By Dheeshma Puzhakkal: Since the first week of February, the US Air Force has shot down a Chinese “spy” balloon and three smaller objects in American airspace. The United States Department of Defense has alleged the incident was part of an extensive Chinese global surveillance program. China has, meanwhile, maintained that the “spy” balloon was a scientific vessel, and nothing more.
Social media has since seen a deluge of photos and videos of alleged “spy” balloons and unidentified flying objects in the US. One such video, seemingly shot from inside a moving vehicle, shows a disc-shaped object in the sky. Another video shows a fighter aircraft launching a missile at an object in the sky that promptly explodes.
AFWA found that the first video was old and unrelated to alleged spy balloons. And the second video was not real at all. So, let’s look at how we came to these conclusions.
With the help of a reverse search, we found the first video (with the disc-like object in the sky) shared on Twitter and YouTube in 2020. The caption to one such video read: “New Jersey UFO sighting”. We noticed that while responding to tweets sharing this video, many people pointed out that the object seen in the clip was a blimp.
We also found the same video in many news reports from 2020. As per these reports, the flying object seen in the sky was a blimp belonging to Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company. A representative of Goodyear confirmed to Insider that the company flew a...
North Korea on Sunday rejected US allegations of cybercrimes originating from there, calling them "absurd slander" and denying it poses a cyber threat, state media KCNA reported. In 2024, a United...