During 2017, various political developments surrounding the U.S. Executive Branch generated a fair number of weird and frankly jaw-dropping news stories. The drumbeat of news that would have seemed outrageous just a year or so ago may have had a hand in lowering the bar for outre items in the venerable Gray Lady.

In December of 2017, the New York Times gave front-page coverage to a bewildering investigative report of Glowing Auras and Black Money: The Pentagon’s Mysterious U.F.O. Program, co-authored by Times journalists Cooper, Blumenthal, and Kean. While taking a generally neutral stance, the report and associated coverage was nonetheless rather startling to readers steeped in the application of Occam's Razor. Indeed, the tone and content led some to notice a correlation with a general uptick in alien-themed astronomy papers and attendant media attention, including the "Megastructures" posited to be orbiting KIC 8462852, and the publicized attempts to monitor 'Oumuamua for artificial broadcasts.

During 2018, will the New York Times publish a news story in which U.F.O.s or associated phenomena (within Earth's Hill Sphere) constitute a substantial part of the narrative? To resolve as positive, the story must run in the main, "A" section of the print-version paper