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

MATERIALS can behave in strange and complicated ways we don’t understand. Nothing could make that clearer than the tragic and horrifying loss of life in the earthquakes last week that killed tens of thousands of people across southern Turkey and northern Syria.
The largest earthquake in Turkey since 1939 flattened cities across the region. The final death toll is predicted to be more than 50,000. Even the ground itself, and the hard bedrock that makes it up, has vast and complex networks of tension.
Earthquakes are incredibly difficult to predict, although doing this would allow for mass evacuations that could save thousands of lives.

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