hello, i'm paul scott at the bbc sport centre. it's been a successful night for the lionesses at the fifa best awards. sarina wiegman was named as best women's named as best women's coach, following england's success at the euros last summer, while mary earps was named best women's goalkeeper. in the men's awards, it was yet another good night for argentina. our football reporter alex howell is in paris. sarina wiegman and mary earps were among the winners in paris. sarina wiegman picked up the award for the best coach in the women's game and mary earps voted

the best goalkeeper. elsewhere, lionel messi unsurprisingly picked up the award for the best player in men's football. he led argentina to the world cup win in qatar. it was a clean sweep for the argentinians in the men's side, who were nominated for awards. the manager picked up the best coaches, and martinez was voted the best goalkeeper. earlier this evening, sarina wiegman had a word with her and said that the award that she and the team were nominated for was an acknowledgement of the success they have had. they'll be hoping that picking up trophies is a good omen. well, one of the biggest cheers of the night was for polish amputee player marcin oleksy, who won the puskas award for the best goal of the year. here's his effort for his club warta poznan — a perfectly executed bicycle kick that flew past the opposition goalkeeper. he beat off competition

from the likes of richarlison to win the award. swansea and rotherham shared the points in the championship after a 1—1 draw in south wales. this finish from joel piroe put the hosts ahead three minutes before halftime. but the swans have won only three of their last 18 matches and were hauled level seven minutes in to the second half, when chiedozie ogbene scored an equaliser. the point means rotherham are now six points clear of the drop zone. the draw for the quarterfinals of the women's fa cup has taken place. championship side lewes�* reward for reaching the last eight for the first time, is a home tie against wsl leaders manchester united. after beating london rivals arsenal, defending champions chelsea have been drawn at reading. manchester city will face aston villa, while the other championship side, birmingham, take on brighton. brighton have never qualified for europe or won a trophy, teenage snowboarder mia brookes has

won a historic slopestyle gold medal at the world championships in georgia. the 16—year—old is the first british athlete to secure the title and did so in style. in her second and final run, she landed the first ever cab mao double grab in a women's competition. brookes was too young to compete at the beijing winter olympics last year, but has long been seen as a future been seen as a future star of the sport. year, but has long been seen as a future star of the sport. new zealand's olympic champion zoi sadowski synnott took silver. i honestly feel like i'm going to cry! i've never been so happy in my life. i can't even speak, i'm that happy. i was at the top and my coach wasjust like, "if you want to win this, try the 14." i tried 12 in practice and came round and almost went 14 and i knew it was possible in thisjump. i tried that before, but this was the first time i stumped it, so i'm super happy.

that's almost all the sport for now. a reminder the fifth day of the second cricket test, between new zealand and england is under way it should be a dramtic climax as the tourists chase victory in wellington you can that's all for now. this is bbc news. we'll have the headlines and all the main news stories for you at the top of the hours straight after this programme. 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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. 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 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 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. ok. 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 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. 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. 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 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 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 theyjust 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 theyjust we ren't noticing before. make no mistake, if any object presents a threat to the safetyj 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 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 mi6. 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 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 $400,000 missiles 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 tend to stop in terms of going higher, f—22, 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, 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 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 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 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. hello there. strong solar activity and clear skies due to high pressure strong solar activity brought spectacular sightings of the aurora borealis during sunday night into the early hours of monday morning. the strongest aurora was across scotland. was across scotland, but unusually, the aurora borealis could be seen as far south as wiltshire and oxfordshire. as wiltshire and oxfordshire, and one of the reasons being clear skies.

in fact, temperatures really fell away quite sharply, as low as —8 in highland scotland, but even —6 in parts of oxfordshire. now, it does look likely that we are going to see more cloud, and so maybe the aurora not quite as prominent as we go through the next few hours. high pressure withers, but a northeasterly flow is drifting in a lot of cloud off the north sea, so that will prevent temperatures from falling too far, perhaps staying above freezing. but where we've got the clearest of the skies, we could see —5 in rural sheltered areas of scotland, maybe a touch of scotland — maybe a touch of the aurora as possible here. but first thing on tuesday morning, we'll continue to see cloud drifting in off the north sea and a scattering of showers to the east of the pennines. quite likely, some of those showers could be frequent as well, and with that brisk northeasterly wind, it will feel quite cool. the best of the sunshine once again in sheltered western areas.

we will see the cloud breaking up a little from time to time with more persistent showers arriving in the far southeast, but you've got to factor in the strength and the direction of the wind. it will feel noticeably colder, particularly on exposed east coast. particularly on exposed east coasts. now, those showers in the southeast will drift away during the early hours of wednesday morning, and once again, the high pressure is still with us. there'll be little in the way of change to the story as we go through the remainder of the week. you can see on wednesday quite a lot of cloud around. still the risk of some showers drifting in off the north sea west is best in terms of shelter, but sunshine is really going to be at a premium. going to be at a premium, i suspect. 7—9 degrees our overall high. looking towards the end of the week, it's not going to be that much in the way of changes. you can see the high pressure does drift a little bit further north and west and the isobars open out of touch, which means potentially, the winds will fall just that little bit lighter. and so, that means we might see a little more in the way

of sunshine coming through, but largely fine and dry for the rest of the working week.

welcome to newsday, reporting live from singapore, the headlines britain and the european union agree a new, post—brexit trade deal, for northern ireland. the new deal would scrap customs checks with the british mainland. this means we have removed any sense of a border in the irish sea. it provides for long lasting solutions that both of us are confident will work for all people and businesses in northern ireland. calls for calm in the middle east after more deadly violence in the occupied west bank between israelis and palestinians in the east of ukraine —

as fierce fighting continues