Southern Illinoisan from Carbondale, Illinois • Page 19

Page 7B RATION Southern Illinoisan, Saturday, July 5, 1997 sited! UFO gathering produces little accord on what happened 50 years ago Mystery problem affects C-130s BOSTON (AP) The C-130 Hercules transport plane, workhorse of U.S. military operations, sometimes loses power in all four engines and the Air Force cannot explain why. The Boston Globe reported today. The Globe, citing Air Force records obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, said the C-130 experienced 58 sudden power reductions in the last 1 1 years. In 57 instances, the crew was able to restore full power to all four engines using techniques the Air Force recommends for the problem.

But in one instance, on Nov. 22, a C-l 30 lost all of its engines 80 miles off the coast of Northern California. It crashed, killing 10 reservists. "If this was happening in a civilian airliner, the NTSB would demand that the problems be fixed," said Alan E. Diehl, a former Air Force safety official who also worked for the National Transportation Safety Board.

Because military safety records are kept secret, the high number of multiple engine power losses has not previously been made public. No major design or engineering changes have been made to deal with the problem, officials told the newspaper. The C-130, which has been in service for about 40 years, is a turboprop manufactured by Lockheed Martin. The Air Force has more than 800 C-l 30s, and there are about 1,300 in the armed forces. Mammoth remains discovered CHANDLER, Ariz.

(AP) Construction crews have come across the remains of a woolly mammoth, and a geologist said charcoal found at the site may show that humans were here that long ago. Machines digging a sewer trench had already tunneled through the middle of the skeleton when a city building inspector noticed curious white objects stuck in the clay soil. "I'm sure there were many more sites like this that were just covered up because construction crews don't recognize them," Arizona State University geologist Brad Archer said of a region where construction is rampant. Though a tusk was sliced in half and some bones were chipped by the digging. Archer said the remains discovered Thursday in this Phoenix suburb may include something even more important first proof that human beings were here at least 10,000 years ago, when mammoths became extinct.

Alongside the remains was charcoal and some unrelated mammoth bones, possible evidence of an Ice Age "kill site" where animals were hunted for food. Ultimately, the site will be covered with asphalt for a neighborhood street, but if excavation of the mammoth takes longer than the weekend or if other rare finds are unearthed, the city will ask the builder to delay this portion of the project. A plastic surgeon was shot to death and his office manager critically wounded in the doctor's office in Petaluma, Calif. Dr. Michael Tavis, 53, had just arrived at the office Thursday morning when someone shot him eight times.

His office manager, Kay Carter, 59, was shot in the head and is in critical condition. A complaint was filed with the California Medical Board in April accusing Tavis, who has been doing business in the San Francisco area for 1 5 years, of gross negligence, incompetence and repeated negligent acts. The distinctive voice of actor Robert Mitehum will live on, at least for a while, in television and radio commercials. The Beef Industry Council says it will continue to use commercials featuring Mitchum's voice extolling "Beef, it's what's for dinner," through the completion of the campaign's scheduled run. Mitehum died earlier this week at the age of 79.

AP photo Vendor: Russel Seifert of Los Angeles (above) poses between two jars containing fake alien bodies Thursday in Roswell, N.M. Seifert and other vendors brought alien-oriented wares to sell to tourists during the 50th anniversary celebration of the Roswell incident. ''X .1 YV- V- 7 i- i i it i i i i I By Barry Shlachter Knight-Ridder Newspapers ROSWELL, N.M. Just what happened at a New Mexico sheep ranch 50 years ago? Even diehard believers in a flying saucer crash, many of them here to attend six days of lectures, book sign-ings and alien-related souvenir sales, can't agree on what brought it down. Some 50,000 to 100,000 people are expected to attend what has been billed as the "Woodstock of UFOlo- gy" Many so-called UFOlogists, convinced of an alien visitation, have moved beyond arguing against government reports rebutting their fervent beliefs.

They now devote enormous time and effort belittling, ridiculing and deriding each other's findings. UFOIogy is no place for delicate egos. And the often heated and emotional debate will likely flare far into the future, as long as there are publishers willing to print UFO books, networks scrambling to air the latest claims and entrepreneurs eager to market everything from alien T-shirts to abduction insurance and jars of pickled space beings. Factions of loyal followers have materialized around top UFO writers. People unrecognized by the general public Stanton Friedman, Kevin Randle, Donald Schmitt, Karl Pflock are veritable icons in this narrow but widening field, stalked by-breathless fans seeking autographs or opinions on their own theories.

Randle's fans raucously cheered when he attacked Pflock at a packed, $5-a-head public debate Wednesday evening. Erich von Daniken, the Swiss writer who popularized belief in UFOs with his 1968 bestseller "Chariots of the Gods," was careful to sidestep the touchy Roswell issue at the golden jubilee gathering. Refusing to endorse any particular theory, Daniken wondered out loud whether extraterrestrials, visiting Earth every 3,000 to 3,500 years, had Roswell on their intergalactic itinerary. To some scholars, the alien crash theorists are unwittingly spinning post-industrial folklore. Of all reports of flying saucers after World War II, only the Roswell Incident has generated such strong, if embattled, beliefs with almost religious overtones.

And like a faith splintered by sects, the Roswell episode has generated a bumper crop of theories about the cause of the purported alien crash, says a new Smithsonian book, "UFO Crash at Roswell: The Genesis of a Modern Myth." Here are some of the theories from that book and other sources: Aliens, keen on monitoring U.S. scientific progress, were attracted to New Mexico because of atomic and nuclear research, according to the 1980 book, "The Roswell Incident." On July 2, 1947, one flying saucer was struck by lightning, causing it to drop parts over the J.B. Foster Ranch. The spaceship remained aloft until crashing 100 miles away near San Agostin, N.M. Eight years later, three UFOlogists issued what was called the MJ-12 report, which said a flying saucer malfunctioned and exploded over the sheep ranch on July 2, 1947.

In the 1991 book "UFO Crash at Roswell," Randle and Schmitt assert that an alien craft swooped down on the ranch after malfunctioning, leaving a black circle, bounced once trying to get airborne, then crashed a few miles away. Friedman, who collaborated on the "The Roswell Incident" and other books, now says that two alien craft collided, with one falling on the Next welfare reform campaign to target rich and powerful Spaceship a lucrative New York Daily News ROSWELL, N.M. There's cash in the crash, and Enterprise-ing Ros-wellians have turned their dusty little town into a UFO Disneyland. At the convention center in the middle of town, a dizzying array of vendors hawk all manner of alien bric-a-brac. Some of the T-shirts, which cost from $8 to $40: "I was abducted by aliens, and all I got was this lousy T-shirt." There's even a "talking T-shirt," which, when touched, says, "We come in peace" and, "Greetings, Earthlings." They've got "UFO Dough" scratch-and-win lottery' tickets, Day-Glo green and pink alien-head kites and UFO pendants.

There are "Area 51 access" car stickers, laminated plastic badges allegedly guaranteeing security clearance to enter the mysterious Area 51. There are "Men in black" official field agent badges, and road signs In the spirit: Roswell Mayor Tom Jennings (center) takes his place with the other aliens during the Aliens Costume Contest Thursday. Jennings who has been mayor since 1994 has been instrumental in building up the UFO legends of the area the drawing tourism dollars to Roswell. sheep ranch and the other crashing near San Agostin. Other theories over the years have had the U.S.

military downing a flying saucer or radar causing the malfunctioning of an alien craft's anti-gravity device. Some suggested a more natural cause, such as wind shear. Three government reports debunking UFO theories, including one issued last week, have done little to convince the UFO community. Even Pflock who believes in UFOs but hasn't found convincing evidence of one yet at Roswell attacked the Air Force study released last week, "The Roswell Report: Case Closed," and said he found parts of it laughable. The Pentagon's backpedaling, compounded by the fact that books by debunkers seldom pay rich royalties and rarely inspire, have helped fill the ranks of UFO believers, said Peter Gersten, 55, a Phoenix attorney who has sued the government to release materials on behalf of UFO groups.

"The Roswell believers have one thing in common," Gersten said as he left the Pflock-Randle debate. "They do not allow truth to interfere with their belief." many believe they arc aliens. They wear black suits and sunglasses, some say to disguise their glowing eyes. Some are short and dark, others are more than 7 feet tall and have green wires running from their socks into electrodes in their upper leg. Abductions Thousands of people claim to have been kidnaped by aliens.

Most say they were transported to alien ships and forced to undergo painful experiments on their sexual organs or even impregnated. Crop Circles Since 1980, thousands of complex geometric shapes have appeared overnight in wheat fields, mostly in Britain. Farmers say they've seen mysterious nocturnal lights hanging over the place where the "saucer nests" later appear. Agricultural experts say it's a weird meteorological phenomenon or a hoax. Cattle Mutilations: Thousands of cows have been found dead, mutilated and drained of blood in North America since the phenomenon was first reported in Kansas in 1973.

Often their reproductive organs have been removed. AP photo venture enterprise that say "Alien X-ing." There are action figures and mugs and caps and even cookies. Stella Chapman was selling little jars, of "Roswell alien slime" for $2.49. One of the most expensive items, but the one that draws the most kids to stare and shout "Eewwwww, gross," is a jar of green or yellow liquid. Inside floats a truly repugnant plastic figure, all veins and eyes and tentacles.

A label on the jar reads, "Alien embryo. Danger. Destroy without opening." They were going and going fast for $30. There's bad taste, like a T-shir. showing the face of Heaven's Gate cult leader Marshall Applewhite and the words, "So many fools, so few comets." Most of the buyers were believers, but most of the vendors aren't terribly militant about UFOs.

don't care what they believe." vendor Phillip Runnels said. "As long as they buy a shirt." Fran Leibowitz REGIONAL DEALER Central tenets of UFO mythology some $30 billion a year in tax loopholes. Kasich's package of 12 would eliminate $11.5 billion in spending over five years. "It's only a bare beginning," said Gene Guerrero of Ralph Nader's Public Citizen, one of the nine groups in the anti-corporate welfare coalition formed last January. The welfare law passed last year and signed into law by President Clinton will save the government $54 billion through 2002, and Congress should extract at least that much from corporate benefactors, said Scott Hodge of the conservative Heritage Foundation.

"Congress should do no less with the corporate community: they should be ashamed of themselves if they don't." But even the program that's at the top of nearly everyone's kill list, the Overseas Private Investment Corporation, is expected to put up a strong fight for survival. Critiques argue that OPIC, an independent federal agency that offers project financing and political risk insurance to American businesses investing in developing countries, is a boon to large corporations and a potential burden to taxpayers. "The taxpayers are guaranteeing these companies and if they take a risk and lose, they get their money back," said Jim Campi of Citizens Against Government Waste. But Mildred Callear, acting president of OPIC, said her agency is self-sustaining, operating on premiums and fees with no net cost to taxpayers, and as such shouldn't qualify as a corporate welfare candidate. OPIC earned $209 million last year, she said.

"It's quite a deal for the taxpayers, so I really don't see how corporate welfare, whatever that means, gets involved." Callear said OPIC, which must compete against far larger investment aid programs run by European and Japanese governments, has the strong support of the administration. Tim Galvin of the Agriculture Department's Foreign Agricultural Service said the administration will also defend the market access program, another on the list of 12. The program, aimed at helping food product groups promote their goods overseas, has been criticized for subsidizing advertising for such giants as Sunkist and Ocean Spray WASHINGTON (AP) It's only fair: the poor may lose benefits under the new welfare law, so the rich should be removed from the federal dole as well. That's the premise behind legislation in Congress that would target corporate welfare programs the of American business ventures for extinction. In the House, Rep.

John Kasich, R-Ohio, Budget Committee chairman and one of the architects of the balanced budget deal, is leading an odd coalition of fiscal conservatives, environmentalists and citizens' groups in pushing a bill that in one swoop would kill 12 federal subsidy programs. Taking a different approach, a Senate committee has approved a proposal by Sen. John McCain, to set up an independent commission, modeled after the military base closing commissions, to recommend corporate welfare programs for reform or termination. "We're going to raise some Cain about this," Kasich said in a recent Fox "News Sunday" interview. He said the time had come to see whether lawmakers from both parties "are really willing to put their money where their mouth is in terms of getting rid of corporate welfare." First, though, they must decide what corporate welfare is.

Most define it as a program that benefits a private enterprise more than it does the general public whose taxes are used to underwrite it. But that can be a fine line to draw, particularly when it involves the special interests of lawmakers. The problem, said House Appropriations Committee Chairman Bob Livingston, is that "the nomenclature of corporate welfare is a broad and inflammatory' term that reaches across good programs and bad programs." Livingston's home state of Louisiana has a large shipbuilding industry that has benefited from federal help and "for reasons of national security I would not be inclined to cut back on programs that encourage ship building." The CBO has estimated direct federal support for business at S30 billion a year. The Cato Institute, a private think tank that promotes a smaller federal government, has identified programs that subsidize industry at $85 billion a year. Big business is also said to benefit from.

Trie telephone is a good way to ta(k to peopfe without having to offer them a drink New York Daily News Roswell Crash In 1947, a UFO reportedly crashed in Roswell, N.M. The government said it was just a weather balloon but gathered up every piece of debris and barred civilians from the site. Later, the Air Force said it was actually a top-secret radar device. Witnesses said the debris was clearly extraterrestrial, like the silver foil that uncrumpled itself. Dead Aliens Some military folk and Roswellians reported seeing four or five small gray bodies being hustled out of town after the crash.

The Air Force last week said what people saw was test dummies dropped in the '50s. Area 51 The top-secret military base on the shores of Groom Lake in Nevada, 130 miles north of Las Vegas, where the dead aliens and their craft supposedly are being held. Men in Black These are the ominous G-Men who, some insist, swoop in after people report UFO sightings and threaten them to keep quiet. Some people think the Men in Black work for the government, JV j. J- JV Jk.

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