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
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 transiting latin america. we antony blinken was due in beijing this weekend to hold talks on a wide range of issues including security, taiwan, and covid 19. he said that was no longer possible because the purpose of the trip, to forge better relations between the two countries, had been undermined. the presence of this surveillance balloon in us airspace is a violation of us sovereignty and international law and is an irresponsible act and the prc s decision to take this action on the eve of my visit is detrimental to the subsequent discussions that we planned to have. planned to have. bei ing says in a phone planned to have. bei ing says in a phone call planned to have. bei ing says in a phone call on planned to have. beijing says in a phone call on friday - planned to have. beijing says| in a phone call on friday n