What Is Disease X? How Scientists Are Preparing for the Next Pandemic

It’s the somewhat mysterious name for an illness caused by a currently unknown, yet serious microbial threat. The World Health Organization added Disease X in 2017 to a short list of pathogens deemed a top priority for research, alongside known killers like Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) and Ebola.

https://twitter.com/DeItaone/status/1747709382874309043

🇻🇪🇷🇺 Maduro praises Russia for fighting the "economic onslaught of the West"

The president of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro, in his Annual Message to the Nation, highlighted how Russia, despite "the multidimensional war against the economy" by Western countries, became the fifth world power and the first economy in Europe.

NEW 🚨 Donald Trump: "Tonight, I am also making another promise to protect Americans from government tyranny. As your president, I will never allow the creation of a Central Bank Digital Currency."

BREAKING - Pakistan carried out ‘military strikes against terrorist hideouts’ in Iran — “This morning Pakistan undertook a series of highly coordinated and specifically targeted precision military strikes against terrorist hideouts in Sistan-o-Baluchistan province of Iran,” a foreign ministry statement said, adding that a “number of terrorists were killed”.

READ: https://insiderpaper.com/pakistan-carried-out-military-strikes-against-terrorist-hideouts-in-iran-foreign-ministry/

JUST IN - Pakistan became the first country to strike inside Iran since the Iran-Iraq war of 1980-1988

JUST IN - NATO plans to mobilize 90,000 soldiers for biggest military exercise since the end of the Cold War — dpa

@disclosetv

🇷🇺🇺🇦 Russia may emerge from the war in Ukraine as a hyper-mobilized, hyper-illiberal revisionist power with a deep pool of trained military manpower and a deep sense of grievance toward the West.

Western sanctions no longer look like wonder weapons. The Russian economy contracted by just 2.2 percent in 2022, and resumed growing in 2023. Russian trade has been rerouted to Asia; financial, technological and commercial relations with China are flourishing. Geopolitically ambivalent swing states, such as Turkey and the United Arab Emirates, are helping Moscow mitigate its economic isolation. Granted, the costs of conflict have exacerbated economic imbalances in Russia. But there is no near-term prospect of the economy, or the war machine it supports, falling apart.

Nor is it clear that the West will soon face a weakened, humbled Russia, incapable of seriously menacing its neighbors. Sure, Putin’s country has suffered grievous losses of men and materiel. But the government has mobilized hundreds of thousands of new soldiers and put the economy on a war footing. With the Kremlin pouring money into the defense sector, military production is soaring: Russia will pump out more artillery shells in 2024 than the US and Europe combined.

Putin has squeezed most remaining moderates out of the political system and weathered internal challenges to his power. He has doubled down on partnerships with Iran, China and North Korea, fellow autocracies that are now providing Russia with military and economic sustenance.

The Russia that emerges from this war may be a hyper-mobilized, hyper-illiberal revisionist power with a deep pool of trained military manpower and a deep sense of grievance toward the West. That’s a recipe for trouble on NATO’s Eastern front — and for increased global demands on American military power.

Finally, the democratic community no longer looks so committed, so unified. For months, political dysfunction has prevented the US from replenishing the level of support Ukraine needs to fight its war. The European Union has been momentarily stymied in its own bid to ramp up Ukraine assistance by the resistance of the pro-Putin government in Hungary. “Ukraine fatigue” is rising in much of the West.

If Donald Trump wins the presidency this November, democratic solidarity could devolve into transatlantic rancor. And if the US ends up abandoning Ukraine, that country could still go down to a military defeat that would have global consequences, by demonstrating that democracies lack the stamina to prevent expansionist autocracies –- whether Putin’s Russia, Xi’s China, Kim’s North Korea, or Khamenei’s Iran -- from imposing their will on the world.

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