======================================================== 1) NORTHEAST BRAZIL SEES BIGGEST UFO FLAP SINCE 1971 Missing Motorists, Many Witnesses Attest to Strange Events

[The following report comes from "UFO ROUNDUP," an email newsletter. To get on the delivery list for this newsletter, send email request to Masinaigan@aol.com. CNI News thanks Roxanne Carol for forwarding this information.]

UFOs made repeated daylight visits to Paraiba, a small state in the Sertao or Northeast of Brazil between April 4 and April 11, according to the Brazilian newspaper O Norte.

In Caiac, the northwest section of Pirpirituba, a small town 180 kilometers (108 miles) north of Joao Pessoa, the state capital of Paraiba, the Policia Militar found an abandoned car on a dirt road leading to the sugar cane fields. The car had "strange marks on the roof," O Norte reported, and "nobody knows where the driver is." The case is now being investigated by Brazil's Federal Police.

On April 5, a "flying disc" or OVNI (Portuguese acronym for UFO) hovered about four feet above an empty lot on the Rua de Aquino in Guarabira, just south of Pirpirituba. The OVNI was seen by eight people. An eyewitness said, "The object was discoidal, didn't emit any sound and had multicolored lights on the bottom."

At 5:30 p.m. on or about April 7, Mrs. Maria Jose, 60, and her son were driving on the main highway between Joao Pessoa and Natal. As they passed through Pirpirituba, they spotted "a strange object hovering close to the cemetery." The UFO flew straight toward them and passed over the roof of their car.

As a result of this encounter, Mrs. Jose suffered a nervous collapse and was taken to a hospital in Campina Grande, a nearby city.

The same week, in the outlying village of Gota de Agua, a 16-year-old boy saw a silvery disc-shaped UFO flying down the valley between two jungle-covered mountain ranges. The UFO was heading west, toward the Planalto de Barbareme and passed right over a radio mast.

An unidentified woman in this same area claimed to have seen the UFO on the ground, with an occupant standing beside it. O Norte describes the occupant simply as "a being."

This is the biggest UFO flap in northeast Brazil in 25 years. On November 17, 1971, a disc-shaped UFO landed at Bananeiras, north of Joao Pessoa, and disabled a Volkswagen. The driver and passenger, Paulo Gaetano and Emilio Bandeirante, were taken aboard the UFO by several small beings. The men reportedly spent five hours on board the object before being released. ============================================================================= 2) CHUPACABRAS REPORTED ACTIVE IN MEXICO

[CNI News thanks journalist Scott Corrales for sending this story.]

by Scott Corrales Samizdat Newsletter

The elusive predatory creature known as Chupacabras (the goat sucker) is at large in Mexico. Reports are coming in from the states of Veracruz, Jalisco and Sinaloa. Animal deaths continue to multiply and a woman now claims to have been the victim of an attack.

Newscaster Jacobo Zabludowsky on the "Primer Impacto" broadcast announced on May 1 that Teodora Reyes, a resident of the village of Alfonso Genaro Calderon in Sinaloa had been attacked by the Chupacabras. The victim presented what appeared to be "burn marks" on her back where the creature had clawed her.

The town of Tlaliscoyan, Veracruz, some three hours away from the state capital, Jalapa, is at the heart of the region's goat-raising area and has already been subjected to the mysterious animal mutilations which have become the Chupacabras' trademark. The death toll stands at 60 slain sheep.

Dr. Rafael Lara Palmeros, director of research for Mexico's CEFP (Federal police), visited the University of Veracruz' Faculty of Veterinary Sciences to see what steps were being taken to investigate the spate of mutilations. He discovered that while there exists "an awareness of the situation" based on TV and radio reports, the medical establishment is not planning on taking steps to conduct field research of its own.

CEFP has expressed its intention of visiting the area to interview the population of Tlaliscoyan, Alverado and surrounding communities, which have been described as being "up in arms" about the mysterious wave of animal deaths.

CNI News will continue to report new developments in the spreading Chupacabras phenomenon.

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3) U.S. ASTRONOMERS DISCOVER ANOTHER NEW PLANET

[CNI News thanks Ryan Wood for forwarding this item, which ran on the Reuters newswire on April 18.]

Two U.S. astronomers have discovered a new planet outside our solar system, orbiting a star about 50 light years from earth, one of the researchers said on Wednesday [April 17].

Geoffrey Marcy, professor of physics and astronomy at San Francisco State University, said the unnamed planet, located in the last few weeks, was the fifth planet outside our solar system discovered in recent months. Three of those have been discovered by Marcy and Paul Butler, also of San Francisco State University. Marcy said the team found the latest planet using the Lick Observatory near San Jose, California.

The planet is orbiting a star, known as HR3522, that is about 50 light years away from the earth, Marcy told Reuters.

Marcy and Butler caused a stir in January when they announced they had discovered two new planets whose environments might be able to support life. But Marcy said the latest planet would be "certainly inhospitable to life as we know it.

"It's much too hot, 500 degrees Centigrade on the surface, scorching hot ... any water would be in vapour," he said.

The planet has a mass about 80 percent as large as that of Jupiter and is about nine million miles (14.48 million km) from its star, Marcy said.

The researchers discovered the planet as part of a 10-year-old research project "to make the initial reconnaissance of planets around other normal stars," Marcy said. He said that, until recently, astronomers did not know for sure of any planets orbiting nearby stars. Last year, a team at the Geneva Observatory in Switzerland discovered the first planet orbiting a normal star outside our solar system and then the California researchers found two more, Marcy said. A fourth planet was located by a team at Harvard University, he said.

Marcy said the researchers do not actually see the planets with their eyes or with the telescope. "A planet orbiting a nearby star would be about one billion times fainter than a star, so planets are just simply too dim," he said. Instead, the astronomers have developed a new technique to measure what he called "the reflex wobble of a star as it is tugged gravitationally by its attendant planet."

"We watch for the star wobbling in space ... The light from a star changes its frequencies when the star is wobbling towards us or away from us, so in effect we are detecting or measuring a change in the pitch of light from a star," he said.

======================================================== 4) ANCIENT CULTURE DISCOVERED IN AMAZON Archeologists Amazed By New World's Oldest Known Artwork

[The following article ran in the "Independent" newspaper on Friday, April 19th. From a CNI perspective, the most notable aspect of the reported discovery is the unusual artwork attributed to the ancient "prehistoric" culture, which, like aboriginal art found in several other parts of the world (Australia, southwest U.S., France, etc.) seems to depict "sky beings." Since the art of aboriginal cultures seems for the most part to be literal and highly accurate depictions of things seen in the local environment, the question arises: did they see "sky beings"? CNI News thanks James Sutton for sending this story.]

David Keys Archaeology Correspondent

Archaeologists have discovered an unknown ancient culture in the heart of the Amazon jungle -- including the oldest art ever found in the Americas. Dating back 14,000 years, the discovery changes the way prehistorians have viewed the early cultural and economic development of humanity.

The discovery, published in the current issue of the U.S. magazine Science, shows that for the first time pre-agricultural Stone Age humans were able to survive and flourish in equatorial rain forest conditions. This suggests that vast tracts of forest in Africa, Southeast Asia and Latin America are likely to have been inhabited long before academics had previously thought, thus extending the range of the human race's prehistoric habitable world by around 15 per cent.

The archaeologists have also succeeded in dating cave paintings on the site, Pedra Pintada near Santarem in Brazil, to 13-14,000 years ago, making them the oldest art works ever found in the New World. The paintings, dated by hi-tech thermo-luminescence and calibrated radio-carbon dating, show fish, birds, deer and humans, apparently masquerading as insects, stars and comets.

One painting shows a figure with and insect-like head and body, but human limbs. Another bizarre creature is shown falling from the sky and has a human torso, a giant eye, and rays radiating from its head. Other compositions portray hunters with spears and spear throwers, and women having babies.

Similar paintings are scattered over hundreds of sites along a 30-mile stretch of the River Amazon.

The excavations -- led by the U.S. archaeologist Anna Roosevelt of Chicago's famous Field Museum of Natural History -- have also revealed one of the oldest securely dated human occupation sites (almost 14,000 years old) found in the New World.

Dr. Roosevelt suspects that the prehistoric inhabitants of Pedra Pintada were among the first human colonists of South America and that vast numbers of other rock paintings elsewhere in Brazil are also likely to date from this early period.

"We plan to look for more sites -- this time submerged under the waters of the Amazon," she said.

======================================================== 5) THEY BURN HERETICS, DON'T THEY?