welcome to our viewers on pbs in america and around the globe. the pentagon has confirmed that they are seeing reports of a balloon transiting over latin america. brigadier general patrick ryder says that the us department of defense now assesses that it is another chinese surveillance balloon. this comes after washington accused beijing of acting irresponsibly after a first such balloon was detected over the united states. secretary of state antony blinken postponed a much anticipated trip to beijing over the incident. china says that balloon was a civilian airship which had deviated from its planned route. we ll have more on the second balloon sighting in a moment, but first, this report from gordon corera. i.have no idea what this thing is. a strange object in the sky filmed by a member of the public in rural montana. and for those of you who think this mightjust be the moon, it is not the moon, the moon is off to my right i can see it. it s not the moon, nor a ufo, bu
hello and welcome to bbc news. us defence chiefs have identified what they say is a second chinese surveillance balloon, this time over latin america. the first balloon is floating across the us mid west. antony blinken, the us secretary of state, has cancelled a trip to beijing, and accused the chinese authorities of being irresponsible. china insists the balloon is a weather monitoring device which has blown off course. our north america correspondent, peter bowes, reports. a surreal but increasingly serious international row. this spec on this guy could be spying on the us. the chinese balloon that has been hovering over the country for several days. china insists it is a platform to conduct weather related research that has deviated from its root. beijing has apologised but the us state department says it stands by its assessment that the balloon is being used for surveillance. and defence officials now say there is a second balloon. we have seen reports of a balloon tran
now, finally, that could be happening. we re notjust settling for doing the same old, same old. we want to push further. and rocket launches are now commonplace, sending up spacecraft for the benefit of life on earth. space is an integral part of society. our way of working only functions with satellites for telecom, for navigation, for earth observation, for weather forecasting, for many things. so we need these satellites for our daily life. the country that first sent a person into space is crashing back to earth because of its war in ukraine. if russia doesn t partner up with another nation or field its own space station, which given the current circumstances and sanctions is quite unlikely, it might not have any crewed space flight. what became a story of collaboration is now once again one of competition and conflict. china has its own space station. india wants one. and private companies are getting in on the act, too, sending up their own rockets. i m pallab ghosh, th
for tomorrow, still this band of cloud bringing a little bit of rain but not very much, across northern england, down into north wales, the north midlands. to the south of that a lot of low cloud cover is the mist, some fog, a little bit of sunshine. the best of the sunshine further north and west for northern ireland and for scotland with a few showers in the north west. temperatures 6 8. here comes the lively bit of the weekend forecast. sunday this area of low pressure passing to the north of scotland and the frontal system which will bring some outbreaks rain. a breezy day generally. it stays mainly fine to the south. early cloud giving way to spells of sunshine. but the winds picking up through the afternoon, to the eastern side of the pennines we could see gusty conditions for a time. also very windy for coasts of northern ireland, more broadly across scotland, in exposed spots in the north of scotland gusts of 65 mph or more with a band of rain pushing southwards and e