United States fighter jets on Saturday shot down an unidentified, unmanned high-altitude airborne object over northern Canada that had entered its airspace from Alaska, President Joe Biden said.

A United States fighter jet Friday shot down an object, the size of a small car, flying with payloads at a height of about 40,000 feet off the northern coast of Alaska on the direction of President Joe Biden, officials said.

The US is planning to resume the process of domestic visa revalidation in certain categories, like H-1B and L1 visas, on a pilot basis later this year, a move that will benefit tens of thousands of foreign tech workers, particularly from India. Until 2004, certain categories of non-immigrant visas, particularly the H-1B, could be renewed or stamped inside the US. After that, for the renewal of these visas, in particular, those on H-1B, the foreign tech workers have to go out of the country, mostly to their own country to get the H-1B extension stamped on their passport.

The US is making investments in defence ties with India to uphold a favourable balance of power in the Indo-Pacific, a top Pentagon official told lawmakers Thursday indicating that strengthening ties with New Delhi is one of the key factors to address the pacing challenge from China.

As the United States focuses on the Indo-Pacific, in particular the Quad, the Biden administration needs to address India's ties with Russia and its 'downward trend of democratic values and institutions', said a report by the Democratic Party of the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee.

Speaking on condition of anonymity, the official asserted that it is known that China used these balloons for surveillance.

India was one of the very few countries where applications for US visas saw a major upswing after coronavirus-related travel restrictions were lifted.

China has 'violated the sovereignty' of not just the United States but of countries across five continents, Secretary of State Antony Blinken alleged Wednesday, days after US fighter jets shot down a Chinese surveillance balloon.

Amidst growing tension with China over a suspected surveillance balloon, US President Joe Biden has said that the United States will act to protect if Beijing threatens its sovereignty.

China has operated a fleet of spy balloons targeting several countries including India and Japan, a media report has said, days after the United States military shot down a Chinese surveillance craft floating over sensitive installations in the country.

"I spoke from this chamber one year ago, just days after Vladimir Putin unleashed his brutal war against Ukraine. A murderous assault, evoking images of the death and destruction Europe suffered in World War II," Biden said in his address to a Joint Session of the US Congress on Tuesday night.

The request was made soon after the balloon was shot down on Saturday off the coast of South Carolina in the Atlantic Ocean.

The US military has intensified its efforts to collect the remnants of the high-altitude surveillance balloon from China that floated over the United States over several days last week from Montana to South Carolina.

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The balloon, which was being used by the People's Republic of China in an attempt to surveil strategic sites in the continental United States, was brought down above US territorial waters.

The detection of the Chinese surveillance balloon transiting Latin America comes a day after the Pentagon found a Chinese surveillance balloon within its territory flying over Montana, leading to US Secretary of State Tony Blinken postponing his planned trip to Beijing.

Blinken was expected to meet with his Chinese counterpart, and potentially with President Xi Jinping.

A suspected Chinese spy balloon, said to be the size of three buses, was spotted over the United States' airspace, the Pentagon has said, a development that has further strained the already tense bilateral ties as Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Friday abruptly postponed his key visit to Beijing.

The MQ-9B predator armed drones -- 10 each for three services -- is seen to be a key part of India's national security and defense needs.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) on Tuesday said it is expecting some slowdown in the Indian economy next fiscal year and projected the growth to 6.1 per cent from 6.8 per cent during the current fiscal ending March 31. The IMF on Tuesday released the January update of its World Economic Outlook, according to which the global growth is projected to fall from an estimated 3.4 per cent in 2022 to 2.9 per cent in 2023, then rise to 3.1 per cent in 2024. "Our growth projections actually for India are unchanged from our October Outlook.