February 16, 2011
By Staff Reporter
By Patrick Markey
Mothership calling Roswell — or should that be Roscommon?
The New Mexico town and Irish county might be divided by thousands of miles, but they are linked by one controversial subject: UFO’s.
A former NASA meteorologist will try to capture a fleet of extraterrestrial spacecraft on film when they make a predicted flyover in the skies over Boyle, Co. Roscommon, next week, according to the Ireland on Sunday newspaper.
Ireland’s leading UFO expert, Eamonn Ansboro, claims the northwestern region will be visited by alien space craft around June 16, the paper reports. Using what he calls a tracking camera, Ansboro, who founded the Irish Center for UFO Studies in Dublin, believes he can capture the fleet on film.
"We hope to see what kind of elements are emitted from the space craft by zoning in on their propulsion emissions with this new camera," claimed Ansboro.
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Hundreds of UFO enthusiasts are expected to converge on the hills of Roscommon and Sligo for the predicted sightings, and already there are plans to use a nearby 130-foot tower as a spotting point.
Ansboro believes Boyle is particularly suited to UFO spotting because it lies beneath a crossover "optical tract" frequently traveled by spaceships.
"It has become apparent that these craft are carrying out a controlled and automated observation program within the Earth’s orbit," the 48-year-old UFO expert said.
"There are at least 660 known orbital tracts used by enormous extraterrestrial craft which can circumnavigate the Earth in 64.3 minutes. I believe a mothership, traveling along any one of these tracks, releases smaller crafts which come close to the Earth’s surface on surveillance missions seen by humans as UFOs."
Tempted? Don’t forget the binoculars.
All in the family
It should at least make for some interesting dinner-table banter.
In a small town in County Clare, a husband and wife are both standing for political office, but for different interests. The hot seat — a coveted place on the Kilkee Town Commission.
Reports the Sunday Tribune, Michael Martin, a town publican, is standing for Fine Gael, while his wife, Diana, is standing as an independent on planning issues.
They say they are happily married, but neither will allow their relationship to interfere with politics. Public service, it seems, is far too weighty an issue for family to play a part.
"I can’t ask my supporters to give their preferences to him just because he’s standing on a Fine Gael ticket," Diana told the paper.
"And he can’t be seen to ask for second preferences for me because he has two running mates."
Diana said she is confident that they will both get elected, as there are 16 candidates and nine seats on the commission. But perhaps the most complicated part of the family’s involvement, the paper suggests, is the couple’s children. Catherine, Deidre, Michael and Seamus — who gets their first vote?
"I am the weaker candidate, so I think I need their votes more than Michael," said their mother.
Unholy behavior?
A former Dublin nun has denied charges that she sexually assaulted a girl in childcare and that she helped a male companion rape the girl and allowed him access to other girls’ rooms at the center where she worked.
According to the Irish Times, the nun said she would "never even think of doing that,’ and claimed the girl, now 21, was fabricating the allegations.
The case is based on charges that the nun and a 50-year-old man raped the woman and had "unlawful carnal knowledge of her," from 1987 to 1990 in a childcare center. The nun was in charge of the center at the time of the alleged assaults. The man had previously been living there.