Washington (AFP) – US Secretary of State Antony Blinken calls it “irresponsible” of China to send a surveillance balloon into US airspace after he scrapped a planned visit to Beijing over the issue. Moments before Blinken’s decision to cancel his trip, China issued a rare statement of regret over the balloon – which it insists was a civilian airship for “mainly meteorological purposes” – and blamed winds for pushing it into US airspace. A second balloon has since been spotted over Latin America.
