The White House on Monday defended the shootdowns of three unidentified objects in as many days even as it acknowledged that it had no indication they were intended for surveillance in the same manner as the high-altitude Chinese balloon that traversed American airspace earlier this month.

Residents across the north of New Zealand are bracing for a rough night as Cyclone Gabrielle lashes the country with torrential rains and winds.

China’s foreign ministry says the US has flown balloons into its airspace more than 10 times in the past year.

Auckland residents hunkered down Monday as they braced for a deluge from Cyclone Gabrielle, two weeks after a record-breaking storm swamped New Zealand’s largest city and killed four people.

Rescuers pulled more survivors from the rubble on Sunday, nearly a week after one of the worst earthquakes to hit Turkey and Syria, as Turkish authorities sought to maintain order across the disaster zone and began legal action over building collapses.

U.S. military fighter jets on Sunday shot down an octagonal object over Lake Huron, the Pentagon said, the latest incident since a suspected Chinese surveillance balloon put North American security forces on high alert.

The tents are so close to the border wall between Syria and Turkey, they are almost touching it.

“Stay close to the wall. Move fast. Single file. Just a few at a time.”

With the first cases detected in September, earthquake devastation risks new stresses, particularly in rebel-held areas.

Turkish authorities are targeting contractors allegedly involved with buildings that collapsed in the powerful Feb. 6 earthquakes as rescuers found more survivors in the rubble Sunday, including a pregnant woman and two children, in the disaster that killed over 33,000 people.

The US believes that the flying objects shot down over North American airspace on Friday and Saturday were balloons, according to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer.

A Palestinian man was shot and killed by an Israeli settler in the West Bank on Saturday, the Palestinian Ministry of Health said, naming him as Mithqal Suleiman Abdel Halim Rayan, 27.