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
The colour of catastrophe
Coral reefs are currently undergoing the most extensive planet-wide bleaching on record, write ROX MIDDLETON, LIAM SHAW and MIRIAM GAUNTLETT
ARMAGEDON: (L to R) Bleached plate coral at One Tree Island, Great Barrier Reef; Temperature logger in situ, both pics April 2024
[John Turnbull/flickr/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
CORALS are symbiotic, meaning they depend on a relationship with another biological organism. Microbes called zooxanthellae live inside the structures corals build out of calcium carbonate.
The microbes photosynthesise, providing corals with energy and nutrients. They also give corals their characteristic vivid colours. However, when corals are placed under stress, they will expel their resident zooxanthellae, turning the coral white.
By far the most serious cause of this stress-related bleaching is warming water. Corals have a typical temperature range they are happy with, and when water temperatures exceed that — particularly for long periods — they bleach.
The bleaching is not merely an aesthetic concern: the expulsion of the zooxanthellae means the corals have lost their main source of food. They may not initially die but they are vulnerable, susceptible to disease and starvation. Longer periods of bleaching and they will die.
When the water temperature becomes too hot, a colourful reef can be transformed into a graveyard. The tropical paradise disappears; as corals die and turn white, a brown algal sludge spreads.
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
