tv BBC News BBC News February 26, 2023 10:30pm-11:00pm GMT
10:30 pm
welcome here's your latest sports news from the bbc sports centre. by their standards it's been a long wait. but, manchester united's 6 year trophy drought is over. they beat newcastle 2—0 in the league cup final at wembley. stuart pollitt reports. for manchester united six years without a major trophy. for newcastle united closer to six decades. the goal keep for suspended, there was a return to the spotlight for laura's carious lasting for liverpool making a mess of the champions league final. save enough hands here. so to davitt
10:31 pm
tejeda denying. a moment later opening goal denied. casemiro�*s header. united in the lead and soon in total control. marcus rashford's finish was a deflection and fingertips not quite enough. and neither were newcastle's best efforts as united held firm. erik ten hag getting his first trophy as the boss at old trafford. and for newcastle a long wait goes on. massive performance if you cannot deliver_ massive performance if you cannot deliver this it tells you that we are fit, — deliver this it tells you that we are fit, physical fit, deliver this it tells you that we are fit, physicalfit, mentally deliver this it tells you that we are fit, physical fit, mentally fit. and energy so i think it was a great performance in the respect from us today _
10:32 pm
history has repeated in the scottish league cup final. last season celtic�*s kyogo furuhashi scored twice to help celtic lift the trophy and today he did it again — as they beat old firm rivals rangers at hampden park. celtic made the breakthrough shortly before half—time, an easy tap—in for kyogo. fireworks in the crowd, meant much of the game was played in a haze of smoke. but the japan international found a way through the murk to claim his second goal. rangers were unbeaten since michael beale took charge almost three months ago and alfedo morelos gave his side hope. but that was as close as they came... celtic lifting the cup once again, and are still in the hunt for two other trophies, the premiership and the scottish fa cup. tottenham have boosted their hopes of top—four premier league finish with 2—0 win over chelsea — a result which increases the pressure on boss graham potter. the biggest talking point of an underwhelming first half saw chelsea's hakim ziyech sent off for this. but referee stuart attwell
10:33 pm
changed his mind after reviewing the incident. just 20 seconds into the second half oliver skipp scored his first spurs goal. harry kane added a second with ten minutes to go to secure the win. the defeat leaves chelsea 14 points behind tottenham who are in fourth place. went chelsea's way — as they beat wsl rivals the tie of the fifth round of the women's fa cup went chelsea's way — as they beat wsl rivals arsenal 2—0 at kingsmeadow. sophie ingle put the hosts ahead in the first half, with sam kerr scoring on her 100th appearance to make it 2—0. arsenal continue to struggle in 2023 they are without a league win this year and now out of the fa cup too. elsewhere, manchester united thrashed durham 5—0. brighton also scored 5 against coventry united, while manchester city beat bristol city 8—1. reading and aston villa both went through on penalties.
10:34 pm
scotland's six nations grand slam hopes are over, after a courageous comeback felljust short in paris. they were beaten 32 points to 21 by france. both teams had red cards in the first half — and while scotland reduced a deficit of 19 points to just 4 in the second half, france held on for their second victory of the campaign. exeter have moved up to fifth in the gallacher premiership after narrowly beating sale at sandy park. a man of the man performance from josh hodge helped exeter to victory, with two first—half tries. sale had gone 10—0 up in the game, but hodge�*s second try with sale down to 13 men helped the chiefs to victory. st helens began their bid for a fifth consecutive super league title with victory at castleford tigers. a week after becoming world champions, saints were tested by castleford, who ran the champions close for much of the contest. but paul wellens' side went
10:35 pm
on to get their campaign off the ground with a 2k points to 6 win. australia have won a sixth women's t20 world cup, by beating hosts south africa in the final by 19 runs in cape town. it was south africa's first final of any kind in either men's or women's cricket. australia set them a target of 157. but they lacked the firepower. australia have now won all but two editions of the women's t20 world cup. that's all the sport for now. day 4 of england's 2nd test in nz is under way. you can of course follow all the action on the bbc sport website. this is bbc news. we'll have the headlines and all the main news stories at the top of the hours straight after this programme.
10:36 pm
it seems extraordinary. witness gasps whoa! rumbling boom did you hear that? unidentified flying objects, talk about aliens, high—tech spying and high—altitude balloons. the united states sent the message to china that if you invade our sovereignty, we'll shoot it down. us militaryjets firing expensive missiles at objects which end up being no real threat. it might all sound like something out of a sci—fi novel, but there are some serious issues here. the big question is, how much of a security threat are balloons? so everyone�*s been talking about balloons lately. there are lots of different theories and speculation flying around. i'm going to try and break all this down to what we actually know
10:37 pm
and talk to a couple of experts about why we've seen this reaction from the americans and a row with china. but let's recap first. how did this crisis start? for those of you who think this mightjust be the moon, it is not the moon. the moon is off to my right. i can see it. people of montana started posting about something strange in the sky. airspace had to be closed, and soon us officials had to explain what this really was. we know that it's a surveillance balloon and i'm not going to be able to be more specific than that. china responded by saying it was just a weather balloon that had been blown off course. the us military said they couldn't shoot it down for fear of causing debris or damage below, so it was only when it drifted across america and out over the atlantic that they eventually shot it down. the spotting of the first balloon led north american air defense,
10:38 pm
norad, to adjust their radar settings. domestic political pressure may have played a part. this is the atrocity that's happening here to america. and if we don't speak stronger, china will continue to do this. scramble some more f—22 raptors, throw some lead in that sucker. trump wanted to nuke a hurricane. you guys won't even throw a dart at a balloon? there was outcry in america as to why a massive spy balloon had not been spotted and shot down earlier. but that meant in the next few days, they were now seeing many more of what were described not as balloons, but objects. if anything enters into our airspace, whether we know what it is or not, we will monitor it and we'll take appropriate action. one was seen over alaska and shot down near a place called deadhorse on february 10th. the next day, another object was shot down over the yukon in canada. and then on february 12th, a strange octagonal object was shot down by fighters over lake huron. these were lower and smaller than the first balloon, but they could have got in the way of civilian airliners. there seemed to be things
10:39 pm
in the sky everywhere. at the same time, china began accusing the us of flying its own high—altitude balloons into chinese airspace without beijing's permission — on more than ten occasions in the last year, they said. translation: it is also common for us balloons to illegally enterl the airspace of other countries. since last year alone, us high—altitude balloons have illegally flown over china's airspace more than ten times without any approval from relevant chinese authorities. the first thing for the us to do is introspect itself and change its course instead of slandering and inciting confrontation. amid growing speculation about what's going on and after one military official refused to rule anything out, on february 13th, the us decided it needed to clarify one thing. these objects were not aliens. i know there have been questions and concerns about this, but there is no, again, no indication of aliens
10:40 pm
or extraterrestrial activity with these recent takedowns. maybe this is the point to address the ufo issue. they exist. they're actually called unidentified aerial phenomena now, and there are hundreds of reports from us pilots about them which get catalogued. they get investigated, not so much because they might be extraterrestrials or aliens, but because the us fears they might be some new technology from another country. and many of those reports may, in fact, have been balloons or similar objects. it's now emerged that the other three unidentified objects shot down between february 10th and 12th were all, to use the jargon, benign. in other words, perhaps weather balloons or research balloons, but not spy balloons. so what do we know about the original spy balloon? it was huge — 200 feet tall and helium—filled. there were solar panels to provide power and sensors and instruments along the bottom. it also had some ability to be
10:41 pm
manoeuvred and guided, although only limited. it was flying at about 60,000 feet. but it's thought that these kinds of balloons can go up to twice that altitude. and to really understand why they're so useful to china, we need to look at a weather map. wind speeds vary hugely depending on how high up you are. and at the altitude where this balloon was flying, there is a very stable and predictable wind pattern between china and north america. so what are the balloons actually being used for? the answer is espionage. they carry sensors to collect signals and data as they fly over locations. us officials are analysing the wreckage they recovered from the sea in order to try and understand what exactly those sensors do and what china was after. you don't need to get into specifics, just, did we know what they're trying to collect, yes or no? yes, sir. we understand that this is part of a broader suite of operations that china is undertaking... so we knew what they were looking for.
10:42 pm
sir, we i think we should talk about this more explicitly in the classified session. but, yes, sir, we understand that this is part of the broader suite of operations that china's undertaking to try and get a better understanding of us. .. i got it. i mean, there's all sorts of suites of operations we have with what's going on in outer space. but the question is, did we know what that balloon was trying to gather? do we know what information it was trying to gather from the united states? it didn't fly over us by accident. it was intentional. do we know what the chinese communist government was looking for? senator, we have some very good guesses about that. and we are learning more as we exploit the contents of the balloon and the payload itself — 0k. what might the chinese be trying to find out? lee hudson covers defence and aerospace for politico. lee, what were these balloons doing, particularly these chinese spy balloons? so it seems, according to the us intel community, that they were gathering not only images, but electronic warfare
10:43 pm
signals, which means that could be anything from cellphone communication and other types of data, because they were flying over an intercontinental ballistic missile site, over montana, which the us military typically tries to protect. people at first thought, why balloons? but i guess your point is that there are things balloons offer that satellites and other techniques might not. it can be hard to distinguish where a balloon is coming from. for example, a satellite or a drone, you could say it's coming from x country's military, but with a balloon, it's more benign. and so beijing tried to say that it was being used for meteorological purposes. a bit of deniability about what they're really up to, you mean? what do we know about the chinese balloon programme, then? so we know that they have been doing this throughout the world, that a lot of these are connected. and this instance with the united states has made
10:44 pm
the us at least look into the programme more. and so we've gathered information that this has been going on for a while. and do we know if other countries have spy balloon programmes as well? yes. i mean, the united states has one. 0k. so that's a prime example. the united states has balloons off the east coast that are run by customs and border control, that they use for counter—drug interdiction. so they're looking towards south america. does the us think that they were taking pictures but also collecting some kind of signals as they flew over some of the military sites? yes, absolutely. and i think what we're still trying to figure out is whether us intelligence was able to block those signals from transmitting back to china. that's still a question mark that many have, because if the united states was able to jam those signals, then maybe they weren't
10:45 pm
as lucky in their attempt. there's a long history going back more than two centuries of using balloons in surveillance, but they still have value today. the altitude they're flying at means they can do things satellites can't do, loitering longer over targets and also collecting signals, because they're in the atmosphere rather than in space. the chinese programme which the first spy balloon belonged to, us officials say, is run by the people's liberation army, and it's been running for years, with at least three balloons over us airspace during the previous trump administration. but both the us and china may have been keeping quiet about what was going on. that's normal for espionage, but now everyone is looking for these balloons. i want people to know that we'll do whatever it takes to keep the country safe.
10:46 pm
we have something called the quick reaction alert force, which involves typhoon planes which are kept on 24/7 readiness to police our airspace, which is incredibly important. so what are the challenges in dealing with these balloons? we're going to bring back our graphic for this part. flying a spy plane lower in the atmosphere would be seen as an aggressive act and much more deliberate than just releasing a balloon into the wind. and meanwhile, a satellite up in space is not seen as such a problem. but balloons are in a kind of grey area in between — and harder to spot. they also pose particular challenges to the military in working out how to take them down. i suspect there's probably a desire to find a way to deflate any potential future ambitions for using these things on a larger scale, excuse the horrible pun. professorjustin bronk is the senior research fellow for air power and technology in the military sciences team at rusi, a think—tank.
10:47 pm
justin, how does the military deal with balloons? i mean, how do theyjudge whether they're a threat or not? it's a difficult one. so in terms of dealing with them, first of all, there's the immediate question of what altitude are they at and what speed are they drifting at, because the primary means for militaries to detect flying objects is radar. and radar works essentially by bouncing energy off objects and reading the returns. but in order to not get endless false returns if you're looking for something like aircraft or missiles, which would be the normal military things that they're trying to track, they will filter out and drop anything that is moving outside of a given range of speeds. so this is why military radars, for example, are able to, most of the time, disregard things like clutter from the ground, reflections from trees and reflections from birds, clouds, depending on the frequency of the radar — because those objects are moving relatively slowly or stationary, and so the radar
10:48 pm
will simply filter them out. the wider you make those kind of velocity gates in terms of what the radar is looking at and what it's disregarding, the more clutter you'll have to deal with, and so the better processing you'll require in order to get usable results for military purposes. what's happened since the chinese spy balloon incident in the us is that the us appear to have reprogrammed a lot of their surveillance radars for air defence purposes with much, much wider velocity gates. so they're suddenly seeing a lot of sort of floating objects, of which there are many that are not spy balloons. you know, weather balloons, research balloons, just hobbyists putting cameras up on high—altitude balloons. but they just weren't seeing those before. and so now, having opened up the velocity gate, they're now having to try and classify and potentially intercept a lot more things that they just weren't noticing before.
10:49 pm
make no mistake, if any object presents a threat to the safety and security of the american people, i will take it down. well, i think we need to focus on the real issue here, which is the impact all of this has had on an already fragile and fraught us—china relationship. i mean, the united states has long had this sense of inviolability. they haven't had to fight on their own territory since the end of the us civil war. and to discover that they are not as inviolate as they thought they were is a big deal culturally and, if you like, semiotically for the us population, and i think this is what is at stake here. it's quite clear that china has messed up. you know, somebody somewhere should have realised that this programme was ongoing at a time when both china and the united states were keen, bordering on desperate, to put a floor beneath a rapidly deteriorating
10:50 pm
relationship. nobody seemed to think that the discovery of one of these balloons, airships, dirigibles, call it what you will, might derail this. when the news first came out, the chinese response was to say that, you know, the united states is making a fuss about nothing. the commentators, newspapers plundered the cliche book to talk about this. and this, i think, is indicative of a fundamental misunderstanding by china of what this means. nigel inkster is the former director of operations and intelligence at m16. he says international law is clear that countries can act to remove flying objects like balloons from their airspace. it may be that these balloons or something like them have overflown the uk at very high altitude and nobody
10:51 pm
has noticed them. you know, if the uk wanted to shoot one of these objects down, under international law, it would be entirely within its rights to do so. but i think there will need to be a degree of political consideration applied to this. after all, the united kingdom is not the united states. we're not a global superpower. but with this increased vigilance, could we see countries shooting down more objects which pose no threat? yeah, it is difficult, especially because a lot of more kind of amateur—type balloons that are floating around may not have filed any flight plans or got any permission. and so there may be very little awareness of exactly what's up there, most of which is entirely harmless. it does pose a challenge, doesn't it, because you've gotjets flying up to try and look and see what they are, which sounds like it's quite difficult for them, and then firing $100,000 missiles
10:52 pm
to shoot them down, which seems to be the only available option. yeah. even the highest flying military jets, things like the f—22 or the british typhoon, which can operate significantly above 50,000 feet, which is typically where fast jets tend to stop in terms of going higher, f—22, typhoon can operate up to 60,000 feet or even a little above. it's tricky being up there. there are considerations around pilot life support and pressurisation of the cockpit. typically, aircraft are designed to operate at really extreme altitudes above that, like the u—2 spy plane or the 71 blackbird, again, spy plane. crews would wear kind of spacesuits, full pressure suits, and most jet fighters aren't equipped for that. also, where there have been previous examples of weather balloons, for example, or surveillance balloons from the us side that have kind of got lost or cables have broken, where fighters have tried to shoot them down at lower altitudes using cheaper gunnery,
10:53 pm
you've had instances where hundreds or even thousands of cannon rounds have gone straight through the balloon, not gone off, in the sense that the rounds haven't exploded because the skin of the balloon is too insubstantial to trigger the fuse. and so they've just put tiny holes in them, which doesn't really cause them to leak at any particularly significant rate, and they've just continued. and of course, if it's over a civilian area or, say, the continental united states, a large area, you have to be very careful where you're firing cannon rounds because those will still come down somewhere. it is a difficult thing to solve with military equipment that isn't designed for it. does that mean we're going to have to look at new ways of defending or dealing with balloons, airships, otherthings flying at this altitude? because it sounds like it's possible we might see more in the future. it's not a technology of the past, but one that many countries look like they're developing. it may be that there will be more
10:54 pm
interest in certainly tracking the use of balloons and potentially developing more specialised capabilities to shoot them down more predictably or with lower cost. the flip side is that, you know, this is not a new technology, and spy balloons are something that have been used significantly by most powers over the years. particularly during the cold war, they were played around with. there are difficulties with them, which is that it's harder to control exactly where they go, even if they have limited propulsion systems on board. so while balloons are a niche, they're probably not revolutionary in that sense. mm. it's more a political challenge and also something that you wouldn't necessarily want to have no answer to in case someone started getting much more creative with what they might try and then do if you had no answer to it, and just let it go unchallenged. so what are the security risks? in one word, escalation. spying happens all the time, but the first rule of espionage
10:55 pm
is don't get caught, because when you do, it can turn into a problem. the us learnt this a couple of times. there was a major incident in 1960 where soviet air defences shot down an american spy plane flying at high altitude within its territory during the cold war. and more recently, in 2001, a us surveillance plane which was flying on the edge of chinese territory was forced to land in china after colliding with a jet watching it closely. that led to a tricky crisis. back then, relations were not that bad. they're much worse today. as we made clear last week, if china threatens our sovereignty, we will act to protect our country. and we did. cheering and applause translation: this behaviour is unimaginable and borders on hysteria. it is 100% an abuse of force. it is a clear violation
10:56 pm
of international practice. if the rhetoric grows and both the us and china feel they need to act tough and shoot things down near their airspace, then tensions will grow and there could be dangerous mistakes. so are these balloons a real security threat to you and me? they may not be in themselves, but how countries react or overreact to them could have real consequences. we're already seeing that what's essentially a tool of espionage could significantly increase tensions between the world's two most powerful countries and maybe even spark a crisis. and there's the risk that a lot more innocent balloons could get shot out of the skies by fighterjets.
10:57 pm
good evening. the weekend brought us a fair amount of dry, settled weather and whilst some of us saw some showers around, particularly in the east with quite a cool easterly breeze for some, in other areas there was plenty of sunshine. this was the picture as the sun was just about to set in dudley a little bit earlier on. now, as we head through the coming week, the weather really isn't changing in a hurry. looking mainly dry for most places. some sunshine, fair amounts of cloud around and nighttime frosts, too. but here's the reason for all this settled weather. big area of high pressure keeping the weather fronts at bay. it's very unsettled further south down towards the mediterranean. storm juliet bringing some disruptive weather there. but here, well, we've still got the breeze just rotating around that high pressure. so bringing a bit more cloud across parts of northern and eastern england. it'll drift its way south overnight and could just bring one or two rogue showers for some central areas. mostly frost—free, i think, by dawn, at least where you've got that cloud. but it could be quite a cold start to monday morning for the south west of england, for instance, parts of scotland
10:58 pm
minus four or minus five first thing monday here. quite a bit of cloud, as you can see, drifting its way westwards across england and wales. could bring just one or two light showers. we've got lighter winds and probably more sunshine further north for scotland. certainly northern ireland also seeing some sunny spells, too. top temperatures between about 7 to 10 degrees on monday. and that really is quite typical for where we should be by the end of february. and then it is going to feel colder, though, during monday afternoon. again, we've got quite a brisk breeze blowing in, particularly for eastern england and through the english channel. so the channel islands, look at that, feeling only around about three degrees. then as we move through monday evening and overnight into tuesday, most of us dry, winds easing for a time. but just cast your eye towards the south—east and you can see these blue colours, a line of perhaps more persistent showery rain just starting to form early tuesday, affecting the far south—east of england. elsewhere, another cold night, certainly a touch of frost for many of us. could be the odd misty patch in the north as well. during tuesday, there's that showery rain likely to affect parts of perhaps kent, essex, sussex and the london region down towards the channel isles, where there'll still be a little bit
10:59 pm
of a breeze blowing on tuesday. further north, you could catch one or two showers, especially for parts of north—east england. the best of the brightness once again will be for scotland and northern ireland as well. further ahead, it does look mostly settled. quite a good deal of dry weather, perhaps a little bit of showery rain across northern areas. best of the sunshine likely towards the west.
11:00 pm
welcome to newsday, reporting live from singapore, mariko oi, the headlines... the uk prime minister, rishi sunak, is to meet the president of european commission ursula von der leyen on monday in a bid to finalise a new brexit deal for northern ireland. at least 59 people including some children have died after a boat carrying migrants sank in rough seas off near the coast of southern italy. israeli settlers in the occupied west bank set fire to palestinian houses, shops and vehicles, after two israelis were shot dead. killing one man and a revenge attack. killing one man and a revenge attack. it comes despite israeli and palestinians officials agree to de—escalate tensions.
34 Views
IN COLLECTIONS
BBC News Television Archive Television Archive News Search ServiceUploaded by TV Archive on