Farmer hospitalized following UFO encounter
Critics of Kumam’s video footage suggest the UFO was nothing more than a glitch in the camera resulting from shooting directly into the sun. However, there has been no official explanation for this UFO, or for the physical reaction claimed by the witness. - openminds
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Argentina: Researcher Challenges Official Commission Over Ituzaingó UFO
Source: Diario Popular (Argentina)
Date: 06.19.2011
Scott Corrales - Inexplicata-The Journal of Hispanic Ufology
Argentina: Researcher Challenges Official Commission Over Ituzaingó UFO
By Sebastián Aranguren
The enigmatic sequence of UFO cases recorded in recent times over Ituzaingó in Western Greater Buenos Aires has led ufologist Luis Burgos to launch a challenge against the recently created Comisión de Investigaciones de Fenómenos Aeroespaciales (CIFA), urging it to discuss the chain of events that now numbers dozens of witnesses in that sector of Greater Buenos Aires. The Ituzaingó events resulted in a flurry of media coverage which brought to light the manifestations of strange, unidentified flying objects plowing the nation’s airspace without any official clarification on the bizarre situation. From the organization he leads – Fundación Argentina de Ovnilogía (FAO) Burgos was among the first ufologists to popularize the subject by reporting on a series of phenomena taking place in precisely the area that now concentrates the attention of scholars, journalists and curiosity-seekers, and which he dubbed “The Western Corridor” (Corredor del Oeste, in Spanish). In the preliminary investigations he has performed, as he advised Expedientes Secretos, the cases occurring at Ituzaingó are not necessarily framed within manifestations of alien intelligence, but rather “the possibility that they may be U.S. or Israeli experimental aircraft.” Speaking in a personal capacity rather than as director of his UFO research organization, and RADIO, the researchers’ collective that he presides, Burgos railed against CIFA, believing that the specialized commission must “at least issue an official communiqué about what’s going on in Ituzaingó.”
In conversation with Expedientes Secretos, Burgos stated that the current wave of cases detected over Ituzaingó began last March and noted in this regard that the two and a half months elapsed since the first sightings merit “an explanation or at least information” on the cases on the part of the organization constituted by elements of the Argentinean Air Force and ufologists of national renown.
Instead, Burgos remarked: “we are faced with absolute silence...if we have a phenomenon occurring as close at hand as Ituzaingó, and a research commission engaged in these matters, why it has not become involved in the situation cannot be understood.” The official silence noted by Burgos has given rise to speculation that the unidentified flying objects in Western Greater Buenos Aires “are triangular super-secret aircraft” whose design and operation Burgos attributes to the United States and Israel. What is taking place in Ituzaingó, in Burgos’s opinion, “may go beyond a conventional phenomenon with UFO characteristics.” In other words, he said “it may be placed within both a terrestrial and extraterrestrial context, and the Commission should account for it.”
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Urban miner
An unemployed jewellery setter has taken to combing the streets of New York with a pair of tweezers to cash in on dropped gems and gold. Raffi Stepanian, 43, has begun crawling around the New York 'Diamond District' on his hands and knees, plucking jewels and fragments of precious metals from between the slabs.
Armed with a pair of tweezers, Mr Stepanian, an unemployed diamond setter from Queens, claims to have collected $1,010 (£623) worth in the past fortnight. "I'm surviving on it," he said. "I may be about to trigger a new gold rush on the streets of New York," Mr Stepanian said. "The soil in the sidewalks of 47th street are saturated with the stuff".
Mr Stepanian's haul so far has included chips of diamonds and rubies, bits of platinum, and gold fragments from watches, earrings and necklaces. He has sold most of his discoveries to metal refiners or diamond sellers, while keeping some gold with a view to melting it down for future use.
Mr Stepanian said that his surgical inspection of pavement cracks had been so fruitful that he had taken 25lb of soil from the area home with him to sift later on. "Being in the jewellery industry for 26 years, it was second nature to spot glistening fragments on the floors and in elevators," he said.
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Man robs bank to get medical care in jail
Some people who need medical care but can't afford it go to the emergency room. Others just hope they'll get better. James Richard Verone robbed a bank.
Earlier this month, Verone, a 59-year-old convenience store clerk, walked into a Gastonia, N.C., bank and handed the cashier a note demanding $1 and medical attention. Then he waited calmly for police to show up.
He's now in jail and has an appointment with a doctor this week.
Verone's problems started when he lost the job he'd held for 17 years as a Coca Cola deliveryman, amid the economic downturn. He found new work driving a truck, but it didn't last. Eventually, he took a part-time position at the convenience store.
But Verone's body wasn't up to it. The bending and lifting made his back ache. He had problems with his left foot, making him limp. He also suffered from carpal tunnel syndrome and arthritis.
Then he noticed a protrusion on his chest. "The pain was beyond the tolerance that I could accept," Verone told the Gaston Gazette. "I kind of hit a brick wall with everything."
Verone knew he needed help--and he didn't want to be a burden on his sister and brothers. He applied for food stamps, but they weren't enough either.
So he hatched a plan. On June 9, he woke up, showered, ironed his shirt. He mailed a letter to the Gazette, listing the return address as the Gaston County Jail.
"When you receive this a bank robbery will have been committed by me," Verone wrote in the letter. "This robbery is being committed by me for one dollar. I am of sound mind but not so much sound body."
Then Verone hailed a cab to take him to the RBC Bank. Inside, he handed the teller his $1 robbery demand.
"I didn't have any fears," said Verone. "I told the teller that I would sit over here and wait for police."
The teller was so frightened that she had to be taken to the hospital to be checked out. Verone, meanwhile, was taken to jail, just as he'd planned it.
Because he only asked for $1, Verone was charged with larceny, not bank robbery. But he said that if his punishment isn't severe enough, he plans to tell the judge that he'll do it again. His $100,000 bond has been reduced to $2,000, but he says he doesn't plan to pay it.
In jail, Verone said he skips dinner to avoid too much contact with the other inmates. He's already seen some nurses and is scheduled to see a doctor on Friday. He said he's hoping to receive back and foot surgery, and get the protrusion on his chest treated. Then he plans to spend a few years in jail, before getting out in time to collect Social Security and move to the beach.
Verone also presented the view that if the United States had a health-care system which offered people more government support, he wouldn't have had to make the choice he did.
"If you don't have your health you don't have anything," Verone said.
The Affordable Care Act, President Obama's health-care overhaul passed by Congress last year, was designed to make it easier for Americans in situations like Verone's to get health insurance. But most of its provisions don't go into effect until 2014.
As it is, Verone said he thinks he chose the best of a bunch of bad options. "I picked jail." - yahoo
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Kid hit by taxi regains sight
A cheeky Grade 1 pupil can see properly again - courtesy of being hit by a taxi!
Gerhard van der Merwe, 7, had very limited sight in his right eye until he was hit by a taxi in front of his parents' house in Parys Avenue about about two weeks ago. Now he can see everything.
He had been wearing glasses since the age of nine months and could only see with the aid of strong lenses.
“Doctors always thought he had very bad eyesight because I am diabetic and injected myself with insulin during my pregnancy. He could barely distinguish light and dark with his right eye,” his mother, Gretha van der Merwe, said.
Gerhard, a pupil at Baillie Park Primary School, and his 12-year-old sister Nadia were crossing the road to call a worker when a taxi hit him.
“He didn’t see the taxi approaching from his right and walked right in front of it. He was flung about 12m through the air. Nadia was walking behind him. We were afraid that he was dead," said Gretha.
But he only hurt his eye and had mild concussion.
Pinched nerves
It now appears that Gerhard’s bad eyesight may have been due to pinched nerves.
“In hospital he kept telling us he could see. He had to get stitches in his right eyelid, and it was swollen. So we thought he meant the swelling was subsiding and that he could distinguish light again. But he kept saying he could see,” his mother said.
An eye specialist tested Gerhard and said he could read “from the largest to the very smallest letter on the chart”.
Dr Gideon du Plessis of the Eye Institute in Pretoria on Tuesday confirmed that Gerhard had extremely defective vision in his right eye. He had not examined the boy recently and would not comment on the possibility that the accident had contributed to his improved eyesight.
“There have been treatments and the situation had started turning around and improving. He was two years old when we treated him the first time and it had definitely been improving,” Du Plessis said.
Gretha said Du Plessis will see Gerhard on a follow-up visit during the July holidays.
For Gerhard, who is very fond of fishing and “Bulletjie” rugby, the best thing is not to have to sit right in front in class any more.
“He says that is where all the naughty kids ought to sit. - news24
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