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China's Wang Yi at the Munich Security Conference on the Ukraine war and balloongate:
US missile may have taken down $12 hobbyist balloon - Sky News Australia:
www.npr.org/2023/02/18/1158048921/pico-balloon-k9yo
Did an F-22 shoot down an Illinois hobby group's small radio balloon?
"98% certainty" that it's the same balloon, an expert says
"Before the Yukon balloon was shot down, us amateurs were watching [K9YO-15] go towards Alaska," Dan Bowen, a stratospheric balloon consultant, told NPR.
The balloon had already circled the Earth 6 times
K9YO-15 was launched last fall by members of the Bottlecap Balloon club — the group takes its name from the Pixar movie Up, which prominently features both balloons and a bottle cap.
Its journey began with a launch from Libertyville, Ill., on Oct. 10, 2022. Before it disappeared, it was one of the club's longest-flying balloons; in its 123 days aloft, it had circumnavigated the Earth nearly seven times.
You wouldn't need a missile to take the balloon down
Balloons like K9YO-15 are inexpensive — when asked for a cost estimate, Bowen replied, "I don't think you'd break $100."
www.chinadaily.com.cn/a/202302/16/WS63ed9b9fa31057c47ebaf...
US resolution on China civil airship 'nothing but malicious hype'
2023-02-16 10:57
China's top legislature "strongly condemns and firmly opposes" a US House resolution which hyped up China's civil unmanned airship and "China threat" theory, the legislature's foreign affairs committee said on Thursday morning.
The resolution passed by the United States House of Representatives last week claiming that "China used a high-altitude surveillance balloon over US territory" and sensationalizing the "China threat" theory is "nothing but malicious hype and political manipulation", according to a statement by the National People's Congress Foreign Affairs Committee.
"China is a responsible country that has been strictly abiding by international law and respecting the sovereignty and territorial integrity of all countries, and has no intention of violating the territory and airspace of any sovereign country," the committee said.
The straying of a Chinese civilian unmanned airship into US airspace was purely accidental and was caused by force majeure, and it didn't pose any threat to US personnel or security interests, the statement said, underlining China's responsible response to the incident.
The Chinese side immediately briefed the US and the international community on the situation and asked the US side to properly handle the situation in a calm, professional and restrained manner, it said.
The committee said that the US side, however, insisted on using force and deliberately created a stir, which seriously violated the spirit of international law and international norms.
"Some politicians in the US Congress are utilizing the issue to fan the flames, fully exposing their sinister intention to contain China," it said. "In fact, it is the US that wantonly interferes in other countries' internal affairs, infringes on other countries' sovereignty and conducts extensive surveillance activities on other countries."
The statement emphasized in the end that building China-US relations featuring mutual respect, peaceful coexistence and win-win cooperation serves the fundamental interests of the two peoples and is the common expectation of the international community.
"We strongly urge the US Congress to respect the facts, the spirit of international law and the basic principles of international relations, to immediately stop slandering and smearing China and to refrain from taking actions that could escalate situations," it said.
www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/vice-president-harris-say...
Vice President Harris says the Chinese spy balloon 'was not helpful' amid blowback over incident
Story by Andrea Mitchell and Rebecca Shabad
WASHINGTON — Vice President Kamala Harris on Friday addressed concerns about the decision by President Joe Biden to shoot down the alleged Chinese spy balloon, which landed in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of South Carolina earlier this month.
In an exclusive interview with NBC News, Harris was asked why the U.S. shot down that apparatus and other aerial objects when the federal government had no policy in place.
"As it relates to the Chinese balloon, we shot it down because it needed to be shot down, because we were confident that it was used by China to spy on the American people," Harris said in Germany, where she is attending the Munich Security Conference. The vice president also repeated President Joe Biden's remarks Thursday that the administration wants to sharpen the rules to address unidentified objects and help institute global standards on the issue.
When asked about the impact of the incident on U.S.-China relations, Harris emphasized that Biden has reached out to the Chinese about the incident and is expected to speak to President Xi Jinping.
"We will maintain the perspective that we have in terms of what should be the relationship between China and the United States," she said. "That is not going to change, but surely and certainly that balloon was not helpful, which is why we shot it down."
Harris added when asked why the administration didn’t take action before the balloon crossed into the U.S.: "We wanted to do it in a way that would ensure that there was no harm to the American people, but in a way that we could also preserve what we could then investigate from a forensic perspective."
Harris' remarks come after Biden said in an exclusive interview with NBC on Thursday that he did not think it was an overreaction to shoot down three unidentified objects over North America in the days after taking down the Chinese spy balloon.
Biden also said he plans to speak with Xi, but declined in the interview to say when.
“I think the last thing that Xi wants is to fundamentally rip the relationship with the United States and with me,” Biden said.
Biden's televised remarks Thursday were his first about the Chinese spy balloon and unidentified objects shot down by the U.S. military in the skies above North America.
“I gave the order to take down these three objects due to hazards to civilian commercial air traffic and because we could not rule out the surveillance risk of sensitive facilities,” Biden said.
In her interview, Harris also addressed other issues, including rejecting the idea that Americans won't feel as eager to help Ukraine amid ongoing inflation as that country's war against Russia enters a second year.
Harris mentioned atrocities such as when a woman at a maternity hospital was killed as she prepared to give birth last year.
"I know the American people feel a sense of moral outrage and a sense of responsibility for our nation to stand with the Ukrainian people around these atrocities," she said. "And I’m confident in that."
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com