passes by the earth. we look at what this means. welcome to bbc news. in the united states, president biden has called for calm after five police officers were charged with the murder of tyre nichols. a black man severely beaten after a traffic stop earlier this month. the officers in memphis, tennessee, who are all black, were fired last week after being accused of using excessive force. their actions were caught on body cameras. that video will be released within the next 2a hours. here s what the memphis police chief and the district attorney had to say. this is notjust a professional failing, this is a failing of basic humanity toward another individual. this incident was heinous, reckless and inhumane. i expect our citizens to exercise their first amendment right to protest, to demand action and results, but we need to ensure our community is safe in this process. none of this is a calling card for inciting violence or destruction on our community or against our citizens
of course the biden administration is going to be under pressure to take some kind of decisive action against this balloon that satisfies the hawks on the hill who have already been saying that the biden administration has not been harsh enough on china. it will be interesting to see how this plays out throughout the day, guys. we re going to bring you that live. anytime now the fbi could search the home of former vice president mike pence for any additional classified documents. up next i m going to speak to a bipartisan pair of congressmen who have drafted a bill to make the penalties tougher for mishandling classified material. also ahead, a killing without a known motive. a new jersey city council woman gunned down inside her own car. i will speak to a friend of hers about what they ve learned about the investigation so far. and later an italian mafia boss on the run for 16 years is finally captured. turns out he was hiding in plain sight, get this, as
floating above the continental united states, and we don t know what data it s collecting. you can see it right there on your screen and it s visable to people on the ground in montana. at least it has been since wednesday. today beijing confirmed it is theirs, claiming it is a, quote, unquote, civilian research air ship that went off course, but minutes ago, the pentagon flatly rejected that claim, calling it a surveillance balloon. secretary of state antony blinken s upcoming trip to china has now been postponed. the pro vocative move is inflaming a u.s.-china relationship already on the brink with tensions over everything from taiwan to tiktok. cnn s natasha bertrand is here to break it all down for us. natasha, there is so much to talk about here. so let s start at the beginning. what do we know about this balloon? yeah. so here, just to get a sense for the scale of this thing, this is the balloon, and what we know about it is that it is the size of about three busses.
in theaters february 17th. ihop. let s put a smile on your plate. . hello i m victory for blackwell, i m allison, mounting concerns about the chinese spy balloon floating over the united states. secretary of state to anthony blending just postponed his high stakes trip to china hours before set to depart. moments ago, the pentagon said this is a surveillance balloon and man new or gently usedible, about the size of three busses was spotted over montana in recent days, the pentagon says it s now over parts of the central part of the country, moving at 60,000 feet over u.s. air space, the chinese are down playing this discovery. they claim it s a weather balloon that blew off course. for now, president biden is opting against the growing calls to shoot it down. . considering the size of the pay load on this, looking at the potential for debris and the impact on civilians on the ground or property damage, we assessed it. it does not pose a risk to people on the ground
would ex ptend political capita to a very capable recognizance satellite program that gives them all the intelligence they need. reporter: but we ve heard the science excuse before from beijing when china tested a missile that went around the world in 2021 they claimed it was a routine spacecraft ex expe experiment. this is like tiktok. does anybody trust china? of course not. for good reason. reporter: china has spy satellites but they can t loitder over a big area like a balloon. the government will track the balloon as it makes its way across america. the u.s. response so far on the diplomatic front with antony blinken delaying the high stakes visit to beijing. conditions are not conducive for a constructive visit at this time. the decision to take this action, my planned visit is detrimental to the discussions we were planned to have. reporter: for where this goes from here. the pentagon says for now they re continuously tracking this balloon and determined it s