The idea of dinosaurs surviving millions of years into the present in remote jungle regions has had universal appeal since Sir Arthur Conan Doyle fooled the Society of American Magicians in 1922 with some test animation sequences for the very first movie of The Lost World (1925). Since then, movies like The Valley of the Gwangi (1968), Baby (1985) and Jurassic Park (1993) have made box-office capital of the idea.
Sanderson & McDonald
But three Manchester lads – Adam Davies, Andy Sanderson and John McDonald – have taken that idea seriously enough to arrange an expedition to go to the Congo next October. Adam – a project manager for Cable & Wireless in Cheshire who says he "needs the buzz of adventure" – has not long returned from Sumatra where he failed to track down the orang pendek, a mysterious ape-like creature. His quarry this time is the Mokele-mbembe, a shy, vegetarian, brontosaur-like sauropod that could be up to 10m (30ft) long, thought to live in the Likouala swamps of northern Congo.
Adam and friends were inspired by stories of sightings and reports that date back more than two centuries to the region’s first white explorers and traders. The creature is well-known to the local pygmy tribes who fear it. One story alleges that, about 50 years ago, a creature was killed by villagers but its flesh proved inedible and the carcass was left to rot on the riverbank. If there is anything to the story, Adam and John intend to find the bones.
The lads had to abort their previous attempt to go to the Congo in 1998, due to the outbreak of civil war. This time, they have studied the records of previous expeditions – see ‘Whatever happened to…’ on page 66 – and realise the difficulties they face. That is why they have are negotiating with William Gibbons, who was himself planning his third expedition to the region. Bill has considerable experience of the territory and its people and decided that October 2000 is the best time to go. For three months, they plan to survey five target areas near Lake Tele.
Another possible addition to the expedition is Swedish explorer-ufologist Jan-Ove Sundberg, organiser of the recent Global Underwater Search Team which so publicly failed to find any sign of the legendary water monster in Norway’s Lake Seljord in 1998. Other applications have come from Holland, Australia and America covering a range of specialities - "but we have no palæontologist yet."
Sundberg coined the title ‘Dino2000’ for the joint effort and it seems to have stuck. As well as providing their own funds, Dino2000 are seeking sponsorship from industry and the media, and the recent publicity has already resulted in some deals.
And what will they do if they spot Mokele-mbembe? Adam told: "We won’t kill or capture the creature – just observe it. Our film and video records will be released for scientific scrutiny."
What are their chances of success? "Very slim, but not impossible," says cryptozoologist Dr Karl Shuker. "It’s a classic example of success depending almost entirely upon being in just the right place at just the right time – otherwise it’s like looking for some moving needles in an unimaginably vast, virtually impenetrable haystack!"
American billionaire Laurance Rockefeller has donated an undisclosed sum of money – believed to be several thousand pounds – to UK crop circle researchers, with the hope of gaining a better understanding of this perennial mystery. Rockefeller has had a long-standing interest in unexplained phenomena, particularly UFOs. He has provided funding to alien abduction researcher John Mack and the Starlight Coalition, comprising ex-military and US intelligence personnel with an interest in UFOs.
The crop formations are now a traditional part of the British summer countryside and by mid-June, 30 had already sprung up in Wiltshire and Hampshire.
Veteran circles enthusiast Colin Andrews is co-ordinating the research, which will involve the use of helicopters, the National Farmers’ Union and ex-members of Hampshire CID, as well as continued examination of soil and crop samples. Andrews now admits that 80 per cent of the formations are created by humans, though he still considers the remainder to be of unknown origin.
Others deny that there is any mystery left to be solved. Circle maker and artist Rod Dickinson told: "Along with the other participants of the crop circle phenomenon, Mr Rockefeller will find only what he expects to find. The phenomenon is regulated by the desire and belief of each individual recipient. This nebulous work of art continues to penetrate and extend its hold, like a form of mind virus that feeds on the visions, dreams and perceptions of others."
Andy Thomas remains adamant that they’re the result of more than just men at work: " The evidence, circumstances and the complicated geometry of the circles shows that they are not simply constructed in a few hours by people… There is a much more intelligent consciousness behind it. I have a feeling that they are precursors to some events or new period of time. It is no coincidence that there has been an increase in numbers over the last 10 years."
Just over 78,000-year-old (by HIS own estimation) fashion designer 
Paco Rabanne reckons that space station Mir will fall on Paris – the Chateau de Vincennes fortress to be exact – on 11 August. Basing his claims on Nostradamus, he says that the verse: "With the flowers past, the world diminishes – a long period of peace and uninhabited Earth", refers to the summer, after spring flowers, and the death of the city's inhabitants. Mir is the Russian word for peace – proof for Rabanne that "it’s all in the prophecies. Mir risks crashing into the earth." Rabanne, or Wacko Paco as the press have dubbed him, first foresaw Paris’ peril in a dream he had in 1951, in which burning Parisians threw themselves into the Seine to escape the flaming conflagration.
Rabanne is so certain of the impending menace that he’s planning to exhibit this season’s line early, close his shops and give all his staff the day off on the 11th.
Less impressed by Rabanne's prophecy is the south-western town of Condom, which he has also fingered for fallout. Local council chairman Philippe Martin is launching legal proceedings against Rabanne for "knowingly distributing false information likely to do irreparable damage to the local image and economy."
In early June, Russian space officials provided a possible basis for Rabanne’s fears when they announced that Mir’s three-man crew will abandon the hapless craft in August – though they don’t say when – unless private funding is forthcoming to carry out the necessary repairs. Perhaps Paco could step forward?
Mir is currently 240 miles (386km) above the Earth, but by February or March next year it will be allowed to reach 125 miles (201km) before a computer command orders it to burn up in the atmosphere.
Mir has been operational for 13 years, and could last longer, but without funding is doomed to obliteration. So all we can say is, come 11 August, watch the skies!!
In the largest protest since the 1989 unrest, 15,000 members of the Falun Gong sect brought the central district of Beijing to a halt for 13 hours.
For 13 hours on 25 April, around 15,000 members of the Falun Gong ("wheel of law") qigong sect surrounded the Zhongnanhai compound in central Beijing where China’s leaders live and work in the city’s largest protest since the 1989 student democracy movement. The mostly elderly and middle-aged devotees stood in silent rows, five or six deep, for over a mile along the Avenue of Everlasting Peace or sat on prayer mats meditating in the lotus position.
They were protesting about their negative image in the state media, and demanded official status for their sect and the freedom to publish their texts. The demonstration was prompted by the arrest of 50 sect members in the nearby port city of Tianjin, following a one-week sit-down protest outside a college which sponsors a magazine that had attacked the sect as fraudulent and dangerous.
At sunset, several groups of devotees rose to their feet and started to applaud, pointing to an apparent vision near the setting sun. Waves of devotees rose to applaud and point with them, some beaming ecstatically and others looking more confused. China’s State Council agreed to negotiate and told the demonstrators to go home, no doubt concerned to avoid trouble in the streets only six weeks before the 10th anniversary of the crackdown on Tiananmen Square on 4 June. The official media made no mention of the demonstration the following day.
Thousands of protesters stand in gigong stances along the Avenue Of Everlasting Peace. (Inset) Cult founder Li Hongzhi who was forced to leave China in 1995
The sect claims to have 100 million members who follow the teachings of a New York-based qigong master called Li Hongzhi. He was forced to leave China in 1995 once his teachings, known as Falun Dafa (Law Wheel Great Way), took off. His books – notably Zhuan Falun, the sect’s bible – have been translated into Spanish, French, German, Russian, Swedish, Japanese and Korean, and he lives comfortably in New York off the royalties with his wife and teenage daughter. The sect is active in 18 US states and more than 80 websites are devoted to the practice of Falun.
Master Li, 48, studied various schools of qigong during his years as a trumpet player with a song-and-dance troupe of the Jinlin provincial forest police. By the late 1980s, he had become a grain bureau clerk in the northeastern industrial city of Changchun and moved beyond qigong to something higher. It was here he founded Falun Gong in 1992 and began giving lectures in stadia across the northeast. "Qigong teaches healing and fitness," he said, "but I am teaching a universal principle."
Master Li claims to have been sent by the "supreme being" to combat the evils of science and save an immoral world on the brink of "the final chaos". He rails against gays, rock music, television and drugs, which he says are signs of the end of the world. Society is in such steep decline that humans are being reincarnated as demons, according to Master Li. "Especially in Taiwan, many famous monks or lay Buddhists are actually demons," he wrote. He talks of them as "possessed by foxes and yellow weasels and even snakes" – images that could come straight from pamphlets at the time of the Taiping Rebellion in the mid-19th century, an episode that cost at least 20 million lives.
His disciples believe Master Li telekinetically implants a falun (wheel of law or miniature of the Universe) into their lower abdomens, where it spins constantly, absorbing and releasing power. They can allegedly attain enlightenment and develop supernatural powers – such as levitating and seeing through solid objects – by practising meditation and a set of exercises to harness their qi, or vital energy. These include "hands pointing to heaven and earth" and "the golden monkey splitting its body".
