It's raining UFOs Down Under

Thu, Apr 29 05:10 PM
Melbourne, April 29 (ANI): The reports of UFO sightings in Australia have gone up with at least seven separate incidents having been reported in the past week.

The sighting of some "unexplained phenomena" has been happening almost every night since the first was reported last week, and most have taken place in Darwin's rural area.

A woman, who wants to be identified as only Shirel, reported the first sighting on April 21, saying that she saw the strange lights from her Humpty Doo home hovering over Howard Springs.

"The lights were really low in the sky, really bright, with flashing dots," the Daily Telegraph quoted her as saying.

"Three of them formed a semi-circle and they hovered over the area for at least half an hour," she revealed.

There were three separate sightings on April 23 including British backpacker Kylie Myers who said she had "never believed in anything like UFOs" before her strange encounter.

Myers, 27, said she stopped her car on the side of the road to grab her camera from the glove box, but the light disappeared.

"It was pretty spooky," she stated.

There were more sightings at Coolalinga on April 24, Acacia Hills on April 25 and again in Howard Springs on April 27.

But astronomer Geoff Carr told the Northern Territory News he was "far from believing any of this UFO stuff".

"Unless aliens have found a way to travel faster than light speed, it's a doubtful thing to believe they came to visit us," he said.

Carr added he believed 99.9 per cent of all the UFO sightings could be explained as simple weather phenomena. (ANI)

16-digit Aadhaar to have four hidden numbers

16-digit Aadhaar to have four hidden numbers

"As far as people are concerned, there would only be a 12-digit number that would be relevant for their identification and use. However, we are making a provision of extra four digits that would be a post-fix for this 12-digit number for pin-based identification. So, UID will become a 16-digit number for our use and the database that we will maintain," Ram Sewak Sharma, Director General and Mission Director of the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), told Business Standard.

These four digits, which the authority terms a 'virtual number', will change as and when the resident changes his pin number or residence. The user, however, will only use the 12-digit number allotted to him.

The first set of Aadhaars will be issued between August this year and February 2011. The authority plans to issue 600 million UIDs over the next five years.

UIDAI, which is being headed by Nandan Nilekani, has been allocated Rs 1,900 crore for the financial year 2010-11. Of this, Rs 1,300 crore will be used to enable the registrars to enrol people in the system and the remaining Rs 600 crore will be spent for setting up the information technology infrastructure.

Moreover, the 13th Finance Commission has given Rs 3,000 crore to the authority over the next five years.

"With this pin-based number, we will have two types of authentication. The first will be biometric identification using finger prints and the iris scan for 100 per cent authentication, and the second is a pin-based process for our database," added Sharma.

UIDAI estimates total annual revenue of Rs 288 crore from authentication services in the initial stages.