Of aliens, and an alienating tax reform

1. What was the most noteworthy thing that happened this week?

For only the 38th time in the 51 weeks of 2017 to date, the remarkable event of the week has come out of the United States. And we're not referring to US media reports that the Pentagon has finally confirmed that it has been studying UFOs. But yes, there was in fact a US$22million Advanced Aviation Threat Identification Program (AATIP) in the US Department of Defense to collect and analyse "anomalous aerospace threats", official-speak for aliens and other unidentified flying objects.

Launched in 2007, AATIP studied, among the anomalies, video and audio recordings of aerial encounters by military pilots and unknown objects, as well as interviews with people who have had physical encounters with such objects.