Wall Street, according to an “explainer” story I saw moving late last week on The Associated Press wire, is teetering on the brink of a “bear market.”

That, of course, is the term used when an index like the S&P 500, the Dow Jones Industrial Average, or even an individual stock, has fallen 20 percent or more from a recent high for a sustained period of time.

(Whatever you do, I’m warning you, do NOT look at your 401(k)!)

Meanwhile, mothers of infants are frantic in their hunt for formula to sustain their babies.

COVID-19 cases are, again, on the rise in Ohio, the U.S. and around the globe.

The bloody war continues in Ukraine with the ongoing threat of nuclear attack.

And, of course, we know all-too-well about the record-high gasoline prices that undoubtedly will impact our holiday weekend travel plans.

So, you might ask, what did the representatives we’ve elected to lead our fine nation debate last week?

Yep … UFOs.

Congress held its first hearing in half a century Tuesday on unidentified flying objects.

No, there is still no government confirmation of extraterrestrial life, but lawmakers from both parties do say UFOs are a national security concern.

Still, Pentagon officials who testified Tuesday before a House Intelligence subcommittee did not disclose additional information from their ongoing investigation of hundreds of unexplained sightings in the sky, according to the AP’s news coverage of the hearing.

They did, however, announce they’ve picked a director for a new task force to coordinate data collection efforts on what the government has officially labeled “unidentified aerial phenomena.”

Ronald Moultrie, the undersecretary of defense for intelligence, said the Pentagon was trying to destigmatize the issue and encourage pilots and other military personnel to report anything unusual they see.

An interim report released by intelligence officials last year counted 144 sightings of aircraft or other devices apparently flying at mysterious speeds or trajectories. In all but one of the sightings investigated, there was too little information for investigators to even broadly characterize the nature of the incident.

Seriously?

I get it. We all want to know what’s out there. But is this the right time? Really?

In what some might view as an attempt by AP reporters to poke fun at this use of time and resources, the news wire described Tuesday’s hearing like this:

Scott Bray, deputy director of naval intelligence, stood next to a television to show a short video taken from an F-18 military plane. The video shows a blue sky with passing clouds. In a single frame — which it took several minutes for staff in the room to queue up — there is an image of one balloon-like shape.

Good grief.

In what could be purely coincidence, social media also was abuzz last week with claims that NASA’s Mars rover has captured images of a doorway cut into a mountainside of the red planet, suggesting the presence of extraterrestrial life.

Social media users shared a magnified version of the image, which made it appear the formation was much larger than its actual dimensions. But in debunking the viral posts, NASA officials and Mars experts say the curious formation is nothing more than a narrow, naturally occurring crevice in the rocky, barren terrain.

In fact, a spokesman for NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, told AP the image being circulated is a “very, very, very zoomed in shot” of a naturally formed rock crevice.

In what also could be an effort also to debunk the UFO talk, some lawmakers from both parties at Tuesday’s UFO hearing did become more honed in on concerns that China, Russia and other well-equipped foreign adversaries could be using new aerospace technology against the U.S. and its allies without their knowledge.

Sightings of what appear to be aircraft flying without discernible means of propulsion have been reported near military bases and coastlines, raising the prospect that witnesses have spotted undiscovered or secret Chinese or Russian technology.

Now, that makes much more sense, and unfortunately, just one more thing for Americans to worry about.