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
Space: what goes up might come down
ROX MIDDLETON, LIAM SHAW and JOEL HELLEWELL look at how British space technology came to be run by private companies like Virgin, despite a strong start with the state-built Goonhilly Earth Station in the 1960s
MISSION FAILED: A repurposed Virgin Atlantic Boeing 747 carrying a rocket, seen here parked at Spaceport Cornwall, was unsuccessful in its attempt to deliver several small satellites
into space last week
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
LAST week, the anticipated launch of the first satellites from Spaceport Cornwall failed. The launch technology involves a modified Boeing 747 plane with a launcher rocket fired from its wing at 35,000 feet.
The rocket successfully ignited and left the wing over the Atlantic Ocean south-west of Ireland, but an “anomaly” with the second-stage engine meant the satellites were lost with the rocket.
The launch had been heavily anticipated as a key moment for the British space industry. Though it may be entertaining to enjoy the public failure of a company associated with Richard Branson, that shouldn’t obscure the fact that this attempt was a part of a dramatic shift currently under way in space transport.
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
