FirstFT: US military rushes to identify downed object

The US military is rushing to identify an “object” that was shot down off the shore of Michigan yesterday, in the fourth such operation in little over a week.

An F-16 fighter downed the object as it flew close to the border with Canada at 20,000 feet, a day after a US fighter jet shot down an unidentified object over Canada’s Yukon. On Friday, the US military shot down what it described as a “high-altitude object” off the coast of Alaska.

The three incidents came roughly one week after the US downed what it said was a Chinese spy balloon off the coast of South Carolina.

The series of flying objects has raised pressure on President Joe Biden to protect US airspace and worsened already strained US-China relations.

Asked yesterday why suddenly so many potential threats to the US had been identified, Melissa Dalton, the top Pentagon official for homeland security, said the military had increased scrutiny of North American airspace following the incursion by the Chinese spy balloon earlier this month.

General Glen VanHerck, head of North American Aerospace Defense Command (Norad), said the three targets that were shot down over the past three days were being classified as objects, not balloons.

He was not able to say how the objects stayed aloft, when asked yesterday. “It could be a gaseous type of balloon inside a structure, or it could be some type of propulsion system,” he said.

Meanwhile, criticism of the Biden administration’s handling of recent events is growing, with some lawmakers saying more information should be released.

“In the absence of information, people’s anxiety leads them into potentially destructive areas,” said Democratic congressman Jim Himes of Connecticut, citing speculation on social media “about alien invasions and . . . additional Chinese actions or Russian actions”.

• Opinion: Recent global events, including the worsening of US-China relations, can be viewed through a psychological lens, argues Rana Foroohar. She offers guidance on how both sides can tiptoe away from a disastrous outcome.

Five more stories in the news

1. Goldman CEO says he should have cut jobs earlier David Solomon told a private gathering of about 400 Goldman Sachs partners in Miami last week that he had erred by not cutting jobs earlier last year. “Every bone in my body believed we should be much more aggressive,” the US bank’s chief said, acknowledging that had he taken action earlier, cuts would have been less drastic than the 3,200 jobs axed last month.

• More banking news: Citigroup is nearing the sale of its Mexican retail bank, Banamex, to the billionaire Germán Larrea, who owns Mexico’s largest mining company, according to three people familiar with the talks.

2. Exclusive: Insight Investment ditched market prices in gilts crisis One of the UK pension industry’s biggest asset managers abandoned mark-to-market pricing, instead choosing higher values that presented a rosier picture of its position. The highly unusual and previously unreported move came at the height of the September crisis that began with then-prime minister Liz Truss’s disastrous “mini” Budget, the FT’s markets editor Katie Martin reveals.

3. Israel on brink of ‘constitutional collapse’, president warns In a primetime address last night, Israel’s president Isaac Herzog appealed to the new hardline government to delay a contested judicial overhaul, warning that mounting political polarisation had left the country “on the brink of constitutional and social collapse”.

4. Peru crisis deepens Lawmakers in Peru’s congress have been unable to set a date for early elections, deepening the political paralysis in the world’s second-biggest copper producer as widespread anti-government protests enter their third month. The assembly’s failure to pass legislation before its closure at the end of this week would make it unlikely that elections can be held this year, analysts said.

5. Investors bet rates will stay high for longer Pricing in the futures market shows that investors expect interest rates to peak slightly above 5 per cent in July, with only one interest rate cut by year-end. As recently as last week, they had been expecting a peak of about 5 per cent in May, with two interest rate cuts by the end of 2023. The shift in interest rate expectations takes investors closer to the Federal Reserve’s official projections which were published in December and follows last month’s bumper jobs report.

The day ahead

Markets Global stocks began the week with small gains as investors looked ahead to upcoming economic data, including a crucial set of US inflation figures tomorrow. The European Stoxx 600 was 0.2 per cent higher, near its highest level in a year. Contracts tracking Wall Street’s blue-chip S&P 500 and those tracking the tech-heavy Nasdaq 100 were flat ahead of the New York open. US equities ended last week by recording their biggest five-day decline in two months.

Nato chief speaks Jens Stoltenberg addresses the press ahead of a two-day meeting of Nato defence ministers in Brussels this week. Nato allies have been under pressure from Kyiv to provide jets to Ukraine.

UAE summit The three-day World Government Summit begins in Dubai. Speakers include the presidents of Estonia, Senegal and Uruguay.

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