Biden says three objects shot down over US ‘most likely’ private, and not more Chinese spy balloons – live

In a White House address, Joe Biden tried to reassure Americans about what fighter jets shot down over North America in recent days, saying there were no signs the still-unidentified objects were connected to China or used for surveillance. Earlier in the day, a Georgia court released portions of a special grand jury’s report into Donald Trump’s election meddling campaign, which indicated jurors were worried about being lied to, but did not reveal if they think the former president or his allies committed crimes. The ball is now in Atlanta-area district attorney Fani Willis’s court, since she’s using the document to determine the next steps in her investigation of the former president’s attempt to overturn his 2020 election loss in Georgia.

Here’s what else happened today:

• Senator John Fetterman checked himself into the hospital to receive treatment for depression. The Democrat’s election in Pennsylvania last November was crucial to the party gaining an outright majority in the Senate.

• Biden wants to speak with China’s president Xi Jinping after the spy balloon incident, though it’s not clear when the leaders plan to jump on the phone.

• Nikki Haley thinks Trump could pass one of the “mental competency tests” she wants to force politicians older than 75 to take.

• Democrats are beginning to worry that Biden is too old to run for re-election.

• A bill to prevent police from using search warrants to access data from menstrual tracking apps failed in Virginia’s legislature, apparently due to interference from Republican governor Glenn Youngkin.

A theory has emerged from the amateur radio community about what exactly a US jet shot down over Canada’s Yukon territory.

The unidentified object, one of three downed by American planes in recent days, may have been a “pico” balloon equipped with a GPS module and a solar panel that was launched from Illinois last October, and in the middle of circumnavigating the earth for the seventh time, according to this report on hobbyist website RTL-SDR.

As the article makes clear, the details of the K9YO-15 amateur radio balloon and US and Canadian authorities’ description of the object encountered on 11 February sure seem to line up:

.css-cumn2r{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}The launch blog post indicates that the K9YO-15 balloon was flying a silver mylar 32” sphere SAG balloon which appears to be this one from balloons.online. Unlike latex or rubber weather balloons which inflate and stretch as they rise into lower atmospheric pressures, these mylar balloons can’t stretch, so their fully inflated ground size will be the same as their size at high altitudes, meaning the pico balloon won’t get much bigger than 32”. The payload was a GPS module, Arduino, SI5351 used as a WSPR and APRS transmitter and a solar panel, all together weighing 16.4 grams. A pentagon memo notes that the object shot down over Canada was a “small metallic balloon with a tethered payload” which fits the description of the pico balloon exactly.

The K9YO-15 balloon ceased all WSPR telemetry transmissions while flying just below Alaska since Feb 11 00:18 UTC (just before sunset in Alaska when the solar panels would stop working).

By using NOAA wind models and the last known location by Alaska, K9YO-15 was projected to have been over Yukon when the US Air Force shot down the unknown balloon object at Feb 11 20:41 UTC (3:41 PM EST / 1:41 PM Yukon time according to Canadian Defense Minister Anand). Reports put the altitude of the shot down object at approximately 40,000ft (~12000 meters), which matches the projected ~11500 meters of K9YO-15. Based on the previous days transmission times, it is suspected that if it were operational, the balloon would have begun transmitting again sometime later in the Yukon afternoon when the sun was stronger, but no transmissions have been seen.

A town in Ohio is demanding answers after a train carrying toxic chemicals derailed in their community, but the Guardian’s Lauren Aratani and Michael Sainato report that rail executives refused to provide any in a meeting last night:

Nearly two weeks after a train carrying toxic chemicals derailed in East Palestine, Ohio, community members packed a local high school auditorium on Wednesday night wanting answers to their health and safety concerns.

Norfolk Southern Corporation, the Atlanta-based operator of the derailed train, ultimately skipped the meeting, which was the first community meeting in the town of 5,000 people since the incident.

“We know that many are rightfully angry and frustrated right now. Unfortunately, after consulting with community leaders, we have become increasingly concerned about the growing physical threats to our employees and members of the community around this event stemming from increasing likelihood of the participation of outside parties,” the company said in a statement. “With that in mind, Norfolk Southern will not be in attendance this evening.”

The New York Times has obtained an email from John Fetterman’s wife to the Democratic senator’s supporters:

John Fetterman, the newly elected Democratic senator whose victory in Pennsylvania gave Joe Biden’s allies an outright majority in the chamber after last November’s midterms, has checked himself into the hospital for clinical depression, his office announced.

“Last night, Senator John Fetterman checked himself into Walter Reed National Military Medical Center to receive treatment for clinical depression. While John has experienced depression off and on throughout his life, it only became severe in recent weeks,” Fetterman’s chief of staff Adam Jentleson said in a statement.

“On Monday, John was evaluated by Dr. Brian P. Monahan, the Attending Physician of the United States Congress. Yesterday, Dr. Monahan recommended inpatient care at Walter Reed. John agreed, and he is receiving treatment on a voluntary basis. After examining John, the doctors at Walter Reed told us that John is getting the care he needs, and will soon be back to himself.”

The three recent shootdowns are among the more mysterious national security happenings in recent time, particularly because days have passed since they occurred, and Washington has yet to come out with an explanation of what American jets encountered in the skies.

But Joe Biden seems to be preparing Americans for the possibility that the unidentified objects were simply innocuous vessels in the wrong place at the wrong time. While he didn’t say what was shot down in his White House speech today, he did note that he asked American intelligence agencies to look into reports of UFOs.

“When I came into office, I instructed our intelligence community to take a broad look at the phenomenon of unidentified aerial objects,” Biden said. “We know that a range of entities including countries, companies and research organizations operate objects at altitudes for purposes that are not nefarious, including legitimate scientific research.”

He also noted that “our military and the Canadian military are seeking to recover the debris so we can learn more about these three objects.” There’s no indication there that they’ve managed to get their hands on them yet, even though it’s been days since they were downed.

The president announced he would look to speak with China’s leader Xi Jinping in the wake of the downing of a spy balloon belonging to Beijing off American’s eastern coast.

“The other thing I want to point out is that we are going to keep our allies and the Congress contemporaneously informed of all we know and all we learn, and I expect to be speaking with President Xi, and I hope we have we are going to get to the bottom, as I make no apologies for taking down that balloon,” Biden said.

He also noted that, “Our (experts) have lifted components of the Chinese balloon’s payload off the ocean floor, we’re analyzing them as I speak, and what we learn will strengthen our capabilities.”

Biden says the government is coming up with practices to better detect and deal with unknown aerial objects in the wake of the recent shootdowns over North America.

“I’ve directed my team to come back to me with sharper rules for how we will deal with these unidentified objects moving forward, distinguishing between those that are likely to pose safety and security risks that necessitate action and those that do not,” Biden said.

“But make no mistake: if any object presents a threat to the safety, security of the American people, I will take it down. I’ll be sharing with Congress these classified policy parameters when they’re completed, and they’ll remain classified so we don’t give our roadmap to our enemies to try to evade our defenses.”

He also addressed why the United States found itself suddenly responding to three unidentified objects in its airspace just days after shooting down a confirmed Chinese spy balloon.

“We don’t have any evidence that there has been a sudden increase in the number of objects in the sky. We’re now just seeing more of them, partially because the steps we’ve taken to increase our radars, to narrow our radars, and we have to keep adapting our approach to dealing with these challenges.”

Joe Biden says the intelligence services haven’t determined the purpose of the three objects American planes shot down in recent days, but there’s no sign they were used for surveillance or connected to China.

“Our intelligence community is still assessing all three incidences. They’re reporting to me daily and will continue the urgent efforts to do so, and I will communicate that to the Congress,” Biden said in an address from the White House.

“We don’t yet know exactly what these three objects were, but nothing right now suggests they were related to China’s spy balloon program, or they were surveillance vehicles from other any other country. The intelligence community’s current assessment is that these three objects were most likely balloons tied to private companies, recreation or research institutions, studying weather or conducting other scientific research.”

Joe Biden has started his address about the UFOs shot down over North America in recent weeks, as well as the Chinese spy balloon.

Follow along here for the latest.