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     On Wednesday, December 3, 1997, at 9 p.m.,
Philippe Dancoisne was in downtown Rennes when
he "noticed the presence of two shining 'stars' at
40 degrees above the western horizon.  The two
stars 'gleamed' with red and green firebursts, as
if they were two luminous objects some distance
from each other--one red, the other green."
    "The objects remained stationary," he added,
"with the same relative space between them.  I
watched until 9:45 p.m." when the lights vanished.
     "In the days following, the same phenomenon
appeared again, at the very same time" and the
UFOs behaved "in an identical manner, which really
astonished me, for I had never observed stars
(acting) in this fashion."
     Rennes is a city in the department Ile-et-Vilaine,
about 280 kilometers (175 miles) west of Paris.
     On Sunday, December 7, 1997, at 11:10 a.m.,
two hospital workers were driving on the highway
between Troyes and Lusigny near the village of
Montreuil-sur-Barce.  Suddenly, "their attention was
caught by a very bright white flash of light, what
seemed to be a reflection of the sun.  They took note
of this development in the sky, believing at first that
it was an aircraft in difficulty."
     The men observed the mysterious light moving
around inside the overcast cloud cover.  "It duplicated
its own motions, moving in a curved flight in an east-
west trajectory but drifting towards the southeast.
Its altitude was less than 1,000 meters (3,300 feet).
It seemed to be engaging in 'low-level flying.'"
     They estimated the UFO "to be 10 to 15 kilometers
(6 to 9 miles) away, towards the Foret d'Orient.  The
(UFO's) appearance was circular, elliptical and
presented itself in profile."  (See the French newspaper
L'Est Republicain for December 8, 1997.  Merci aux
Franck Marie et Picot Sylvain pour ces nouvelles.)
UFO, MYSTERY HELICOPTERS
SPOTTED IN PORTUGAL
     On Saturday, December 20, 1997, at 2 a.m.,
Roberto Cardoso "was driving home with a friend"
about 10 kilometers (6 miles) west of Leiria,
Portugal when his companion spotted something
very strange in the sky.
     On "a straight and downhill section of the road,
where we could perfectly see the sky in front of us...
Suddenly, a white-blue round object appeared from
behind a cloud and made a perfect vertical descent"
of 500 meters from the rainy overcast sky.
     "The light made the descent in no more than a
second," Roberto reported, adding that it touched
down about 10 kilometers (6 miles) east of the
Atlantic Ocean shoreline.  "The object itself could
have had a diameter between one and five meters.
The light was strong and it brightly illuminated the
clouds around it as soon as it became visible.  The
light appeared at (the) 11 o'clock (position) just
about in front of us.  We were heading west towards
the Portuguese coast."
     "'Hey!  Did you see that?' my friend said."
     "'Yes.  But it's too far away for us to find it,
damn!'"
     Roberto told his other friends about the sighting.
A few days later, one of them, Manuel Oliveira,
reported an equally strange incident near Martinha
Grande, southwest of Leiria.
     Oliveira "told of seeing some strange helicopters
of a type he had never seen before.  He told me that
they were NOT black and had some nation's insignia
on them.  He only knows the Portuguese and USA
insignias and it was not one of theirs," Roberto wrote,
adding that they might be "of the Westland type."
     Both encounters, he added, took place about
15 kilometers from the Fuerza Aerea Portuguesa
(FAP) air base at Monte Real.  (Email Interview)
     Leiria is 184 kilometers (115 miles) north of
Lisboa (Lisbon), the nation's capital.
(Editor's Note: The Westland Lynx Mk3 and Mk4 are
used by both the UK and France.  For more black
helicopter news, see the Pennsylvania story in
this issue.)
LUMINOUS UFO FLIES OVER
A CITY IN CENTRAL ITALY
     On Sunday, December 14, 1997, at 6:15 p.m.,
pedestrians in Terni, a city in the Monti Sabini
mountain range approximately 100 kilometers
north of Rome, spotted a strange luminous
object flying across the evening sky.
     The UFO was described as "a luminous white
object in the form of a pointed arch."  Witnesses
said the UFO "made a swift passage" through the
sky over Terni "along a horizontal trajectory."
     The case is being investigated by ufologist
Massimo Valloscuro of the Centro Italiano di Studi
Ufologici (CISU).  (Grazie a Edoardo Russo di CISU
per questo rapporto.)
MAN AND SON SPOT UFO
OVER NORTH CAROLINA
     On Saturday, December 20, 1997, at 5:40 p.m.,
Chuck Olmstead and his son "were in the front yard
of our home in Greenville, North Carolina (N.C.)
(population 44,972), looking into the sky.  We had
just launched a helium balloon with a return tag as
an experiment and were watching it travel to the north."
     "The sky was dark blue, a few of the early evening
stars were visible" and they also saw two aircraft,
one at 45 degrees or so from the horizon with red and
white lights visible and one in the northeast, also at
45 degrees from the horizon."
     "Looking up at zenith, I watched a group of about
6 or 7 stars of varying intensity suddenly line up in a
straight line," Olmstead reported.  "My son saw it also
and yelled out, 'Daddy!'"
     "I told him, 'Run inside and get your mommy.'"
     He estimated the formation's size as "the height of
my index finger (held) at arm's length.  Some of the stars
were large and bright--larger than Venus--and others
were dim.  I then noticed that the entire line was moving
slowly to the west in sync."
     "At the same time, I then noticed another star to the
west that seemed to be the 'leading' star, also moving in
sync with the rest of the stars.  What I visualized was an
equilateral triangle with only one leg of the three visible...
Suddenly, all of the stars seemed to converge at the
center of the triangle, and all faded out just prior to
meeting in the center.  The entire event was probably
only eight to ten seconds long.  This is the strangest
thing I have ever seen in the sky..." (Email Interview)
UFOs SEEN RECENTLY OVER
WAYNESBORO, VIRGINIA
     On Sunday, December 21, 1997, at 5:15 a.m.,
Ellen Mycroft spied a UFO from her home in
Harrisonburg, in Virginia's Shenandoah Valley.
    "I saw what appeared to be 3 to 5 bright lights
in a row in the eastern sky.  After a while, they just
gradually faded away," Ms. Mycroft reported,
adding that she had them in view for "a period of
five to twenty seconds.  I don't know how long they
had been up there before that, but I watched for a
while, maybe 30 seconds to a minute."
CONTINUED
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