Why doesn’t US military shoot down the Chinese ‘spy’ balloon?

The US military has said it does not currently plan to shoot down the alleged Chinese spy balloon as it does not pose a threat militarily or to civilians, but that targeting it could create a huge amount of potentially dangerous debris.

At the same time, it said it was monitoring the path of the balloon as it tracked eastwards across the US.

As Secretary of Sate Antony Blinken postponed a visit to Beijing amid a spike in tensions since the Pentagon revealed it was tracking the object, China has said it is a weather monitoring device and apologised.

On Friday,...