for protests and legal reform. the boss of tesla, elon musk, is cleared of fraud charges brought against him by the company s shareholders. and it s one of mother nature s greatest displays a spectacular murmuration of starlings. china has made another attempt to calm the diplomatic crisis caused by the detection of a chinese surveillance balloon over the united states. the top foreign policy official wang yi has discussed the dispute with the us secretary of state anthony blinken, who postponed a trip to beijing this weekend in response to the dispute. china insists the balloon is a weather obervation airship that went off course, but washington says it s being used for spying. our north america correspondent, peter bowes, reports. a surreal but increasingly serious international row. this speck in the sky could be spying on the us the chinese balloon that s been hovering over the country for several days. china insists it s a platform to conduct weather related research
of the independence hero, john garang. the family of nicola bulley, who went missing in lancashire eight days ago, urge people to keep an open mind about what s happened to her. police believe she fell into a river. health leaders in the uk are warning that there will be a struggle to clear backlogs and improve emergency care, unless industrial action by thousands of staff is brought to an end. and 18 year old juliette lamour has won $a 48 million canadian, on the gold ball lotteryjackpot, on her first try, but she still plans to finish her university studies and become a doctor. china has called for a cool headed handling of the dispute about a chinese spy balloon that s been seen over the united states. a senior chinese foreign ministry official has spoken with the us secretary of state antony blinken by phone, after he cancelled his trip to the country this weekend. presidentjoe biden says the united states is, in his words, going to take care of the balloon. beijing i
visit, alongside the leaders of the church of england and church of scotland. hello to you in the uk, and around the world. in the last few hours, a united states fighterjet has shot down a chinese surveillance balloon which had been spotted over sensitive us military sites, on the orders of president biden. three airports on the east coast were closed in preparation for the operation. beijing has tried to calm the diplomatic row about the balloon, insisting it was gathering weather data and wasn t being used for spying. a short time ago, this is what president biden said. i ordered the pentagon to shoot it down as soon as possible, they decided without doing damage to anyone on the ground. they decided that the best time to do that was as it got overwater within a 12 mile limit. they successfully took it down, and i want to complement our aviators who did it, and we ll have more to report on a little later. our north america correspondent david willis has been giving us the
today on the program, the first lady of ukraine. i talk to olena zelenska about that frequently forgotten side of war, the human toll. how are ukrainians dealing with the destruction of their cities and towns? how are they fighting winter s cold as the country struggles to pump out heat? and can they ever return to life as normal? also, brazil s january 8th and its stunning similarities to america s january 6th. we dig into the attack on the capital in brasilia with reporter mac margolis. and california was pummelled by rivers of rain. we ll destroy the astronomical cost of climate change and wild weather that is already upon us. but first, here s my take. this week, at a summit, joe biden said that the western was experiencing unprecedented levels of migration, greater than at any time in history. this is not hyperbole. there were 2.4 million apprehensions at america s southwestern border last fiscal year, which is about 600,000 higher than the prior year, the previous h