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
Flying visits
New research suggests that peregrines which migrate long-distances have a superior long-term memory, write ROX MIDDLETON, LIAM SHAW and JOEL HELLEWELL
The researchers noticed that there were two clear groups of birds: short-distance and long-distance and by looking at the bird’s genomes, they report evidence that this difference might have genetic causes
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
PEREGRINE FALCONS are known for their speed: when one dives from a great height at more than 320km (199 miles) per hour, for a brief moment it will be the fastest animal on Earth. But they are also endurance flyers, migrating thousands of kilometres.
In a new study published in Nature, an international team of researchers investigated peregrine migration. As they note in their response to one peer reviewer who complained about the relatively small size of the dataset, “for a top predator living in the remote Arctic” only accessible in “short Arctic summer breeding windows,” they did pretty well: they tracked 56 birds and took blood samples from 35 individuals.
The peregrines in the study breed in the Arctic north, along the top of Russia and migrate south to a huge variety of locations: northern Africa, India, China and Indonesia. By putting satellite trackers on birds and watching their flight patterns over multiple years, the researchers hoped to be able to understand why the birds took the routes they did.
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
