Tina Is Back.

A Marshall Plan for obesity.

“The first news summary of the morning —the most comprehensive I’ll receive all day— and the last thing I read before going on air.” — Hugh Hewitt, host of The Hugh Hewitt Show.

---

1. China is setting out to chart an exquisitely detailed subterranean atlas across the country’s vast expanse. The $1 billion, 6-year survey, which will involve thousands of researchers from scores of institutions, is motivated not only by the nation’s hunger for natural resources, but also by fundamental science questions, including long-standing puzzles about India’s slow-motion collision with Eurasia and the rise of the Tibetan Plateau. The initiative, SinoProbe II, was previewed last month at the DEEP-24 symposium in Beijing. Beginning in early 2025, researchers plan to deploy thousands of instruments and drill holes to record-setting depths, all with the goal of creating a 3D map of the rock layers kilometers below the surface. The scope of SinoProbe II—successor to SinoProbe I, a coarser survey that ran from 2008–16—“is mind-boggling,” says Larry Brown, a geophysicist at Cornell University. “I can’t think of any kind of geoscience it doesn’t cover, except atmospheric sciences.” Mian Liu, a geophysicist at the University of Missouri, says, “Sinoprobe II will give us a much better understanding of planet Earth.” (Source: science.org)

---

2. There is a growing threat facing Western security agencies already stretched thin by war and terrorism: alliances between adversarial states and criminals, including drug gangs and lone wolves hired online. Dealing with crime was once the domain of law enforcement, while threats from foreign countries were the responsibility of intelligence agencies. Today the confluence of these foes is increasingly rendering such distinctions obsolete. Numerous incidents in recent years have awakened Western intelligence officials to the problem. Among their allegations: Russia recruits criminals on social media to commit acts of sabotage across Europe. China outsources overseas cyberattacks to private hackers. Iran hires teenage boys in Scandinavia to lob grenades at Israeli embassies. North Korea deals in drugs and cyber-fraud. Even the Indian government contracted a notorious gangster’s associates to kill a Sikh separatist in Canada. In July 2020, Italian police seized 84 million captagon tablets at the port of Salerno. The drugs, worth 1 billion Euros, were manufactured by the Islamic State group in Syria, which uses drug trafficking to finance its terrorist operations. The new threat is forcing Western governments to rethink decades of national-security and intelligence practices. (Source: wsj.com)

---