Organisers of birthdays parties across the United States have been put on high alert as the Beijing government reacted angrily to the US administration's decision to send an F22 fighter to shoot down a spy balloon that had been flying over America for several days.
The spy balloon had been flying over US military bases capturing sensitive images and video of soldiers peeling potatoes and shouting "Hooah" as they accidentally cut their fingers. However occasionally the Chinese cameras caught images of sensitive assets, such as the prototype M3A Fenton tank, which can devastate enemy vehicles at twice the distance of its predecessors.
China had insisted that the balloon was a weather balloon which had "flown 11,000 kilometres off-course by a total accident". After days of pondering what to do, President Biden bowed to domestic pressure to shoot the thing down. Now the Chinese are livid.
One family in Columbus, Ohio said they are terrified about what might happen next weekend, as they celebrate their 10-year old son's birthday at Ponderosa. "There will be many party balloons with birthday wishes written on them and now we're at risk of lots of foreign spies scuttling into the restaurant with sharp pins to pop them and no doubt their Huawei cameras to record the upsetting event."
