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Texans report seeing UFO

STEPHENVILLE, Texas (AP) — In this farming community where nightfall usually brings clear, starry skies, residents are abuzz over reported sightings of what many believe is a UFO.

Several dozen people — including a pilot, county constable and business owners — say they have seen a large silent object with bright lights flying low and fast. Some reported seeing fighter jets chasing it.

People wonder what in the world it is because this is the Bible Belt, and everyone is afraid it’s the end of times, said Steve Allen, a freight company owner and pilot who said the object he saw last week was a mile long and half a mile wide. It was positively, absolutely nothing from these parts.

While federal officials say there’s a logical explanation, locals swear that it was larger, quieter, faster and lower to the ground than an airplane. They also said the object’s lights changed configuration, unlike those of a plane. People in several towns who reported seeing it over several weeks have offered similar descriptions of the object.

Machinist Ricky Sorrells said friends made fun of him when he told them he saw a flat, metallic object hovering about 300 feet over a pasture behind his Dublin, Texas, home. But he decided to come forward after reading similar accounts in the Stephenville Empire-Tribune.

You hear about big bass or big buck in the area, but this is a different deal, Sorrells said. It feels good to hear that other people saw something, because that means I’m not crazy.

Sorrells said he has seen the object several times. He said he watched it through his rifle’s telescopic lens and described it as very large and without seams, nuts or bolts.

Maj. Karl Lewis, a spokesman for the 301st Fighter Wing at the Joint Reserve Base Naval Air Station in Fort Worth, said no F-16s or other aircraft from his base were in the area the night of January 8, when most people reported the sighting.

Lewis said the object may have been an illusion caused by two commercial airplanes. Lights from the aircraft would seem unusually bright and may appear orange from the setting sun.

I’m 90 percent sure this was an airliner, Lewis said. With the sun’s angle, it can play tricks on you.

Officials at the region’s two Air Force bases — Dyess in Abilene and Sheppard in Wichita Falls — also said none of their aircraft were in the area last week. The Air Force no longer investigates UFOs.

One man has offered a reward for a photograph or videotape of the mysterious object.

About 200 UFO sightings are reported each month, mostly in California, Colorado and Texas, according to the Mutual UFO Network, which plans to go to the 17,000-resident town of Stephenville to investigate.

Fourteen percent of Americans polled last year by The Associated Press and Ipsos say they have seen a UFO.

Erath County Constable Lee Roy Gaitan said he first saw red glowing lights and then white flashing lights moving fast, but that even with binoculars could not see the object to which the lights were attached.

I didn’t see a flying saucer and I don’t know what it was, but it wasn’t an airplane, and I’ve never seen anything like it, Gaitan said. I think it must be some kind of military craft — at least I hope it was.
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Spears not around as hearing begins

LOS ANGELES, California (AP) — Britney Spears was nowhere to be seen Monday as a court hearing convened in her child custody battle with ex-husband Kevin Federline.

Federline and his lawyer were on hand as Superior Court Commissioner Scott Gordon began the hearing, which was scheduled after Gordon earlier this month suspended Spears’ right to visit her sons.

Gordon allowed reporters into the courtroom for about one minute before he announced that the hearing was being closed.

The commissioner granted a motion Monday from Spears’ attorneys to quash a subpoena, but there was no information about what the subpoena involved or to whom it had been issued. Live blog: Spears-Federline hearing

A group of people, possibly witnesses, were later allowed into the courtroom.

Superior Court spokesman Allan Parachini, who was in court, told reporters at late morning that the first of an expected eight or nine witnesses had taken the stand. The number of witnesses suggested the hearing could last most of the day.

A throng of photographers and reporters waited outside the downtown courthouse to see if Spears, 26, would come to what one attorney described as the most significant hearing in the case so far. Law enforcement officers watched over the scene.

But Spears has had trouble making recent legal dates: On December 12, she called in sick for a court-ordered deposition, then arrived nearly two hours late at an attorney’s office on its rescheduled date, January 3.

Neither Spears nor Federline were under order to appear Monday. But Federline’s attorney, Mark Vincent Kaplan, suggested in an interview with The Associated Press on Sunday that it would be important for her to be there.

You can’t phone this one in, he said.

Kaplan said he knew it was only a temporary measure when he obtained emergency court orders two weeks ago granting sole physical and legal custody to Federline.

Among those expected to testify, Kaplan said, were police and emergency medical technicians who were summoned to Spears’ home the night of Jan. 3.

A court-appointed monitor called police when Spears refused to hand over Jayden James, 1, and Sean Preston, 2, to Federline’s security guard. She locked herself in a room with one of the boys.

Police officers spent hours at the house and then called fire department paramedics, who placed Spears on a gurney and took her to a hospital with a crowd of paparazzi in pursuit. She left Cedars-Sinai Medical Center a day and half later.

Police have released no information about why Spears was taken to the hospital.

TV’s Dr. Phil McGraw told celebrity news programs he was with Spears as she was released, saying she was in dire need of medical and psychological help. That drew a rebuke from Spears’ relatives.

The day after the incident, Kaplan presented papers to the court commissioner, who awarded sole legal and physical custody of the children to Federline and suspended Spears’ visitation rights.

Kaplan said if visitation is restored, it would be under more restrictions than those originally imposed by Gordon. E-mail to a friend

Copyright 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

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Rebels abduct 6 on island, Colombia’s navy says

BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) — Leftist rebel gunmen kidnapped six tourists from a Pacific island, Colombia’s navy said Monday, adding to the more than 700 hostages it still holds for ransom or political leverage.

The six Colombians taken — including two university professors and a biologist — were among 19 people accosted by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia on Sunday afternoon, the navy said.

Apparently, 10 uniformed bandits from the FARC, in addition to robbing these people of everything they had, kidnapped six of the 19 people who were on the boat, Adm. Guillermo Barrera, the navy’s commander, told The Associated Press.

A navy statement said the tourists were seized from the beach of Moromico island, off Colombia’s coast.

Three days earlier, the FARC freed two female hostages after six years in captivity, increasing international pressure on Colombia’s government to accede to a swap of 44 high-profile hostages, including three American military contractors and former presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt, for hundreds of its jailed fighters, including two in U.S. jails.
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Drugs, race raised in Clinton-Obama fight

COLUMBIA, South Carolina (CNN) — Black Entertainment Television founder Bob Johnson has waded into the Democratic presidential race on behalf of Sen. Hillary Clinton, leveling what appeared to be a criticism of Sen. Barack Obama’s admitted past drug use.

Johnson, a prominent Clinton supporter, made the remarks during an appearance Sunday at a church in South Carolina, the scene of a January 26 primary with a large share of African-American voters.

Clinton also accused Obama’s presidential campaign of distorting remarks she and her husband have made recently, which touched off concerns among some African-American voters.

Johnson said he has held previous fund-raisers for Obama but was unhappy with criticisms of the former first lady-turned-New York senator by Obama’s campaign.

As an African American, I’m frankly insulted that the Obama campaign would imply that we are so stupid that we would think Bill and Hillary Clinton, who have been deeply and emotionally involved in black issues when Barack Obama was doing something in the neighborhood that I won’t say what he was doing, but he said it in his book, Johnson said while campaigning at Columbia’s largely black Northminster Presbyterian Church.

In Obama’s recently reprinted 1995 book, Dreams of My Father the future presidential candidate writes he was once headed in the direction of a junkie and a pothead.

In December, Clinton personally apologized to Obama after her New Hampshire campaign co-chairman raised the issue, and the adviser resigned amid the controversy that followed.

In a statement issued Sunday afternoon, Johnson said his remarks referred to Barack Obama’s time spent as a community organizer, and nothing else. Any other suggestion is simply irresponsible and incorrect.

The Clinton and Obama camps are locked in an increasingly heated battle for black voters in South Carolina, whose primary choices include the African-American senator and the wife of a man once nicknamed the first black president.

Former South Carolina state Rep. I.S. Leevy Johnson, an Obama supporter, called on Clinton to disavow Johnson’s remarks.

It’s offensive that Senator Clinton literally stood by and said nothing as another one of her campaign’s top supporters launched a personal, divisive attack on Barack Obama, he said in a statement released by Obama’s campaign. For someone who decries the politics of personal destruction, she should’ve immediately denounced these attacks on the spot.

Sunday’s flare-up capped a weekend of sparring between the two camps that began with Clinton’s comments last week that while Martin Luther King Jr. led the civil rights movement, Dr. King’s dream began to be realized when President Lyndon Johnson passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964. It took a president to get it done.

Some African-American leaders criticized the remarks as dismissive of the civil rights movement and of King, who was assassinated in 1968. On Sunday, Obama described Clinton’s comments as ill-advised but rejected any suggestion that his campaign has been behind the complaints.

For them to somehow suggest that we’re interjecting race as a consequence of a statement she made, that we haven’t commented on, is pretty hard to figure out, he told reporters on Sunday.

And the third leading Democrat, former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards, said Clinton was suggesting that real change … came not through the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, but through a Washington politician. Edwards won the South Carolina primary in 2004.

Speaking on NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday, Clinton said Obama’s backers were distorting her remarks and called King one of the people I admire most in the world.

He understood that he had to move the political process and bring in those who were in political power, she said. And he campaigned for political leaders, including Lyndon Johnson, because he wanted somebody in the White House who would act on what he had devoted his life to achieving.

And Sunday, at the Presbyterian church, Clinton said it was historic that both a black man and a woman were considered serious contenders for the White House.

I am so proud of my party. I am so proud of my country, and I am so proud of Senator Barack Obama because together we have presented our cases to the people, she said.

Edwards, meanwhile, used an appearance at a black church in Sumter, east of Columbia to remind voters that he is a native of the state. Edwards said his experience growing up in the then-segregated South allowed him to understand in a personal way the struggles that African-Americans have gone through.

No one has been more aggressive and more outspoken on issues that affect the African-American community, said Edwards, a veteran trial lawyer and the Democrats’ vice presidential nominee in 2004.

Obama also accused her of rewriting history in her complaints about his voting record on Iraq.

Former President Bill Clinton last week criticized Obama’s statements over the years about Iraq, and argued that Obama has not been consistent.

Obama has said his positions are consistent, and that he has always staunchly opposed the war. And he told reporters Sunday, She started her campaign saying she wanted to make history and has been spending a lot of time rewriting it.
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Choi battles for wire-to-wire win

HONOLULU, Hawaii (AP) — K.J. Choi held off a late challenge from Rory Sabbatini to complete a wire-to-wire victory at the Sony Open, winning by three strokes in blustery conditions at Waialae Country Club on Sunday.

Equipped with a four-shot lead, the Korean closed with a one-over 71 as he became the first man in 41 years to win the event with a final round over par.

South Africa’s Sabbatini fired six birdies in his 68 but a double-bogey at the par-four eighth hole and other dropped shots at the fifth and 15th left him with too much ground to make up, having started the day six strokes off the lead.

All things considered, I’m really looking forward to the rest of the season, Sabbatini said.

His birdie at the 16th left him two behind Choi, who settled down with a par from just off the same green and a chip that caught part of the cup on the 17th.

Choi dropped shots at the fourth and 13th holes, but picked up his only birdie of the day at the final hole to close with a total of 14-under 266 and claim his seventh victory on the PGA Tour and the winner’s purse of $954,000.

He is the first player to lead the event from start to finish since Paul Azinger in 2000.

I can’t remember having such a difficult round as today, Choi said.It was very difficult conditions out there. I told myself, ‘Try not to lose focus.’

When I made that three-putt (at 13), that really woke me up. It was kind of like medicine. It woke me up and I said, ‘I have to hang in there, not fall apart.’ It motivated me.

The 37-year-old has now won a tournament for the fourth consecutive season — Tiger Woods, Phil Mickelson and Vijay Singh are the only other players with active streaks that long.

Jerry Kelly closed with a bogey-free 67 to finish alone in third on 270, one behind Sabbatini.

He came into the week at No. 64 in the world rankings, and he will move into the mid-50s with only four weeks before the deadline to qualify for the Accenture Match Play Championship.

I’m aware of that, but I’m not worried about it, the American said. I’ve always paid too much attention to everything. I’m trying to get away from the future and the past, because I’ve handled both of them poorly.

Being lulled to sleep for three days made it tougher. If we would have been facing this all week, we might have seen more rounds like that. I’ll tell you, I’d hate to be a rookie and just all of a sudden see this place Sunday.

One such rookie was Tim Wilkinson, the 29-year-old from New Zealand playing in only his third PGA Tour event, and starting off in the final group with Choi after a third-round 62.

Wilkinson started off with a bogey and it went badly from there as he shot 78 to tie for 25th.

Steve Stricker birdied the last hole for a 70 and finished in a tie for fourth with Stephen Marino (72), Pat Perez (70) and Kevin Na, who made eagle on the final hole for a 72.
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