they're dropping like flies! Crashes in Kazakhstan and Needles CA

The web is abuzz with the news of 3 luminous spheres crashing to earth in Kazakhstan on 5/13/9. The news is all over Russia and The Ukraine.
The elements of the story that stand out and make it seem not just like more orbital debris are that the objects "...were emitting red and green sparks as they descended to earth." and that "...the curious villagers tried to chip the UFOs with a chisel [upon which] colourful sparks flew out but to their astonishment they were unable to mark the objects in any way." There's some lively discussion on Above Top Secret about this case. Also, an update on that case can be found here.

Searching for that led me to another story about yet another crash in in Pavlodar, Kazakhstan on 1/5/9. Apparently there, a local police chief saw a shining flying object falling into the Belaya river early on January 5. Divers found nothing after four attempts, but investigated a "15-meter air hole" whatever that is.
Are the aliens already (unsuccessfully) looking for the ET Embassy they're building there? :D

And that of course led me to more new stuff about the alleged UFO crash in Needles CA last year (2008), just a couple months before the afore-mentioned Japan crash; George Knapp, the NV TV news guy who's broken so many good UFO stories, has this piece.
Essentially the details are these:

Those who saw the object descending, claim that it was of a turquoise color. Any idea of the object being a meteorite was quickly dismissed because of the presence of a number of helicopters, which appeared to be searching for the object. Eyewitnesses claimed that the group of helicopters eventually located the object, and toted it to an unknown location.

The blogosphere is already on to that one, and some interesting commentary on it has already appeared. Some more interesting detail on the witnesses can be found in this blog post. I've give that Knapp guy credit -- he's either a top-notch BS artist, or one ballsy reporter...
The video of the news story on this site, with the full story found here.

UFO crash in Japan?

There's been some flutter on the web lately about a possible UFO crash -- and debris retrieval -- in Japan on 7/16/08.
I've been trying to find more info on this before posting, but there doesn't seem to be much. Nothing, actually! But it's so intriguing I thought I'd post it anyway.
Although in searching for corroboration, I did find this little gem -- a historical document in Japan that appears to be the story of a UFO crash in 19th century feudal Japan! Very interesting. I love the historical stuff, because that basically puts the kibosh on the skeptics who say it's all due to people being influenced by the media. Sadly, i can't seem to find the translated article that the pinktentacle post refers to @ the bottom....