Strange lights give Shanghai UFO fever

THE CITIZENS of Shanghai are accustomed to bright lights, but a shining cylinder with a flaming orange tail took them by surprise when it hovered over the city for about 10 minutes.

Nearly 100 people reported seeing the UFO. Even Shanghai's staid official newspapers insisted that the sighting, on Thursday afternoon, was no illusion. "UFO darts across the city's skyline," wrote the Shanghai Daily. Other papers ran photographs of the object, while both the city's television channels showed amateur video footage of the encounter.

Officials could not explain the incident, which came a little over a month after two Chinese air force pilots reported seeing a bright object shaped like a mushroom in the skies south of Peking.

That encounter took place on 19 October, when four radar stations picked up an unknown moving target directly above a military flight training base near Cangzhou. The base commander ordered armed aircraft to pursue the object and, according to official accounts, the pilots reported seeing a mushroom-shaped dome with a flat bottom covered with bright, continually rotating lights. The UFO appeared to wait for the jet aircraft and then sped off to hover at a distance.