A Bosnian man who claims he is being targeted by extraterrestrials after a series of meteorite strikes on his house has now been hit by a sixth space rock in the space of a few years.
Radivoje Lajic first came to international attention in 2008, shortly after the fifth meteorite had crashed into the roof of his house in the northern village of Gornji Lajici.
And now, within the past month, another rock has hit the roof of his house, in defiance of all the odds - making it six strikes since the plague of meteorites began in 2007.
A Chinese airport was closed after this mysterious object was spotted in the sky.
Arcing over Zhejiang's provincial capital Hangzhou, the UFO appeared to glow with an eerie white light and left a bright trail in its wake.
Xiaoshan Airport was closed after the UFO was detected at around 9 pm and dozens of flights had to be diverted.
Stunned witnesses reported seeing a comet-like fireball in the sky and a number of local residents took photos of the strange ball of light.
A local bus driver, giving his name only as Yu, said he had seen a strange glowing object in the sky late on Wednesday afternoon. 'The thing suddenly ran westwards fast, like it was escaping from something,' he said.
Oddly-shaped, brightly-coloured or even transparent these are some of the bizarre creatures that scientists did not even know existed until recently.
They are among a host of new animals that scientists have just uncovered in the hidden depths of the Atlantic Ocean during a new study which has 'revolutionised' thinking about deep-sea life.
Scientists believe they have discovered more than 10 new marine species by using the latest diving technology during the groundbreaking study. [ DAILYMAIL UK ]
A "Doomsday " moment will take place in 2014, and will determine whether the 21st century is full of violence and poverty or will be peaceful and prosperous - according to a Cambridge University professor.
In the last 500 years there has been a cataclysmic "Great Event" of international significance at the start of each century, he claims.
Occurring in the middle of the second decade of each century, they include events which sparked wars, religious conflict and brought peace.
Professor Nicholas Boyle of Cambridge University, who carried out the research, has pinpointed the global financial crisis as the trigger for the next 'Great Event'. And he claims the U.S., with its waning economic influence but unrivalled military power, holds the key to determining the course and character of the next 90 years.
Wes Craven's horror movie "A Nightmare On Elm Street" (1984) remains one of the most popular horror movies of all time. But for all its outlandish content, a real disease called "sudden unexpected nocturnal death syndrome"(SUNDS) inspired the movie, Craven said in an interview with Cinemafantastique magazine in 2008. SUNDS strikes otherwise healthy young people dead in their sleep, not unlike a certain claw-handed villain in the Elm Street movies. [ YAHOO NEWS ]
In a documentary series, the renowned astrophysicist argued that it is 'perfectly rational' to assume intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe.
And in an extraordinary series of assertions, he said Earth might be at risk from what he imagines to be 'massive ships' which could try to colonize our planet and plunder our resources.
THE aliens are out there and Earth had better watch out, at least according to Stephen Hawking. He has suggested that extraterrestrials are almost certain to exist - but that instead of seeking them out, humanity should be doing all it that can to avoid any contact.
The suggestions come in a new documentary series in which Hawking, one of the world’s leading scientists, will set out his latest thinking on some of the universe’s greatest mysteries.
Alien life, he will suggest, is almost certain to exist in many other parts of the universe: not just in planets, but perhaps in the centre of stars or even floating in interplanetary space.
Hawking’s logic on aliens is, for him, unusually simple. The universe, he points out, has 100 billion galaxies, each containing hundreds of millions of stars. In such a big place, Earth is unlikely to be the only planet where life has evolved. [ TIMES ONLINE ]
For ages, mankind has craved a tool that can provide early warning of that terrifying moment when the earth begins to shake.
But if a scientific paper published on Wednesday is confirmed, we may at last have found one.
The best hope yet of an earthquake predictor could lie in a small, brown, knobbly amphibian, it suggests.
The male common toad (Bufo bufo) gave five days' warning of the earthquake that ravaged the town of L'Aquila in central Italy on April 6, 2009, killing more than 300 people and displacing 40,000 others, the study says. (BREITBART)
In 2008, NASA beamed the Beatles song "Across the Universe" into deep space, sending a message of peace to any extraterrestrial who happens to be in the region of Polaris, also called the North Star, in 2439.
"Amazing! Well done, NASA!" Paul McCartney said. "Send my love to the aliens."
Who could argue with such a well-meaning, positive initiative? Quite a few, actually. As the citizens of Planet Earth strive ever more enthusiastically to reach E.T., some experts say numerous messages zipping through the cosmos are confusing or little more than space spam.
Others ask who has the right to represent our world to the galaxy -- or question the wisdom of bellowing out our presence in what may be a hostile neighbourhood.
Rapid technological leaps forward in the last 10 years mean mankind is closer than ever before to knowing whether extra-terrestrial life exists in our galaxy, one of Britain's leading scientists said on Tuesday.
Astronomer and President of the Royal Society (academy of science) Martin Rees said science had made enormous progress in the search for planets grouped around other distant stars — a discipline he stressed did not exist in the 1990s.
"Now we know that most of the stars, like the sun, are likely to have planetary systems around them and we have every reason to suspect that many of them have planets that are rather like our earth," Rees told Reuters in an interview.
Scientists searching for alien life should get governments and the UN involved lest we unwittingly contact hostile extraterrestrials, a British astronomer has warned.
Mr Marek Kukula, public astronomer at the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, said: "Part of me is with the enthusiasts and I would like us to try to make proactive contact with a wiser, more peaceful civilization."
But he warned: "We might like to assume that if there is intelligent life out there it is wise and benevolent, but of course we have no evidence for this.
"Given the consequences of contact may not be what we initially hoped for, then we need governments and the UN to get involved in any discussions," he told The Sunday Times.
UFO investigators see references to rocket ships, aliens and astronauts that go back to the days when humans first put chisel and paintbrush to rock. More than 6,000 years later, objects that are unidentified - at least at first - continue to appear in the skies and generate buzz.
Take, for example, the blazing pinwheel that appeared in Norwegian skies in December 2009, shown here. The sight sparked speculation that aliens were sending earthlings a signal. Other researchers speculated – and the Russian military later confirmed – that a missile failed.
NBC space analyst James Oberg says the incident fits into a long tradition of UFO sightings over Russia that are caused by secret military and space activities. Even when there's a prosaic explanation for the sightings, they can provide useful information about covert activities. ( 8 Pages @ MSNBC )
Buddhist monks in orange robes chanted on a Thai beach, an Indonesian mother mourned her children at a mass grave, and a man scattered flowers in now-placid waters Saturday to commemorate the 230,000 killed five years ago when a tsunami ripped across Asia.
An outpouring of aid that followed the Dec. 26, 2004, tsunami has helped replace homes, schools and entire coastal communities decimated by the disaster. But at Saturday's ceremonies, survivors spoke of the enduring wounds.
Thousands in Indonesia's Aceh province, which was hardest hit, held prayer services at mosques and beside the mass graves where tens of thousands were buried. The 167,000 people who died in Indonesia accounted for more than half the total death toll.
Weirdness takes many forms, and 2009 had its share of weird events. Here's a look back at the strangest news stories of the year drawn from the realms of pseudoscience, the paranormal, media hype, outright lies and the just plain strange.
The volcanic explosion that obliterated much of the island that might have inspired the legend of Atlantis apparently triggered a tsunami that traveled hundreds of miles to reach as far as present-day Israel, scientists now suggest.
The new findings about this past tsunami could shed light on the destructive potential of future disasters, researchers added.
The islands that make up the small circular archipelago of Santorini, roughly 120 miles (200 km) southeast of Greece, are what remain of what once was a single island, before one of the largest volcanic eruptions in human antiquity shattered it in the Bronze Age some time between 1630 B.C. to 1550 B.C.
A UFO appears to streak through the sky in this astonishing video of the Iranians test firing a controversial missile.
The mystery object zooms unseen through Iran's airspace - before splitting a cloud in two as the film focuses in on the soaring rocket.
A UFO expert today described the unknown craft - which appears to be tracking the weapon - as "phenomenal". ( CLICK HERE FOR VIDEO - Watch around the 23-28 second mark, something zips through the clouds )
A strong core of believers continue to believe the notion of frequent alien visitors to Earth - UFOs - although this view is largely dismissed by skeptical, mainstream researchers.
But UFOlogists come in two flavors: Those who spend money to investigate the possibility, and those who simply aim to make money off the whole concept.
All this was discussed here last month at the 40th Annual International UFO Symposium, staged by the Mutual UFO Network, Inc., or MUFON, based in Fort Collins, Colorado. The symposium subtitle: "Dawn of a new era in UFO research."
A few lecture topics by noted speakers tell the story, from reflections of an old UFO chaser to dramatic changes in trace/landing events, as well as highlights from a 20-year study of Canadian sightings and even a talk on engaging a skeptic about UFOs.
Stories of hurricane winds and rain lashing the coasts of Florida, Louisiana and other southeastern states pop up in the news constantly during the summer, but warnings of Pacific storms such as Jimena are few and far between.
In fact, only one hurricane is thought to have ever struck California, and that was clear back in 1858. Could it happen again? Not impossible, but also extremely unlikely in any given year.
The disparity is a result of the oceanic and atmospheric conditions at play in both basins, which send hurricanes in the Atlantic toward land and hurricanes in the Pacific away from it, generally sparing West Coasters from the rages of these storms.
The hurricanes that swirl over both oceans form through the same mechanism, whereby warm ocean waters fuel the rotating storms. (Typhoons are also the same phenomenon; the name is simply the designation used in the western Pacific and Indian Oceans.)
wo terrified youths who ran into a Staffordshire police station were in no doubt they had seen a UFO land in a field near Chasetown after they experienced an intense heat when they were walking up Rugeley Road, Burntwood, at 11pm on 4 May 1995.
"Their skin turned a glowing red," said the Staffordshire police inspector's report. "They saw a darkish silver inverted saucer shaped object in a field, which was glowing red beneath. The object was about four houses high in the sky and about 40ft away from them. They then, reluctantly, went on to state that a voice, which came from a lemon-like head, which appeared beneath the machine, said: 'We want you, come with us'."
Neither was drunk or under the influence of illegal substances and the next day both provided the police with detailed written reports of what they had seen, but when the police visited the field a local farmer said he had been crop spraying there but had not seen anything unusual.
What will our world look like in 2050? Astronomer Royal and president of the Royal Society Martin Rees predicts crises in water and energy supplies as a result of increased population pressure, exacerbated by climate change. Speaking to Alok Jha earlier this month, he also discussed the prospects for mitigating global warming and the UK's role in reducing carbon emissions.
On a lighter note - perhaps - Rees weighed up the chances that we will have discovered alien life by 2050.
Severe flooding over the last month brought on by torrential rains has killed 45 people across northern Brazil and forced some 378,000 others to evacuate their homes, mainly to emergency shelters, officials said.
The National Civil Defense Secretariat said deaths have occurred in eight out of the 11 states severely affected by the flooding , including Ceara with 15 deaths, 10 in Maranhao and seven in Bahia in the perennially drought-stricken northeast; and eight deaths in the northern state of Amazonas.
Real robot names such as Roomba and Asimo don't evoke as much fear as the fictional "Terminator." But consider that Roomba, the automated vacuum cleaner, is manufactured by iRobot, creator also of armed robot warriors for the U.S. military. And Asimo represents just the first wave of an incoming tsunami of robots that strive to look and act eerily human.
It goes beyond automated vacuums and mildly entertaining dance-bots. Japan and Korea plan to deploy humanoid robots to care for the elderly, while the United States already fields thousands of robot warriors on the modern battlefield. Meanwhile, plenty of people have enhanced their bodies technologically in ways that bring them closer to their robotic brethren.
So it's OK to become a bit of a paranoid android, because many experts say that the robotic future is rapidly approaching, if not already here. Robots probably won't completely take over or annihilate the human race anytime soon, but they may supplant us by other means -- and LiveScience is here to count the reasons why you need not hide your fear of the metal ones.
An oddly shaped space boulder appears to show eye sockets and a nose leading to speculation it might be a Martian skull.
At first glance it looks like a rocky desert - but this image of the Mars landscape has got space-gazers talking. An oddly shaped space boulder appears to show eye sockets and a nose leading to speculation it might be a Martian skull.
Internet forums are full of chatter about the picture, taken by a panoramic NASA camera known as Spirit. One alien-spotter speculated: "The skull is 15 cm with binocular eyes 5 cm apart. The cranial capacity is approximately 1400 cc
People from Maryland to Hampton Roads heard loud explosions and saw brilliant, streaking lights in the sky Sunday night.
There was no immediate explanation, the National Weather Service office in Wakefield said. The Virginia Beach 911 center had numerous calls waiting just before 10 p.m., a supervisor said. The Weather Service said reports were made from Dorchester County, Md., to the Virginia/North Carolina border. People said they saw a streak in the sky and heard an explosion.
“It was orange, like a fireball,” said Steve Wagner, who lives in the Great Bridge area of Chesapeake and said what he saw was too close to be a shooting star. Wagner was outside cooking with family when he saw the streak. He said he went inside when his daughter called, then heard an explosion that sounded like thunder.
If Friday the 13th is unlucky, then 2009 is an unusually unlucky year. This week's Friday the 13th is one of three to endure this year.
The first came last month. The next is in November. Such a rare triple-threat occurs only once every 11 years.
The origin of the link between bad luck and Friday the 13th is murky. The whole thing might date to Biblical times (the 13th guest at the Last Supper betrayed Jesus). By the Middle Ages, both Friday and 13 were considered bearers of bad fortune. In modern times, the superstition permeates society.
It seems that every month or two some new piece of evidence surfaces that promises to shed light on an unexplained mystery: A miraculous healing story here, a Borneo river monster photo there. Yet like the proverbial carrot before the donkey, final evidence is always in sight but never obtained.
For decades, UFO buffs have claimed that conclusive proof of alien life is just around the corner. They believe that the "truth will be revealed" — either by extraterrestrials finally making themselves known (a visit to the White House lawn or Times Square might be on the agenda), or by the world's governments ending their conspiracy of silence and letting the public see the real evidence and alien bodies they've had on ice since 1947.
Weird & Strange 
