U.S. military shoots down Chinese air balloon that traveled across the country
WASHINGTON
The U.S. military on Saturday shot down a suspected Chinese spy balloon off the Carolina coast on orders from President Joe Biden after it traversed sensitive military sites across North America, the latest flashpoint in tensions between Washington and Beijing.
Biden wanted the balloon downed on Wednesaimed
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See how local group Bella Dose caught the attention of Shakira and now plans to take over the music world. day but was advised that the best time for the operation would be when it was over water, U.S. officials said. Military officials determined that bringing it down over land from an altitude of 60,000 feet would pose an undue risk to people on the ground.
The presence of the balloon in the skies above the U.S. last week dealt a severe blow to already strained U.S.-Chinese relations that have been in a downward spiral for years. It prompted Secretary of State Antony Blinken to abruptly cancel a high-stakes Beijing trip
at easing tensions.
“They successfully took it down and I want to compliment our aviators who did it,” Biden said after getting off Air Force One en route to Camp David.
The giant white orb was spotted Saturday morning over the Carolinas as it approached the Atlantic coast. At 2:39 p.m. EST, an F-22 fighter jet fired a missile at the balloon, puncturing it while it was about 6 nautical miles off the coast near Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, senior defense officials said.
The spectacle had
Americans looking to the skies all week, wondering whether the mysterious balloon had floated over them.
On Saturday, Ashlyn Preaux, 33, went out to get her mail in Forestbrook, South Carolina, and noticed her neighbors looking up — and there it was, the balloon in the cloudless blue sky. Then she saw fighter jets circling and the balloon get hit.
“I did not anticipate waking up to be in a ‘Top Gun’ movie today,” she said.
The debris landed in 47 feet of water, shallower the national economy good and 76% say conditions are poor, according to a poll by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. At the same time, 57% say their personal financial situation is good. That’s unchanged since December, but it has eroded slightly since earlier last year when 62% felt positively about their finances.
The key force shaping the economy right now is the Fed, which has the mission of keeping prices stable and inflation at around 2%. Consumer prices jumped 6.5% last year.
To bring down inflation, the Fed has tried to slow down hiring and growth by raising its benchmark rate over the past year. When Biden delivered the State of the Union Address in 2022, the Fed's benchmark rate was effectively near zero. It's now over 4.5%, the fastest increase in four decades, and Fed Chairman Jerome Powell said Wednesday that the rate will likely go higher.
“Without price stability, the economy does not work for anyone,” Powell told reporters after the
Fed board's most recent meeting.
The Fed rate increases mark a major reversal in than officials had expected, and it spread out over roughly seven miles and the recovery operation included several ships. The officials estimated the recovery efforts would be completed in a short time, not weeks. A salvage vessel was en route.
U.S. defense and military officials said Saturday that the balloon entered the U.S. air defense zone north of the Aleutian Islands on Jan. 28 and moved largely over land across Alaska and then into Canadian airspace in the Northwest Territories on Monday. It crossed back into U.S. territory over northern Idaho on Tuesday, the day the
White House said Biden was first briefed on it.
The balloon was spotted Thursday over Montana, home to Malmstrom Air Force Base, which has fields of nuclear missile silos.
The Americans were able to collect intelligence on the balloon as it flew over the U.S., giving them a number of days to analyze it and learn how it moved and what it was capable of surveilling, according to two senior defense officials said. The officials briefed reporters on condition of anonymity.
The officials said the U.S. military was constantly assessing the threat, and concluded that the technology on the balloon didn’t give the Chinese significant intelligence beyond what it could already obtain from satellites, though the U.S. took steps to mitigate what information it could gather as it moved along.
Republicans were critical of Biden's response.
“Allowing a spy balloon from the Communist Party of China to travel across the entire continental United States before contesting its presence is a disastrous projection of weakness by the White House,” said Mississippi how the economy operates.
Ever since the 2008 financial crisis, the U.S. central bank had held its benchmark rate near historic lows to bring back growth. That made it easier for tech start-ups because cheap money meant investors expected them to focus on growth instead of profits. Consumers got use to historically cheap rates for mortgages and auto loans.
The past year's rate jumps produced a sudden whiplash. The stock market fell. Prominent tech companies such as Google and Microsoft recently announced layoffs. Even as computer chip companies began building new plants and crediting Biden's policies, the world economy swung from a dearth of semiconductors to a glut. Mortgage rates initially doubled to over 7%, before falling back a bit to 6% last week. The big increase meant monthly payments became unaffordable for would-be buyers, forcing many to stay in rentals.
Glenn Kelman, CEO of the real estate brokerage Redfin, said the housing market is stronger than many people expected.
But the years of low rates worsened generational inequality. Baby boomers became wealthy as their
Sen. Roger Wicker, the top Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee.
Sen. Thom Tillis, RN.C., tweeted: “Now that this embarrassing episode is over, we need answers from the Biden Administration on the decisionmaking process. Communist China was allowed to violate American sovereignty unimpeded for days. We must be better prepared for future provocations and incursions by the CCP.”
China has continued to claim that the balloon was merely a weather research “airship” that had been blown off course. The Pentagon rejected that out of hand — as well as China’s contention that it was not being used for surveillance and had only limited navigational ability.
The Pentagon also acknowledged reports of a second balloon flying over Latin America. “We now assess it is another Chinese surveillance balloon,” Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder, Pentagon press secretary, said in a statement.
China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs did not respond to a question about the second balloon.
This isn’t the first time Chinese spy balloons have crossed into U.S. airspace in recent years, one of the officials said. At least three times during the Trump administration and at least one other time during Biden’s time as president they’ve seen balloons cross, but not for this long, the official said.
Blinken, who had been due to depart Washington for Beijing late Friday, said he had told senior Chinese diplomat Wang Yi in a phone call that sending the balloon over the U.S. was “an irresponsible act and that [China’s] decision to take this action on the eve of my visit is detrimental to the substantive discussions that we were prepared to have.” homes increased in value, but then rates jumped at the time when more millennials wanted to buy and they found themselves priced out.
“A generation ago, boomers owned 21% of U.S. wealth,” Kelman said. "For millennials, that number is 7%. They’re still on the outside looking in.”
Carl Tannenbaum, chief economist for Northern Trust, said he is surprised that the rate increases have hit housing but not employment. Traditional models assumed that efforts to lower inflation would automatically include job losses. But when he talks to companies, most are reluctant to fire their workers because businesses had trouble finding skilled employees during the pandemic.
“Because the supply of labor has been so starved for the past two years, firms are holding on to who they have,” Tannenbaum said. "The prevailing wisdom is if we have a recession it’s going to be shallow. Firms are going to want to be ready to go.”
As much as Biden says his mission is about giving Americans a sense of confidence, his challenge might rest with an economy in which few things are certain.