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
High flyers: the secret life of great reed warblers
Researchers have found that a small migrating warbler flies to a height of over five kilometres above the Sahara Desert
The Great Reed Warbler
[Eugene Stolyarov/Creative Commons] 
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
IN A column a few weeks ago, we wrote about new research into the migration patterns of peregrine falcons.
Falcons prey on small birds. But some of these small birds have long migrations of their own. This week, new research reports a remarkable finding about a small songbird, the great reed warbler.
These birds weigh less than a slice of bread but must migrate long distances, from breeding sites in northern Europe to spend winter in tropical Africa. Two times a year, they cross barriers of sea and sand: the Mediterranean Sea and the Sahara Desert. Whereas normally they fly at night and rest in the day to shelter from predators, over these barriers they fly non-stop – due to the lack of food and shelter at ground level.
Previous research had identified this change of behaviour. It was also known that during the night, the birds typically flew quite high above the ground. But when the team of researchers analysed the information from the geolocators they had fitted to 14 individual warblers, they were shocked.
During the night, the warblers flew as expected, around 2km (1.2 miles) above the ground.
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