Sailors assigned to Explosive Ordnance Disposal Group 2 recover a high-altitude surveillance balloon off the coast of Myrtle Beach. | U.S. Navy via AP
The military has concluded its efforts to recover debris from what the U.S. government says was a Chinese government surveillance balloon that was downed off the coast of South Carolina.
U.S. Northern Command officials said Friday that it wrapped up recovery efforts Thursday and is sending the final pieces of debris to an FBI lab in Virginia for analysis.
The balloon, which was shot down Feb. 4, was the first of four objects downed after flying in U.S. airspace in recent weeks. Three smaller objects, which have not been similarly identified by the U.S. government as surveillance equipment, were subsequently shot down over Canada, Alaska and Lake Huron.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
On Tuesday, the group said one of its balloons was last spotted at 12:48 a.m. on Saturday along an uninhabited island off the coast of Alaska. That tracks with when a U.S. F-22 used a Sidewinder missile to shoot down an object over the Yukon later that same day. Canadian officials have since said the debris will be extremely difficult to retrieve due to the frozen terrain and the remoteness of the site.
The club’s balloon had a long journey, traveling for 123 days and 18 hours of flight before — possibly — being shot out of the sky. “For now we are calling Pico Balloon K9YO Missing in Action,” the club’s website says, without making any accusations or connecting the incident to the military shootdown.
“I have no information for you from NORAD on the objects,” said Air Force Col. Elizabeth Mathias, a spokesperson from the North American Aerospace Defense Command. “I understand FBI spoke with that hobby group, and I expect the [National Security Council] task force to have more on the potential identification of the objects.”
POLITICO has reached out to the club for comment. The FBI did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The brigade flies pico balloons, which are filled with hydrogen and carry a transmitter with GPS tracking. The balloons rise to 47,000 feet, the group says on its website. The Yukon object was reported to be floating around 40,000 feet.
“As we travel, our GPS is able to locate our current location, and other information is gathered depending on what chips we have on our transmitter while using other programs to gather other inflight information,” the group says on its website.
In a speech on Thursday, Biden noted that the objects are still being investigated, and he backed up previous comments from U.S. officials who said the objects probably aren’t from China and are most likely “benign.”
“The intelligence community’s current assessment is that these three objects were most likely balloons tied to private companies, recreation or research institutions studying weather or conducting other scientific research,” Biden said.
The Northern Illinois Bottlecap Balloon Brigade, which formed two years ago, got its name from the children’s film “Up”. The founders drew inspiration from the Ellie Badge, a grape soda bottle cap on a pin that’s a prized possession for the main character in the movie.
“There were 10 of us to start, aged 11 years old and up, kids, their parents and friends, some licensed in Amateur Radio some having an interest in science and engineering,” according to the website. “We met monthly to research and report and had our first launch on September 25th 2021.”
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
Joe Biden has broken his silence on unknown aerial objects shot down over North America during the past week, assessing that they were “most likely” operated by private companies or research institutions rather than China.
The US president’s tentative conclusion is likely to fuel criticism that his orders to take down the objects were an overreaction amid political pressure over the discovery of a suspected Chinese spy balloon that transited much of the country.
Biden spoke for eight minutes at the Eisenhower executive office building on Thursday after Republicans and some Democrats expressed concerns that his unwillingness to comment on the issue could allow conspiracy theories to thrive.
“We don’t yet know exactly what these three objects were but nothing right now suggests they were related to China’s spy balloon program or that they were surveillance vehicles from any other country,” the president told reporters, against a backdrop of flags and the presidential seal.
“The intelligence community’s current assessment is that these three objects were most likely balloons tied to private companies, recreation or research institutions studying weather or conducting other scientific research.”
Earlier this month an American fighter jet downed a balloon sent by the Chinese government off the coast of South Carolina. The incident prompted accusations from Republicans that Biden had been too slow to react and should have shot it down before it passed over the continental US.
When three additional unidentified objects were spotted on Friday off the coast of Alaska, on Saturday over Canada and on Sunday over Lake Huron, Biden was quick to order that they be taken down.
But on Thursday, with efforts to relocate the wreckage hampered by weather, he acknowledged that many objects are sent up by countries, companies and research organisations for reasons that are “not nefarious”, including legitimate scientific research.
“I want to be clear,” Biden said. “We don’t have any evidence that there has been a sudden increase in the number of objects in the sky. We’re now just seeing more of them partially because the steps we’ve taken to increase our radars.”
The president, who has directed national security adviser Jake Sullivan to lead an “interagency team” to review procedures, said the US is developing “sharper rules” to track, monitor and potentially shoot down unknown aerial objects.
These rules would help “distinguish between those that are likely to pose safety and security risks that necessitate action and those that do not,” he added. “Make no mistake, if any object presents a threat to the safety and security of the American people I will take it down.”
The downing of the Chinese surveillance craft was the first known peacetime shoot down of an unauthorised object in US airspace and continues to send out diplomatic ripples.
The White House national security council has said the balloon had the ability to collect communications and that China has previously flown similar surveillance balloons over dozens of countries on multiple continents, including some of the US’s closest allies.
The US blacklisted six Chinese entities it said were linked to Beijing’s aerospace programmes.
China has denied that the balloon was a surveillance airship. Wang Wenbin, a foreign ministry spokesperson, told a press conference that the balloon’s entry into US airspace was “an unintended, unexpected and isolated event”, adding: “China has repeatedly communicated this to the US side, yet the US overreacted by abusing the use of force and escalating the situation.
“It also used the incident as an excuse to impose illegal sanctions over Chinese companies and institutions. China is strongly opposed to this and will take countermeasures in accordance with law against relevant US entities that have undermined China’s sovereignty and security to firmly safeguard China’s sovereignty and legitimate rights and interests.”
US relations withChina have been tested over the last year due to tensions over cybersecurity, competition in the technology sector, the looming threat to Taiwan and China’s failure to condemn the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
On Thursday Biden criticised China’s surveillance programme, saying the “violation of our sovereignty is unacceptable,” but said he looks to maintain open lines of communication with Beijing. “We’re not looking for a new cold war.”
Secretary of state Antony Blinken postponed his first planned trip to China as the balloon was flying over the US and a new meeting with his Chinese counterpart has yet to be scheduled.
“I expect to be speaking with President Xi and I hope we can get to the bottom of this,” Biden said. “But I make no apologies for taking down that balloon.”
Senators from both sides of the aisle have complained about being denied detailed information. John Cornyn, a Republican senator for Texas, told the Politico website that the White House was “creating a bigger problem for themselves by the lack of transparency because people’s minds, their imaginations begin to run wild. I think they’re behind the curve on this and they really need to be more transparent.”
On Monday, just to be sure, the White House felt compelled to announce that there was no indication of “aliens or extraterrestrial activity”.
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( With inputs from : www.theguardian.com )
I spent my early adulthood in South Africa during the apartheid era. In 1974, the government passed a law stipulating that all lessons for black children had to be in Afrikaans, which most could not speak, and which was considered the language of the oppressor. By 1976, Black schoolchildren took to the streets of Soweto to protest and were met with police violence, with over 176 deaths. It was then that the tide turned, the protest movement grew and people worldwide became more aware of the injustices of apartheid.
Sensing the country was on the cusp of change, I went out to try to photograph what was happening around me. I was in my early 20s and working for a company that printed magazines, so I’d take my own pictures at weekends. I’d had no photographic training and because I could hardly afford film, I bought bulk reels of black and white, which were cheaper. I had to limit the number of exposures I could make due to the cost, and used cat litter trays for developing the silver gelatin prints.
I had a manual Canon FTb camera and a standard 50mm lens, which approximates the field of view of the eye. I would visit and photograph squatter towns where Black people were living as family units in defiance of the labour laws, and I also went to District Six, a mixed-race community where homes were demolished and the inhabitants evicted to make way for white housing. I’d knock on doors and ask if I could photograph people in their homes.
When I took pictures of people on the streets, they were often absorbed in their own worlds. I spotted the couple in this photograph in Green Point, Cape Town, near where I lived. The man was tenderly caring for his sick partner, and a smartly dressed woman walked past them, totally oblivious to their existence. The man looked up at her and the white of his eye caught the light as I took the picture. There are two other photographs I took showing a pair of white kids walking past the same couple without appearing to notice them, and then on their return journey, eating ice creams they’d just bought.
I felt my pictures needed to be seen and a local publisher was interested in producing a book, which reached the dummy stage before he decided the project was going to be too risky. But a photograph I sent to the British Journal of Photography made their front page in 1977, so that same month I packed a box of prints into a suitcase and flew to Heathrow. I only had a couple of dozen or so prints, and lent these to the International Defence and Aid Fund, which campaigned to defend people in race trials and raise awareness of apartheid internationally. My pictures were exhibited and published widely and, as a consequence, I was unable to return to South Africa until apartheid was abolished over 13 years later.
Under apartheid, anti-racist behaviour was spurned by the government, interracial sex was illegal and the best jobs, housing and education were strictly reserved for whites. One of the other photographs I brought to the UK is a portrait of a man I worked with at the printing company. He was an experienced technician, but I remember once asking him to prepare two exposures on a contact sheet. He had to remind me he was only allowed to make one exposure, as two were classed as “skilled” work, which was reserved for white technicians.
Apartheid, meaning “apartness”, was a deliberate process of engendering indifference between the races, which I think this photograph demonstrates. When you walk into my new exhibition at Leicester Art Gallery, it’s the first picture that strikes you, because it has been printed a couple of metres tall. There’s a resonance when people realise that such social and economic differences are still present 45 years later. The difference with this image is that the couple were denied equal opportunities by law.
After the end of apartheid and the election of Nelson Mandela, I trawled through the old negatives, discovering images I’d forgotten I had. I became a wildlife photographer in midlife and now it feels like the photographs I took at 23 belong to another lifetime. They act as a poignant reminder of why history must never be buried or forgotten and how we need to be constantly reminded of such injustices to help prevent them from happening again.
Steve Bloom’s CV
Photographer Steve Bloom
Born: Johannesburg, 1953 Trained: Self-taught Influences: “Photojournalist W Eugene Smith, with his powerful features in Life magazine.” High point: “Seeing my first photography book roll off the press. It’s the knowledge that the images will be seen. I think reaching an audience is a joy for any photographer.” Low point: “The phone call from a processing lab in the analogue film days to say that there had been a chemical ‘incident’ and the films I had brought back from a shoot in Kenya had been destroyed.” Top tip: “In this age of billions of pictures being made each day, it’s tempting to take multiple pictures of the same subject without actually concentrating too much on composition, lighting and timing. Photograph as if you only get one chance at it, and that discipline will sharpen your creative mind.”
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( With inputs from : www.theguardian.com )
American forces decided to target the objects because of concerns about potential surveillance, Kirby said on MSNBC later on Tuesday, so they “acted out of an abundance of caution.” No other objects are being tracked, he said.
It’s still unclear what the objects were, and administration officials have provided few details. Senators received another classified briefing from the administration on the incursions on Tuesday, but they haven’t shed much light.
As for the Chinese spy balloon that was shot down on Feb. 4, officials expect to learn more about its payload in the coming days as crews continue to retrieve materials, Kirby said. On Monday, U.S. Northern Command said it had recovered critical electronics including key sensors presumably used for intelligence gathering.
When the balloon was shot down over the Atlantic, some materials floated while the payload, which carries critical information about the airship, sank to the “ocean bottom,” FBI officials told reporters last week. Crews have since successfully recovered parts of the balloon.
But two of the objects shot down over the weekend were downed over the Yukon and Lake Huron, locations that may make recovery impossible, officials said.
“We are working very hard to locate them, but there is no guarantee that we will,” said Sean McGillis, Royal Canadian Mounted Police acting deputy commissioner. “The terrain in Yukon is rather treacherous right now… the same could be said about what’s taking place in Lake Huron.”
Joseph Gedeon, Kelly Garrity and Paul McLeary contributed to this report.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
Jerusalem: A Palestinian man who attempted to stab Israeli soldiers was shot and killed south of the occupied West Bank city of Hebron, the army in the Jewish state said.
In a statement, the army issued a picture of a large kitchen knife and said it was used by the suspect to try to stab the soldiers on Friday who “responded with live fire and neutralized the suspect”, reports Xinhua news agency.
No injuries were reported among Israelis.
Meanwhile, the Palestinian Health Ministry identified the victim as Sharif Hasan Rabbaa, 22.
The killing was the latest in a surge of violence in the West Bank, as Israel maintains that it has intensified its military raids in the West Bank after a string of deadly street attacks in March and April 2022.
The Israeli army has killed at least 43 Palestinians since January 1.
Meanwhile, the Jewish state said seven Israelis were killed in attacks during the same period.
New York: Valentine’s week has begun and today people are celebrating Propose Day. Many people propose to their significant others or declare their love for them today. However, in a bizarre turn of events, the propose day becomes the most horrific day for a couple.
Reportedly, a man proposed his long time crush with a heart shaped balloon filled with hydrogen gas. The lady was about to respond to the crush when the heart-shaped balloon blasted. The lady slapped the man and went away.
Later it was learned that the balloon was spotted by the US army who mistook the balloon for Chinese spy balloon and shot it down by firing over 1000 bullets. Fortunately, none of the bullets caused any harm to anyone except to the couple.
The US army has accused the man of violating American sovereignty and international law. Man, on the other hand, has said that by shooting down its balloon, the US has violated the law of celebrating valentine week and warned that he reserves its right to take appropriate action in response.
[ Disclaimer: With inputs from The Fauxy, an entertainment portal. The content is purely for entertainment purpose and readers are advised not to confuse the articles as genuine and true, these Articles are Fictitious meant only for entertainment purposes. ]
Gurugram: A man was shot at and vehicles were damaged in a clash between two groups allegedly after an inter-faith marriage in Haryana’s Pataudi area, police said on Tuesday.
On January 30, a Muslim man from Pataudi’s Baba Shah locality lodged a police complaint alleging that his 22-year-old daughter had gone missing. It was later found that she had married one Rakesh, they said.
After the wedding, Rakesh had started receiving threat calls. He informed his relatives in Rewari about the calls and they reached out to Bajrang Dal members for help. A group of men led by the outfit’s leader reached the man’s house where the clash erupted, they said.
An FIR was registered against the Muslim party under sections 148 (riots), 149 (unlawful assembly), 323 (causing hurt), 506 (criminal intimidation), 380 (theft) and 427 (causing damage) of the IPC.
Mubin Khan, a resident of the same locality, said his son Mohin, who was at a grocery shop, was shot at during firing between the two groups. His son is being treated in a private hospital in Gurugram and is still unconscious, police said.
An FIR was registered under section 307 (murder attempt) at the Pataudi police station.
Aligarh: A former Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) student was shot at outside a hostel on the campus, police said on Saturday.
Mohammad Faizan, who is a boarder at the Ross Masood Hall hostel, was rushed to the Jawaharlal Nehru Medical College hospital and his condition is stated to be critical, they said.
AMU proctor Md Waseem told PTI that Faizan was shot at on the night of February 3. “Though the motive behind the attack is still not clear, police are investigating the matter,” he added.
AMU students held a protest march on campus against the law-and-order situation. In a memorandum addressed to the vice-chancellor, they demanded that elections to various representative bodies, including the students’ union, should be held for restoration of democratic rights.
The protesting students also demanded that the university should take urgent steps against those elements who are trying to disturb the peace on campus and are “defaming the institution”.
Kupwara, Jan 27 (GNS): A teenager was injured after hit on the face by a shot fired from a 12 bore rifle by an unknown person at Payerpora Hyhama area of north Kashmir’s Kupwara district, officials said on Friday.
A police officer told GNS that information was received that one unknown person has “utilized” 12 bore illegally at Payerpora Hyhama, resulting in minor injuries on face of a teenager identified as Sahir Ahmad Khan son of Niyaz Ahmad Khan of Payerpora Hyhama.
The Injured was shifted to SDH Kupwara wherefrom he was referred to GMC Baramulla. In this regard, he said, a case (FIR No 12/2023) under section 307 IPC (attempt to murder) and 3/27 Arm Act (use of prohibited arms or ammunition) stands registered investigation taken up. (GNS)
