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The French space agency, the National Space Studies Center (CNES), plans to put its part of its archive of around 6,000 UFO sightings online in late January or mid-February. France has been collecting these for around 30 years. Since many of these are different reports of the same sightings, only about 1,600 actual reports will be posted.

Yahoo news quotes CNES director Jacques Arnould as saying, “Often they are made to the Gendarmerie [police], which provides an official witness statement?and some come from airline pilots.” To access the CNES website, click here.

Art credit: freeimages.co.uk
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A strange aerial event was reported near Lephalale, SouthAfrica on Saturday. Leonie Ras, the Administrative Managerof the town, was at her daughter’s farm east of town whenshe heard an enormous roar at 4:33 in the morning. Shedescribed it as sounding like a jumbo jet starting itsmotors. The noise grew until it sounded likemassive screaming turbines. She looked outside and saw thatthe clouds had turned a bright orange-red in color. A brightobject looking like a comet with an orange tail shot out ofthe sky and hit the ground with a huge explosion. Itappeared to have hit near the tiny South African town ofBeauty, between the Tambootie and Palele rivers. So far,authorities have shown no interest in looking for the objectin this isolated area.read more

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I recently wrote a diary about Christmas, so I thought I’d write one about New Years as well, because I saw an inspiring example of courage on television.

We went to Texas to spend New Years eve with a couple who are old friends. We’ve spent many New Years eves with them. We basically have dinner, drink some champagne, and try to stay awake long enough to watch the ball descend in Times Square on TV. Since Texas is an hour earlier than New York, this starts at 10 p.m.
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New research shows that movie theaters could increase their profits if they charged different prices for different movies. But this would involve movie studios knowing what customers will like, and since there are plenty of surprise hits, this is not an exact science, by any means.

Right now, consumers pay the same price for blockbusters as they do for flops. But many studios feel that their flops would be liked by a wider audience if they could only get people into the theater to watch them. Maybe lower ticket prices would lure them into the theater and start up good word-of-mouth, which is much more powerful than advertising or publicity, when it comes to creating a hit.
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