There have been penalties for those who looked the other way when Epstein was convicted of child sex offences and decided to maintain relationships with the financier — but not for the British ambassador to Washington, reveals SOLOMON HUGHES
Amateur entomologists bug out
Insect-watchers can make an important contribution to our understanding of local species populations and assist in conservation efforts – but this hobby is on the decline. ROX MIDDLETON, LIAM SHAW and MIRIAM GAUNTLETT ask why that might be
FASCINATION ON THE WANE: Jan van Kessel the Elder (1626–1679): A Study of Butterflies, Moths, Spiders, and Insects
[Museum of Fine Arts Houston/CC] 
Labour’s new Treasury unit will ‘challenge unnecessary regulation’ by forcing nominally independent bodies like Ofwat to bend to business demands — exactly what Iain Anderson’s corporate clients wanted, writes SOLOMON HUGHES
DR DYLAN MURPHY looks at a Big Brother Watch report which exposes the government as an enabler of DWP secret spying on benefit claimants
The EU faces a critical choice: will it remain in the shadow of an increasingly unreliable US ally, or will it forge its own path in a multilateral world where co-operation with China is essential, asks MARC VANDEPITTE as leaders meet for the EU-China Summit
A lot of discussion about how the left should currently organise – including debate on whether the Green Party is a useful vehicle for advance – runs the risk of refusing to engage with or learn from the reasons the left was defeated previously, argues KEVIN OVENDEN
For Egypt trade trumps the Israeli genocide of the Palestinians, but how long can the country’s ‘misleaders’ – and others in the region – continue their indifference against the popular will of their own people, asks ROGER McKENZIE
HOBBYIST insect-lovers are becoming rarer. To understand why it matters, we might need to know more about what it means to be an entomologist.
There are many niche interests in the world. Amateur entomology — the study of insects — is one of these. It is perhaps hard for those outside the field to grasp the popularity of the hobby, but amateur entomology has its own strong culture with an infrastructure of clubs and societies as well as scientific journals. A lot of people really like looking at insects. But why?
One answer is that there is still a lot to discover about insects. There are more than one million species of insects already described — 75 per cent of all known animal species are insects — but it is believed there are approximately another four to nine million unidentified insect species out there. A large number of all these insects are at risk of extinction because of humans.
More from this author
What’s behind the stubborn gender gap in Stem disciplines ask ROX MIDDLETON, LIAM SHAW and MIRIAM GAUNTLETT in their column Science and Society
While politicians condemned fascist bombing of Spanish civilians in 1937, they ignored identical RAF tactics across the colonies. Today’s aerial warfare continues this pattern of applying different moral standards based on geography and race, write ROX MIDDLETON, LIAM SHAW and MIRIAM GAUNTLETT
The distinction between domestic and military drones is more theoretical than practical, write ROX MIDDLETON, LIAM SHAW and MIRIAM GAUNTLETT
Nature's self-reconstruction is both intriguing and beneficial and as such merits human protection, write ROX MIDDLETON, LIAM SHAW and MIRIAM GAUNTLETT
