An alleged spy balloon spotted over the US is a Chinese “civilian airship” which had deviated from its planned route, China says.
US defence officials said they believed the balloon, seen above sensitive areas in recent days, was in fact a “high-altitude surveillance” device.
But in a statement, China’s foreign ministry said it was used for “mainly meteorological” purposes.
China “regrets the unintended entry” of the balloon into US airspace, it added.
The object flew over Alaska’s Aleutian Islands and through Canada before appearing over the city of Billings in Montana on Wednesday, according to officials.
Montana is home to some of the US’s nuclear missile silos.
The US decided not to shoot down the balloon because of the danger posed by falling debris, and the limited use of any intelligence the device could gather, a US defence official said.
However, the government prepared fighter jets in case the object had to be shot down.
The Chinese statement said the balloon had been blown off-course by unexpected winds.
“Affected by the Westerlies and with limited self-steering capability, the airship deviated far from its planned course.
“The Chinese side regrets the unintended entry of the airship into US airspace due to force majeure.”
The statement referred to the incident as an “unexpected situation” and said Beijing would continue to communicate with the US side.
On Friday, Canada said it had summoned China’s ambassador over the incident and will continue to “vigorously express” its position to Chinese officials.
The balloon has been reported in US media as being about the size of three buses.
During Thursday’s briefing at the Pentagon, US defence officials declined to disclose the aircraft’s current location and did not give information on where it was launched from.
They added that the balloon was “appearing to hang out for a longer period of time” than others tracked by the US over the past several years.
The unfamiliar sight caused confusion as the balloon hovered above Montana, with some people posting images of the pale round object high above the Earth’s surface.
China initially warned against “conjectures and hyping up the issue” while it worked to “verify” the reports of the balloon, with state media outlet the Global Times accusing the US of aggravating tensions between the two countries.
Despite China’s explanation, the incident is likely to increase tensions ahead of US Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s visit to China next week. It will be the first visit to the country by a Biden administration cabinet secretary.
The top US diplomat will be in Beijing to hold talks on a wide range of issues, including security, Taiwan and Covid-19.
A jaw-dropping home security video from Hawaii shows the moment when a woman narrowly missed being crushed by a massive boulder that barreled through her home. According to a local media report, the astounding incident occurred this past Saturday evening in the Honolulu neighborhood of Palolo. As homeowner Caroline Sasaki was heading into her living room to watch television, she suddenly heard a strange boom and briefly paused before the enormous boulder came rolling through her home right in front of her.
Conceding that she has yet to watch the now-viral video of the near miss, she marveled that “they said if I took one more step, I probably wouldn’t be here.” Sasaki credits her good fortune to an injured leg which causes her to walk slowly, though in this instance, it just so happened to be the perfect pace. Authorities say that the boulder, which measured a staggering five feet by five feet and weighed a whopping 3,000 pounds, first smashed through a cinder block wall of the home and then shattered a glass door as it rolled through Sasaki’s living room before ultimately coming to rest in a bedroom.
The boulder’s origin has proven to be something of a contentious issue since it came crashing into Sasaki’s home as she and her family believe that it was dislodged from a construction project on a cliff side above her home. “I was in fear of this happening,” she said, indicating that she had concerns from the moment the nearby work started. It remains uncertain if that was where the boulder came from, though the city has issued a stop work order for the project while they assess if there is any potential for similarly dangerous incidents to occur. Fortunately for Sasaki, she has gotten some relief when it comes to removing the giant rock as a local construction company has reportedly volunteered to extricate the onerous object free of charge.
A mysterious piece of artwork has been discovered in the desert outside of Las Vegas and the curious drawing is so enormous that it can actually be seen from space. According to a local media report, the peculiar design was seemingly first spotted last month by Dr. David Golan as he and his wife were walking their dogs in an area of wilderness at the edge of the city. When they reached a particularly high plateau, he noticed “this pattern in the rocks” which resembled “a face and a yin and yang sign.” A subsequent excursion to the site revealed that the artwork is largely hidden to those on the ground, Golan explained, “all you can kind of tell is that there are rocks piled up.”
Lest he had any suspicions that his mind might be playing tricks on him, when Golan later looked at the location on Google Earth, the remarkable artwork was clearly visible. Amazingly, the area resident says that he has often walked his dogs in the mountainous location over the last five years, but never spotted the drawing until last month and an online search for references to the mysterious piece turned up nothing. “Someone did some pretty miraculous artwork up on the top of the hill,” he marveled, “and it’s just sitting here.” The presence of the piece was apparently also news to the Bureau of Land Management, which is responsible for overseeing that particular portion of the desert.
As of now, the creator of the artwork as well as the meaning behind the piece remains a mystery, though a look at previous Google Earth images indicates that it has been something of an epic and evolving work in progress that began sometime in 2017. Beyond the questions surrounding its origin and its designer is the matter of its future now that the drawing has been discovered as such land art requires special permits from the BLM. Since the piece consists solely of rocks with no artificial materials, Golan hopes that the artwork will be allowed to remain in place, though since the presence of the piece is now public knowledge, it has already begun to draw visitors and, one fears, there is always the chance that some ‘critic’ will wind up destroying it.
Cynthia Jane Williams (August 22, 1947 – January 25, 2023) was an American actress and producer, known for her role as Shirley Feeney on the television sitcoms Happy Days (1975–1979), and Laverne & Shirley (1976–1982). She also appeared in American Graffiti (1973) and The Conversation (1974).
Early life Williams was born in the Van Nuys district of Los Angeles, California, on August 22, 1947. She was Italian on her mother’s side, Francesca Bellini. The family moved to Dallas, Texas when she was a year old and returned to Los Angeles when she was ten years old. She had one sibling, a sister named Carol Ann.
Williams wrote and acted during childhood at a church and later acted at Birmingham High School, graduating in 1965. She attended Los Angeles City College where she majored in theater .
Just after sunrise, Manitoba Merv, the rodent forecaster at Oak Hammock Marsh Interpretive Centre made his Groundhog Day prediction, and it’s grim.
Merv saw his shadow, so Manitobans will have another six weeks of winter.
Oak Hammock Marsh staff say Merv’s predictions have been amazingly accurate.
For the past 23 years, Manitoba Merv has correctly predicted the arrival of spring and only made one error.
The groundhog may well be correct about this year’s prediction. Six weeks from now is mid-March, which is typically when the first geese return, Oak Hammock Marsh staff say.
I don’t trust groundhogs anyway, or gophers and badgers for that matter. All they’re doing is guessing. And more and more of the guessing is being made by puppeteers.
Now it’s over, we can say it: a biggish asteroid passed by Earth a short while ago.
About the size of a minibus, the space rock, known as 2023 BU, whipped over the southern tip of South America just before 00:30am GMT.
With a closest approach of 3,600km (2,200 miles), it counts as a close shave.
And it illustrates how there are still asteroids of significant size lurking near Earth that remain to be detected.
This one was only picked up last weekend by amateur astronomer Gennadiy Borisov, who operates from Nauchnyi in Crimea, the peninsula that Russia seized from Ukraine in 2014.
Follow-up observations have refined what we know about 2023 BU’s size and, crucially, its orbit.
That’s how astronomers could be so confident it would miss the planet, even though it came inside the arc occupied by the world’s telecommunications satellites, which sit 36,000km (22,000 miles) above us.
The chances of hitting a satellite are very, very small.
The time of lowest altitude was accurately calculated to be 19:27 EST on Thursday, or 00:27 GMT on Friday.
Image caption,Artwork: We still have a lot to learn about the near-Earth environment
Even if 2023 BU had been on a direct collision course, it would have struggled to do much damage.
With an estimated size of 3.5m to 8.5m across (11.5ft to 28ft), the rock would likely have disintegrated high in the atmosphere. It would have produced a spectacular fireball, however.
For comparison, the famous Chelyabinsk meteor that entered Earth’s atmosphere over southern Russia in 2013 was an object near 20m (66ft) across. It produced a shockwave that shattered windows on the ground.
Scientists at the US space agency Nasa say 2023 BU’s orbit around the Sun has been modified by its encounter with Earth.
Our planet’s gravity pulled on it and adjusted its path through space.
“Before encountering Earth, the asteroid’s orbit around the Sun was roughly circular, approximating Earth’s orbit, taking 359 days to complete its orbit about the Sun,” the agency said in a statement.
“After its encounter, the asteroid’s orbit will be more elongated, moving it out to about halfway between Earth’s and Mars’ orbits at its furthest point from the Sun. The asteroid will then complete one orbit every 425 days.”
There is a great effort under way to find the much larger asteroids that really could do damage if they were to strike the Earth.
The true monsters out there, like the 12km-wide rock that wiped out the dinosaurs, have likely all been detected and are not a cause for worry. But come down in size to something that is, say, 150m across and our inventory has gaps.
Statistics indicate perhaps only about 40% of these asteroids have been seen and assessed to determine the level of threat they might pose.
Such objects would inflict devastation on the city scale if they were to impact the ground.
Prof Don Pollacco from the University of Warwick, UK, told BBC News: “There are still asteroids that cross the Earth’s orbit waiting to be discovered.
“2023 BU is a recently discovered object supposedly the size of a small bus which must have passed by the Earth thousands of times before. This time it passes by only 2,200 miles from the Earth – just 1% of the distance to the moon – a celestial near miss.
“Depending on what 2023 BU is composed of it is unlikely to ever reach the Earth’s surface but instead burn up in the atmosphere as a brilliant fireball – brighter than a full moon.
“However, there are likely many asteroids out there that remain undiscovered that could penetrate the atmosphere and hit the surface to cause significant damage – indeed many scientists think we could be due such an event.”
Gogol Bordello is an American punk rock band from the Lower East Side of Manhattan, formed in 1999 by musicians from all over the world and known for theatrical stage shows and persistent touring. Much of the band’s sound is inspired by Romani music mixed with punk and dub, incorporating accordion and violin (and on some albums, saxophone).
Eugene Hütz born Yevgen Oleksandrovych Nikolayev-Symonov, Ukrainian: Євген Олександрович Ніколаєв-Симонов, on 6 September 1972) is a Ukrainian-born singer, composer, disc jockey and actor, most notable as the frontman of the Gypsy punk band Gogol Bordello.
An airliner passenger traveling from Los Angeles to Atlanta captured footage of what appears to be a cluster of UFOs flying alongside the plane. The intriguing sighting reportedly occurred earlier this month shortly after the unnamed witness’ flight had departed from California. Although they were uncertain of exactly where they were along the trip, they indicated that it occurred as the airliner was “at 41,000 feet above possibly Nevada or Arizona.” While gazing out their window, the passenger was stunned to see “something flying in tandem with us” in the form of four glowing orbs that were tightly clustered together and seemingly rotating.
Fortunately, the bewildered witness managed to capture footage of the curious cluster, which some UFO enthusiasts have likened to the famed Phoenix lights case from 1997. That said, more skeptical observers have offered more prosaic explanations for the odd orbs with some suggesting that they could be lights from a community beneath the aircraft or another plane that only appears unusual due to the angle of the witness.
Ming was a tiger that became notable when he was found living in an apartment in Harlem, New York City, United States, in October 2003. Ming, approximately three years old at the time of his capture, lived semi-openly with his owner, Antoine Yates, in a room of his five-bedroom apartment on the fifth floor of a large public housing complex in Harlem. Several other normal and exotic pets were found in Yates’ apartment, including an alligator named Al in another bedroom.
Ming spent the rest of his life at Noah’s Lost Ark Animal Sanctuary in Berlin Center, Ohio. Ming died from natural causes in February 2019 and was buried at the Hartsdale Pet Cemetery in Hartsdale, New York.
Ming’s resting place in Hartsdale Pet Cemetery, Hartsdale NY.
In April 2000, Antoine Yates, a 31-year-old part-time taxicab driver and resident of Harlem, New York City, purchased Ming, an 8-week-old male Siberian–Bengal tiger hybrid, from the BEARCAT Hollow Animal Park in Racine, Minnesota. Records indicated that BEARCAT Hollow had previously sold a lion cub to Yates, but he had found another home for the lion shortly after purchasing Ming. Yates lived with the animals in Apartment 5E of the Drew-Hamilton Houses, a public housing complex; for five years, Yates left the apartment only once a day for an hour to purchase food.
In an interview published in 2020, Yates clarified that he first had purchased Jabba, a lion cub which passed away at a young age, and then he purchased Ming and Nemo, another lion cub, as a pair. Nemo was included with the sale because he was ill and unlikely to live long. At the time he acquired Ming, Yates already owned an alligator named Al, which he had purchased legally in New Jersey.
Ming’s existence became known and reported in the media after Yates was taken to the Harlem Hospital Center emergency room on September 30, 2003 with bites on the arm and leg. At the time of treatment, Yates claimed that his pet pit bull had bitten him; however, the medical personnel were suspicious, because the width of the bite marks suggested an animal with a much larger jaw. Later, Yates said he had been bitten while trying to keep Ming away from Shadow, a cat he had recently adopted. That day was the first time Ming had met Shadow; according to Yates, after Ming began chasing Shadow, Yates jumped in front of Ming, who bit and clawed Yates multiple times as he wrestled with the tiger. After Ming finally closed his jaws on Yates’s knee, Yates recalled “That had me going through flashes of life. I was like, ‘Oh my god, guess this is where I die at.'” Yates declined to call it an attack, saying it was a natural reaction of Ming’s frustration: “I’m walking around. I’m still alive. I haven’t lost a limb. You couldn’t even tell I got bit by a tiger, unless I told you and showed you the mark.”
On Thursday, October 2, the police received an anonymous tip that “there was a large wild animal that was biting people”; the same anonymous person followed up the next day by providing the animal’s location, at Yates’s apartment.[9] Yates checked out of the hospital that same day, and following up on the tips, an officer of New York City Police Department was sent to his home address to investigate on October 3. Loud growling noises could be heard through the door of the apartment and the officer declined to enter. The NYPD Technical Assistance Response Unit drilled holes through a neighbor’s walls and used a camera on a pole to locate Ming. Martin Duffy, another police officer, was sent to the roof, from which he abseiled on a rope sling to view through the apartment’s windows. Ming roared at Duffy, who then anaesthetized Ming by firing a rifle with a tranquilizer dart prepared by Dr. Robert Cook, then the Chief Veterinarian of the Wildlife Conservation Society, which manages the city’s zoos.
After being darted, Ming charged at the window from which Duffy had fired, breaking it, then retreated further into the apartment. Authorities waited several minutes for the sedative to take effect before an animal control team was sent into Yates’ apartment. Dr. Cook used a catchpole and gave Ming another sedative injection to ensure he would remain asleep during transport. It took more than six men to carry Ming down via elevator to a waiting truck. The team also discovered Al, a five-and-a-half-foot alligator that Yates had been raising in one of the other bedrooms. Yates was later located at a hospital in Philadelphia and placed under guard.
After Ming was discovered in Yates’ apartment in October 2003, questioning of the neighbors determined that the existence of the tiger was widely known for at least three years, but as a sort of urban legend. Yates regularly bought large quantities of raw chicken at the local supermarket, and one standing joke in the building was that he could eat so much chicken every day. By 2003, Yates was feeding Ming 20 pounds (9 kg) of chicken, livers, and bones per day. The downstairs neighbor was aware that Yates owned many animals, in contradiction to Housing Authority rules, and her daughter had once seen Ming. The neighbor added it was not a problem until the summer of 2003, when she opened her windows for the first time that year and found her windowsills soaked with urine accompanied by a heavy animal odor. In addition, Yates had taken roommates, who were unaware at first of the animals in the home. According to the New York Daily News,
A woman who shared a Harlem apartment with a 425-pound tiger said yesterday she was terrified at first—but soon got used to living with the man-eater down the hall. Caroline Domingo told the Daily News she couldn’t believe her eyes when she spotted the big cat roaming free in the apartment where she and her husband rented a room from tiger-owner Antoine Yates. […] But eventually, she said, “We all became family.”
Authorities decided to move the seized animals to more appropriate housing: Ming was sent to Noah’s Lost Ark Animal Sanctuary in Berlin Center, Ohio, while Al was given a new home in Indiana. For approximately a decade, human visitors were barred from visiting Ming in Ohio, but the sanctuary later changed their policy in the interest of enrichment. Ming lived in Ohio until he died on February 4, 2019, of kidney and heart failure; his remains were cremated and interred at Hartsdale Pet Cemetery in Hartsdale, New York on April 20. The cemetery donated the site and mausoleum. According to the director of Noah’s Lost Ark, “[Ming] lived a really good life here. He was able to run and play on the grounds. He had tiger friends. He had a swimming pool. He was able to experience the elements.”
The MarkoZen Blog 