White House briefing begins after mysterious objects shot down over weekend – live

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The White House is having its experts sit down to try and figure out what’s going on in the skies, John Kirby announces.

“The president, through his national security adviser, has today directed an interagency team to study the broader policy implications for detection, analysis, and disposition of unidentified aerial objects that pose either safety or security risks,” the national security council spokesman said.

Then he gets into the shootdowns this weekend, and why the public still doesn’t know what the fighter jets encountered.

“We have no specific reason to suspect that they were conducting surveillance of any kind, (but) we couldn’t rule that out,” Kirby said. “Efforts are actively under way right now at all sites to find what is left of those objects so that we can better understand and communicate with the American people what they are. I think it’s important to remind you objects in Alaska and Canada are in pretty remote terrain, ice and wilderness, all of that making it difficult to find them in winter weather. The object over Lake Huron now lies in what is probably very deep water.”

Kirby said, “There are no active tracks today, but the professionals at NORAD will continue to do their important work.”

Kirby is now getting into the latest objects shot down from North American skies, but does not reveal what they are.

Instead, he links them to the larger issue of unidentified aircraft that he says the government hadn’t previously taken particularly seriously.

“These unidentified aerial phenomena had been reported for many years, without explanation or deep examination by the government. President Biden this changed all that. We’re finally trying to understand them better,” Kirby said.

In addition to the Chinese spy balloon, he noted that, “a range of entities including countries, companies, research and academic organizations operate objects at these altitudes for purposes that are not nefarious at all, including scientific research. That said, because we have not yet been able to definitively assess what these most recent objects are. We acted out of an abundance of caution to protect … our security, our interests and flight safety.”

National security council spokesperson John Kirby is now talking about the Chinese spy balloon shot down off the Atlantic coast shortly after it had crossed much of the northern United States.

“We were able to determine that China has a high-altitude balloon program for intelligence collection that’s connected to the People’s Liberation Army. It was operating during the previous administration, but they did not detect it. We detected it. We tracked it. And we have been carefully studying it to learn as much as we can,” Kirby said.

“We know that these PRC surveillance balloons have crossed over dozens of countries on multiple continents around the world, including some of our closest allies and partners. We assessed that at this time, these balloons have provided limited additive capabilities to the PRC … (compared to) other intelligence platforms used over the United States. But in the future, if the PRC continues to advance this technology, it certainly could become more valuable to them.”

Well, it’s not aliens.

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre has taken to the podium at the White House, and confirmed that the objects shot down over North America did not come from worlds beyond.

“There is no indication of aliens or terrestrial activity with these recent takedowns. I wanted to make sure that the American people knew that,” Jean-Pierre said.

As we wait for the White House press briefing to kick off, CNN has some brief comments from Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau about the UFOs caught flying around North America recently:

We may soon get answers on the latest North American UFO mystery.

The White House’s daily briefing is about to start, where press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre is being joined by John Kirby, spokesperson for the national security council. They may shed some light on what American fighter jets blew out of the sky this weekend over various parts of the continent.

Follow this blog for the latest.

House speaker Kevin McCarthy has called for the resignation of architect of the Capitol Brett Blanton, who heads the agency responsible for the building’s maintenance and preservation:

Blanton has faced a number of allegations of wrongdoing, which grew worse last week when he admitted to lawmakers that he avoided going to the Capitol on January 6. This comment from Democratic congresswoman Norma Torres sums up how that revelations was received:

I’m outraged that you would be in a comfortable place, sir, while the rest of us were thinking about dying that day and how we were going to come out alive that day.

We’re awaiting more details from the Biden administration after a busy weekend for American fighter jets, which have downed three unidentified objects in North American skies since Friday. Are they aliens? Probably not. Might they be more surveillance equipment from China? We’d be guessing, but after the spy balloon saga earlier this month, it’s not an unreasonable bet. The White House may reveal more when press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre and national security council spokesperson John Kirby brief reporters at 1 pm eastern time.

Here’s what else has happened today thus far:

On Thursday, parts of a special grand jury’s report into Donald Trump‘s election meddling campaign in Georgia will be released, though a judge has ordered most of the document withheld from public eyes.

China says the United States also spies on it with balloons, which Washington forcefully rejected.

Many people are tracking a US military jet looking for the wreckage of something shot down over Lake Huron on Sunday.

We’re about 45 minutes away from the White House press briefing, where Biden administration officials may give more details about whatever was shot down over North America this weekend. Richard Luscombe has a recap of the latest on the eventful three days in the continent’s skies:

Pressure was growing on the Joe Biden White House on Monday to reveal more of what it knows about a series of mysterious objects shot down by the US military over an eight-day period in North American airspace.

A missile strike Sunday on an unidentified “octagonal” flying object above Lake Huron, Michigan, was the third such instance after the downing of a suspected Chinese spy balloon off the South Carolina coast on 4 February, and it is prompting questions from Republican and Democratic lawmakers.

Pentagon officials have conceded the extraordinary sequence of events has no precedent during peacetime.

Meanwhile, the Nato secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, suggested on Monday the objects were part of a “pattern” of surveillance of the US and its allies by China and Russia, and an American air force commander said the US military had spotted Chinese spy balloons in the Middle East in “the recent past”.

Florida Republican Marco Rubio, vice-chairperson of the US Senate intelligence committee, claimed that unidentified aircraft had operated “routinely” over restricted American airspace for years.

“This is why I pushed to take this seriously & created a permanent [unidentified aerial phenomenon] taskforce two years ago,” he said in a tweet.

A year ago almost exactly, in what can only be described as a coincidence driven by news demands and certainly no foreknowledge of events to come, the Guardian’s Adam Gabbatt took a close look at the issue of UFOs in America’s skies. You could say recent events have given the article new relevance:

Last year was a breakthrough time for UFOs, as a landmark government report prompted the possibility of extraterrestrial visitors to finally be taken seriously by everyone from senators, to a former president, to the Pentagon.

But 2022 could be even more profound, experts say, as the clamor for UFO disclosure and discovery continues to grow, and as new scientific projects bring us closer than ever to – potentially – discovering non-Earth life.

In June, the Pentagon released a highly anticipated report on unexplained aerial phenomena (UAP), the now preferred nomenclature by some in the extraterrestrial community, which found more than 140 instances of UAPs that could not be explained.

The report came after leaked military footage documented seemingly otherworldly happenings in the sky, and after testimony from navy pilots helped to somewhat destigmatize a subject that has long been defined by conspiracy theories and dubious sightings.

All in all, the newly sincere approach to UFOs has longtime sky-watchers excited.

“I’m confident that 2022 is going to be a seismic year for UFOs,” said Nick Pope, who spent the early 1990s investigating UFOs for the British ministry of defence.

Air tracking website Flightradar 24 reports its users are closely following a military plane looking for the wreckage of whatever was shot down yesterday over Lake Huron:

See it for yourself here.