Prior to hitting the open roads for a brief visit to Pennsylvania this weekend, I thought I’d poke around this morning and see what  anomalous news might be pushing the envelope around the world. Here are some of today’s top stories:

The mother of an autistic schoolgirl is now saying she feels the public school board in Barrie, Canada, acted unprofessionally by allowing a psychic to suggest that her daughter was a victim of sex abuse. “I have trust issues now,” she told the Toronto Sun, asking “What are they going to concoct next week?” School board directors, on the other hand, stated that all cases of suspected abuse must be reported if there are “reasonable grounds.” The autistic child, age 11, has been diagnosed with severe autism, and is nonverbal. School officials correlated her behavior with a recent psychic consultation, which described that a child whose name began with the letter “V” was being sexually abused by a man in his twenties, and called the for an “urgent meeting” where the girl’s mother, Colleen Leduc, was informed of the circumstances. According Leduc, “that’s when I got sick to my stomach. I was shocked (by) the whole meeting.”

http://www.torontosun.com/News/Canada/2008/06/18/5910691-sun.html

Though NASA’s Phoenix Lander hasn’t found any signs of water yet, researchers “remained confident that the craft is in the right place to uncover veins of ice believed to lie only inches beneath the surface,” as reported by the LA Times on Tuesday. Two successive soil samples were cooked at temperatures reaching 95 degrees and 350 degrees respectively. According to lead scientist William Boynton, “Had there been any ice, it would have melted. We saw no water in the soil whatsoever.”

http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/asection/la-sci-phoenix17-2008jun17,0,4714208.story

“BIG SEXY DINOSAURS” in Mass-Jurrassic Grave: “In just three weeks of work on federal land near Hanksville, Utah, paleontologists say they unearthed at least two meat-eating dinosaurs, a probable Stegosaurus, and four sauropods,” reported National Geographic on Tuesday. According to Salt Lake City Bureau of Land Management paleontologist Scott Foss, the site, now known as the “Hanksville-Burpee Quarry”, is part of the Morrison formation, “where all the big sexy dinosaurs that we grew up learning about are most commonly found.” Looking sharp, sister… with those thirteen-inch incisors, that is.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/06/080617-utah-dinosaurs.html

…And in another of nature’s (bright) and beautiful contradictions, scientists now say Earth’s sun may hold the key to dark matter. Now it’s down to whether the axions or the wimps (weakly interacting massive particles) will be able to light on the fundamental makeup of the dark stuff once and for all.

http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/080617-st-dark-matter.html

Here at the Gralien Report, we’ve looked at elements of UFO reports that might involve plasmas like ball lightning and other luminous phenomenon. Our friends over at Cabinet of Wonders have shared numerous insights with regard to taking this angle, and now have offered up a delicious blend of elements having to do with yesterday’s announcement by the University of Florida that designs for a WEAV (wingless electromagnetic air vehicle) are in the works. Indeed, we may have plasma-propelled flying saucers of our very own before too long:

http://www.wunderkabinett.co.uk/damndata/index.php?/archives/1442-Man-made-plasma-UFOs.html

Similarly, Cabinet of Wonders also commented recently on the unusual story of a ball lightning manifestation that occurred at an evangelical meeting in 1968. “The crowd ran away although it was heralded as a heavenly manifestation by some present. The lightning then passed through a cafe door, hit a woman on the chest and then bounced out through another window before exploding. The woman felt as if she had been struck a light blow but was otherwise unhurt.”

http://www.wunderkabinett.co.uk/damndata/index.php?/archives/1444-Does-ball-lightning-have-a-sense-of-humour.html