and shocked, the copper rushed back to the station to seek help.
Initially, PC Godfrey’s encounter became an in-joke within the station as gossiping bobbies made sniggering remarks such as ‘Captain Kirk’.
One even made a prank report to the local newspaper reporter who rang up to check if any serious incidents had been reported.
Other strange sightings
During his next shift, PC Godfrey was called in to see his inspector, who remarkably revealed three officers from the Halifax division also reported seeing strange “steel blue lights” at 4.49am.
Initially, it was believed to have happened on the same night as PC Godfrey’s case - it was only decades later it turned out to have happened several days earlier.
“But I was just so relieved that I wasn’t the only bobby to report strange sightings on the tops - I wasn’t going mad on my own,” he explains.
“I was delighted to have corroboration and thought ‘no more p***-taking from that lot’.”
Soon after, PC Godfrey tracked down another witness Leonard Smith, a former copper, who also reported seeing a “large sphere object rise into the sky”.
And in 2014, Bob Coates, a bus driver who passed the same spot as PC Godfrey at 4.55am on the same night, shared a similar story of leaves and twigs circling in a “whirlwind”.
PC Godfrey's superiors gave the green light to an interview with the local reporter and it appeared in the Hebden Bridge Times on December 5, 1980.
“I treated it as a bit of a laugh, I thought it could do no harm,” said PC Godfrey.
That was until the report was picked up by one of the UK’s top UFO academics, Jenny Randles.
Miner's murder
Ms Randles, a scientist and former director of the British UFO Research Association, read PC Godfrey’s story in the local paper and immediately launched an investigation.
And in an article she later wrote for a UFO magazine, she unwittingly linked the mystery murder of Zygmund Adamski - which PC Godfrey had helped investigate months earlier - with his encounter.
Mr Adamski was a 56-year-old miner who went missing five months earlier.
His body was found dumped on top of a 15ft-high coal pile in Todmorden by PC Godfrey, then a 33-year-old policeman with two commendations to his name.
His death was never solved, but speculation remained rife around the circumstances.
In his report PC Godfrey told of the frightening expression of “fear and pain” on Zygmund’s face as well as weeping burns on the back of his head, neck and shoulders that had been treated with a peculiar ointment.
His hair had been messily cut short, he was wearing a jacket but no shirt and there was no sign of coal dirt or dust on his hands, face or front - leading investigators to believe his body had been dumped there.
Despite exhaustive police investigations and medical tests, his death was never explained and the strange liquid was never identified.
In the wake of Ms Randles's article, PC Godfrey’s encounter eventually appeared on the front page of the Sunday Mirror and became worldwide news - with the copper appearing on chat shows, TV documentaries and radio programmes, and giving interviews to dozens of media outlets.
But their quest for the truth paled compared to that of PC Godfrey, who had been encouraged to undertake several hypnotic regression sessions in a bid to piece together the moments after the burst of white light.
Professor Robert Blair and Dr Joseph Jaffee were both experts in the field and treated PC Godfrey on three occasions from their practices in Manchester.
He met Dr Jaffee for two sessions, both of which were filmed.
And what PC Godfrey described while under hypnosis was astonishing.
During one, he revealed: “I just started shouting ‘Jesus the light… the light’. I’d been blinded.”
Child-sized 'creatures'
In the recording, PC Godfrey described being carried inside the object where he met a strange “Biblical” man.
He told how he was carried, or “floated”, into the object, adding: “With him was a group of child-sized, large-headed ‘creatures’ working alongside the bearded ‘human’.”
PC Godfrey was pulled out of the regression over fears for his safety and the recordings gobsmacked him.
But, unlike his versions of events up until the bright white light, PC Godfrey is sceptical even of his own accounts during those sessions.
He added: “I have absolutely no idea what I was saying, if they are true, if they are a fabricated memory or if they are a collection of stories all muddled together as a result of hypnosis."
Scientists' struggles
Since first investigating UFOs in the 1970s, Jenny has been one of many scientists trying to find a middle ground theory that accepts the reality of the UFO phenomenon but does not go to the extreme of alien contact.
“Anyone who investigates UFO experiences and accounts thoroughly will know that there are too many genuine cases from very sincere and honest people like Alan, a distinguished policeman and father, for it to all be made up," she tells Sun Online.
“Scientists talk about unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP) instead of UFOs.
“It’s a way of disassociating actual scientific research from the little green men and flying saucers stigma attached to UFOs.”
Jenny points to work conducted by academics across Norway and the US as well as the Ministry of Defence.
The UK’s Condign Report, released under a Freedom of Information request in 2006, confirmed “unquestionable atmospheric events occur that are not yet fully understood by modern science”, events that some believe could be what witnesses like PC Godfrey have experienced.
“We need to properly study if natural phenomena in the ground can push waves of energy into the atmosphere, which then creates physical phenomena that can be seen and can be felt," Jenny adds.
“And, that also creates energy that can stall car engines, interfere with radio transmissions and potentially triggers physiological actions in those that get too close to it.
“People could suffer a terrifying experience which is in an altered state of consciousness where perceiving what they’re really seeing but also having a stimulated hallucination that is packed onto the top of that.”
Hundreds of sightings have been recorded in Todmorden and the surrounding Pennines.
Jenny claims it is one of the world’s best examples of a “window area”, a place where concentrated forces trigger forces such as lights and “alien contacts” like PC Godfrey’s.
The surrounding 20 miles of Todmorden have had more UFO sightings than any other part of the UK, with up to 100 sightings a year according to some experts.
Did PC Godfrey have an out-of-body experience?
Neuro-scientist Dr Michael Persinger investigated the effects pulses of energy, magnetism and electricity can have on humans - including the out-of-body experiences many UFO encounters centre around.
He created an electromagnetic helmet for participants to put on, dubbed the God machine.
Of the 900 people he tested in the 1990s, many had interactions with religious figures including the Virgin Mary, the Prophet Mohammed and Jesus.
Others who did not follow any religion gave accounts comparable with alien abductions such as PC Godfrey under hypnosis.
Professor Sue Blackmore, who underwent Dr Persinger’s test while exploring alien abduction accounts for the BBC’s Horizon show in 1994, explained: “Some abductees recall their experiences in full detail, but for many the ‘memories’ emerge only when they take themselves to a therapist for hypnotic regression.”
While PC Godfrey has always admitted he did not fully believe his regression tapes, he has always strenuously stuck to his version of events up until that point.
And Professor Blackmore - a respected lecturer and expert in out-of-body experiences, near-death experiences, lucid dreams and sleep paralysis - said his description is to be believed.
She added: “My attitude to all that is: I believe your description of what happened. They might be making it up, in my experience very few are.
“There’s been a huge resistance to this because the initial response from most people is either it’s all true and it proves aliens are coming or it’s all a lie.
“No one really will ever know how tired Alan was, but if you’re doing shift work you’re much more likely to suffer sleep paralysis.
“I think his description is a very good one of what happened at the time and he dropped into this microsleep and probably one or two seconds later the car’s moved on and the memory that’s created feels more real than what’s created during ‘normal’ life.
“This is very important because people who dismiss these experiences don’t take into account how absolutely real it seems.”
Unsolved mystery
While Alan insists he won’t be gazing into the night sky to mark the 40 years since his encounter, many remain keen to solve the mystery of UFOs and UAPs.
Philippe Ailleris, a project controller at the European Space Agency, is calling on scientists to come together to investigate UAP events.
He runs the UAP Reporting Scheme to track and monitor natural phenomena linked to UFO sightings.
“There are still many truly puzzling cases that need investigating and moving on from the taboo that surrounds UAP would help,” he explains.
“We still cannot predict when and where such astronomical events will occur in the sky.
“But we understand to an extent the nature of supernovae and gravitational waves because scientists have collected and shared data.
“We do not know what UAP are, and this is precisely the reason that we as scientists should study them.”
Whatever scientists find, and as time only continues to move on from PC Godfrey’s encounter, exactly what happened may always remain a mystery.
However, he remains adamant: “I know what I saw, I’ll never forget it.”
By Berny Torre
The Ministry of Defence's secret ET hunters "didn't trust" civil servants with their information, claims Dr David Clarke who uncovered the Defence Intelligence Staff's study in 2005
Britain's secret UFO investigators kept their findings hidden from the Government, an academic has claimed.
Dr David Clarke, of Sheffield Hallam University, said the Ministry of Defence team tasked with hunting ETs "didn't trust" civil servants briefing ministers with their data.
The lecturer and investigative journalist uncovered the Defence Intelligence Staff's 400-page study into 10,000 UFO sightings in 2005.
He has now said its military officials often kept their findings secret from civil servants over fears the information would be leaked.
Dr Clarke added former Government UFO investigators who have gone public over the findings such as Nick Pope "didn't investigate anything".
He told the UFO Podcast with Martin Willis: "There was a UFO desk where he was an incumbent for three years but he was just one of dozens of different people who did that task and he didn't actually investigate anything.
"He just received reports and filed them. He was a civil servant, there was a body that investigated cases and it was known as the Defence Intelligence Staff, DI55, and they were the people who were tasked to investigate UFO incidents that were deemed to have some kind of military significance."
The UFO investigator added: "The system was extremely complicated and there was at various times two or three different departments of the British Ministry of Defence who were involved in investigating UFOs or responding to the public.
"He might run a few checks with a local radar station but that's as far as time allowed.
"If there was anything deemed to be of potential military significance or something that needed further investigation it was passed to DI55 to do the investigation.
"I've interviewed most of the people who worked on this subject in DI55 at that time and they tell me, 'well Nick Pope didn't have any involvement in this, we did the investigations, we didn't share information with them because we didn't trust them'.
"He was a civilian who was briefing ministers, he was doing PR work and during that time in that job he thought, 'well I could make a living from this'."
Officials at the Defence Intelligence Staff investigated some 10,000 potential ET sightings in the UK from 1997 to 2000.
It concluded that UFOs had an “indisputable” observable presence but there was no evidence to suggest they were "hostile or under any type of control".
By Isaac Crowson
A UFO came within seconds of colliding with a passenger jet in a terrifying close call.
The rogue object came at the packed Boeing 737 plane “almost head on” as pilots prepared to land at Leeds Bradford airport.
The scare on September 1 was rated a 'Category A' event by the UK Airprox Board - which monitors and investigates near-miss events.
The unidentifiable object - which could have been a drone or lantern - was just 10 feet away from the flight arriving from Spain.
The Airprox report revealed: “Both pilots suddenly saw a bright light and an object which appeared to be moving toward the aircraft, almost head on, slightly up and to the left.
“The object appeared without warning and there was no time to act."
After landing, the pilots were told that a police helicopter had seen lanterns flying in the area.
But the report added: "Neither of the pilots believed what they saw was a lantern.”
Investigators ruled that “a definite risk of collision had existed”.
The near miss came three days before a drone came three feet away from striking an Easyjet flight which had taken off from Manchester Airport.
The Airbus A320, carrying 186 passengers, was 8,000ft over Greater Manchester. The drone was flying 20 times above the legal height.
Pilots have reported fears of drones getting close to passenger jets.
There have been more than 400 incidents in the past five years.
By Maxine Joselow
Former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has kept busy since leaving Washington.
The Nevada Democrat has had a flurry of phone calls and text messages with aides to President-elect Joe Biden in recent days, recommending picks for Cabinet positions and offering advice from his three decades in Congress.
The 80-year-old has also stayed active in Nevada politics, setting up a successful political operation that has shaded the Silver State blue.
A climate hawk, Reid has at times angered Republicans and delighted environmental groups with his fierce criticism of the fossil fuel industry and the Koch family.
"We've got to get rid of fossil fuels as fast as we can. We've done a pretty good job of lessening our demand for coal," he said in a recent interview.
While serving as Senate majority leader from 2007 to 2015, Reid notched a number of controversial achievements, including passage of the Affordable Care Act and elimination of the filibuster for executive branch nominations and federal judicial appointments.
Since retiring in 2017, Reid has battled pancreatic cancer. It is now in remission, but he uses a walker to get around.
The political mastermind spoke on the phone with E&E News last week about how Biden can tackle climate change without the Senate, whether the filibuster will survive and why he believes in UFOs.
What have you been up to since leaving Congress?
Well, I've had a few health issues. But my health has been pretty good over the last year and a half, which has given me the opportunity to become more involved.
I try to maintain contact with my former colleagues, both Democrats and Republicans. I've got a call in an hour or so with one of my Republican senator friends. But I try not to interfere too much. I don't want them to think I'm trying to run the government from here.
Of course, I'm also heavily involved in Nevada politics with my program that I developed over the years. I have five children, four of whom live here in Nevada very close to me. So I keep pretty busy and am pretty content with my existence.
Have you spoken with members of President-elect Joe Biden's transition?
Yes. I've talked to [incoming counselor to the president] Steve Ricchetti several times. I've texted with [incoming chief of staff to Biden] Ron Klain. And I'm going to talk to [longtime Biden aide and former senator from Delaware] Ted Kaufman soon.
What have those conversations been like?
They've been good. They're all my friends, so it's easy.
Have you offered any advice for the transition?
Yeah, of course I have. But as far as what I've talked about, that would probably be the end of all my calls if I shared that. [Laughs]
What could Biden accomplish on climate policy if the Senate remains in Republican hands after the runoff elections in Georgia in January?
Of course we're going to wait until Jan. 5 to make that summation. But I think the climate crisis is such an issue that it cannot be ignored anymore. It is an issue that is already affecting migration around the world.
We have talked about it for years and frankly done almost nothing. That cannot continue. So regardless of whether President-elect Biden when he becomes president has a Republican majority or a Democratic majority or it's a tie, it cannot be ignored.
And one of Joe Biden's great attributes is he is a deal-maker. A lot of people who've been legislators even for a long time tend to forget what legislation is about. It's simply about the art of compromise. That's all it is. And Joe has been very good at understanding that. He spent those decades in the Senate as chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, chairman of the Judiciary Committee.
What are some of the first actions that Biden should take on climate change?
On day one he should rejoin the Paris climate accord. He should rejoin the World Health Organization. And he needs to look at all the executive orders that Trump executed that were detrimental to the environment.
As to what should happen with energy, Trump was very, very bad about renewable energy, which is something we have to focus on. So there are many, many things that Joe Biden can do as president in the first few days just with executive orders.
You've been a vocal critic of fossil fuels in the past. Why is that?
We've got to get rid of fossil fuels as fast as we can. We've done a pretty good job of lessening our demand for coal, but as we speak, China is building a number of brand new coal-fired generating [stations].
So we've got to get rid of coal and do anything we can to get rid of even natural gas, which is so much better than the normal fuel that we've used in the past. Other countries may not do it, but it's to their detriment.
You served in the Senate with Biden, and then you were Senate majority leader when he was vice president under President Obama. What was it like working with him?
Obama depended on Joe Biden to come to the Hill and try to work things out. And during the time that I was the leader and responsible for trying to execute Obama's policies, there were often times when I needed Joe Biden to help me. And he helped me on a number of occasions, one of which was during the long time I spent on the Affordable Care Act.
Do you have thoughts on who Biden should pick to lead federal agencies focused on energy and the environment, such as EPA, the Interior Department and the Department of Energy?
Yes. Even before the election was over, I'd spoken to Ricchetti on a number of occasions about some ideas I had.
Are you willing to share any of those ideas?
Well, there have been many articles written about names that are out there, and they're good names. For [the Interior Department], they're talking about [Democratic Sens.] Martin Heinrich and Tom Udall of New Mexico. So he's got a wide variety of people who would be excellent that have obviously been considered 'cause there have been articles about them the last few days.
Do you think Biden should avoid progressive nominees who might not get confirmed by a GOP-controlled Senate run by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell [R-Ky.]?
I think Joe Biden should select the best people that he can, the best qualified. If Republicans reject them on a partisan basis, it's a pox on their house, not on Joe Biden.
Do you think the filibuster will survive in the next Congress? And should it survive?
Well, I've been very public about that in saying that it's not a question if the filibuster's going to be done away with. It's just a question of when.
Now with the Senate going to be so evenly divided, it may not happen this Congress. But it's going to happen because you cannot have a democratic body that requires 60 votes.
It used to be that there was a lot of collegiality in the Senate and so it wasn't used very much. But McConnell has used it for everything. And as you know, I previously moved to change the rules for judges and Cabinet appointments but left a supermajority for Supreme Court justices, and the Republicans got rid of that, too.
Based on your experience of Yucca Mountain in Nevada, what do you see as the future of nuclear waste disposal in this country?
I think what we've learned over the years is that the best thing to do with nuclear waste is to place it where it is. Don't transport it. Put it in dry cask storage containers. You can bury it in the ground or leave it above the ground because the dry cask storage containers that we've developed are extremely safe.
You were featured in the recent documentary "The Phenomenon," in which you said the U.S. government has been hiding evidence of possible UFO encounters for years. Why do you believe that?
Well, I've been on the forefront of this for a long time. I obtained $22 million in taxpayer dollars to study these aerial phenomena through the [Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program]. And that was extremely helpful in trying to understand what's going on.
Do we have all the answers? Absolutely not. But at least we know that thousands of people have reported these unusual occurrences over the decades. And as I have said, we cannot ignore what's going on. Russia, China and France are all working on this. And I hope that we will pick up the ball and continue to work on this.
I'm happy that the Pentagon now allows its pilots to report these unusual occurrences. In the past, pilots have been afraid to acknowledge them because it could hurt their promotions. So I think the federal government is doing better at recognizing it's something we have to stay on top of. And we have better cameras now with the aircraft, and we've got pictures we didn't have before.
By Toby Smith
Aztec, New Mexico, with a population of about 6,500, is a tidy community a few miles east of Farmington.
The nearby Aztec Ruins National Monument stands monumentally still. The Aztec Museum and Pioneer Village features such century-ago items as a historic barbershop, antique telephone equipment, various fossils and minerals.
Something else, something much darker, draws tourists to here.
On the night of March 25, 1948, a flying saucer allegedly crash-landed on a lonely mesa in Hart Canyon, four miles distant. There’s a plaque where it put down.
Folks as far away as those who lived in Cedar Hill, 10 miles northeast of Aztec, were said to have heard the crash. But that fact was never verified.
In Farmington, hundreds reported the incident to the Farmington Daily Times. A state policeman debunked by saying the flying saucer was fluff from cottonwood trees. The Aztec tale was suddenly full of holes and hoaxes.
Here’s what came later. Two con men convinced Aztec residents that a saucer had definitely dropped in. That was a fraud, of course.
Nonetheless, Aztec swiftly became a favored spot for sky-watchers and believers from every which way.
A year earlier, in Roswell, in July 1947, a balloon fell smacked into the ground on a nearby ranch. Immediately conspiracy theories took hold as were extra-terrestrials.
As the years went by, Roswell became the king of all those who peered at the heavens thinking they had seen something important.
A 1996 UFO festival, brought Roswell mobs of visitors. A museum and research center dominated Roswell’s Main Street. Ufology turned into a serious subject. Books on the topic suddenly popped up everywhere.
Meanwhile, little Aztec became just a footnote.
And yet supposedly 12 giant humanoids were aboard that UFO. Perhaps 18, maybe 30. The saucer itself was said to be an incredible 100 feet in diameter. Members of the armed forces were ordered to store various pieces of debris and send them to such locales as Wright Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio, never to be seen again.
Frank Thayer, an emeritus professor at New Mexico State University, traveled to Aztec to see what the hubbub was all about.
“The military must have used the biggest Bekins truck available to cart away all that stuff,” he told me.
Beginning in 1997, a UFO symposium was held in Aztec. That conference lasted until 2011.
Papers were submitted on such subjects as alien abductions, cattle mutilations and government cover-ups.
Meanwhile, Roswell was experiencing an economic boom. Thus, Aztec became thought of as Roswell’s little brother.
How does one find the Aztec site?
The Visitor’s Center in Aztec is currently closed due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Over the phone, I talked to Wilann Thomas, who ran the center.
I asked her what she believed. Her answer: “All those researchers who were here? They’re all graveyard-dead now.”
Seth Finch, a Presbyterian minister in Albuquerque, grew up in Aztec. He and some college friends took a road trip to where Seth was certain the site was located. “It was getting late, so I don’t know if we were near the actual site. It’s a wild place. There’s no signage at all. We went mountain-biking instead.”
In mid-October, my wife and I met up with another couple from Albuquerque and drove along a gritty, gravel road in Aztec for 6.5 miles. Not a single building could be seen, save for oil and gas operations.
I waved to the driver of a pickup truck to stop. “Do you know where that UFO trail is?” I asked.
He shook his head and said, “I been livin’ here 70 years and don’t know what you’re talkin’ about.”
I thanked him, and onward we went. We hiked up past fallen cedar branches, and down rocky paths. After four hours of looking, we came to a clearing. There stood the celebrated plaque that had been installed in 2007.
It is certainly not a wall plaque. Rather, it appeared to be a lectern, the sort you might see in a college classroom. A few feet away lay a curious circle of rocks. Were those rocks put there by aliens? I wondered.
Nah, probably not.
Onlookers were left stunned by the changing lights spotted across an 80-mile radius over Texas, with some convinced of an alien visit.
By Laura Sharman & Michael Havis
Mesmerising footage shows a series of glowing lights hovering above Texas sparking fears of a possible UFO.
The mysterious lights were spotted changing formation in the night sky over three separate counties across an 80-mile radius.
Stargazers in and around Dallas chimed in with sightings after footage of the bizarre presence over Duncanville, in the south of the city, was shared online.
A flurry of witnesses came forward to claim sightings from multiple sites, with some convinced the lights were caused by visiting aliens.
Retail manager Javier Estrada III, who filmed the footage, said: "What I saw mesmerised me. I was visiting family for my grandma's birthday and happened to look up.
"I saw glowing lights hovering real slow and that's when I knew it was something out of the ordinary - not scary, just crazy to look at.
"I do believe in extraterrestrials so the first thing that came to mind was a UFO. As soon as I saw it, I was starstruck - it seemed so real.
"I wouldn't mind having aliens come to visit but knowing us in the USA we will probably attack them first."
In Javier's video, four lights are visible in the starry sky, shifting from a kite-like formation to a square one, before drifting apart and out of view.
Two more lights then come into view before the clip ends. They could have been drones.
Sightings were reported from a total eight different areas in and around the city, mainly towards the south, with many describing the lights as forming a "straight line."
Onlookers also reported the phenomenon in Allen, to the north of the city, and Granbury, to the southwest - which are separated by a distance that would take nearly two hours to drive.
And with more than 16,000 people seeing the footage, there were plenty of suggestions as to what the lights could be.
Some suggested the display was caused by drones or Chinese lanterns, but nobody ventured an explanation as to how they were spotted in places so far apart.
Others speculated satellites or weather balloons, though nobody offered any tracking data.
While others turned to aliens or conspiracy theories.
One viewer added: "It's 2020. Anything is possible."