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 most important vaccine of 2021 might be for malaria
Promising results from a new trial indicate we could finally be equipped with one of the tools needed to rid us of a disease that has plagued people since the dawn of humanity, write ROX MIDDLETON, LIAM SHAW and JOEL HELLEWELL
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
DISEASES come in many guises. Before late 2019, there had never been a single case of Covid-19 and SARS-CoV-2 was an unknown virus. Now, less than a year and a half later, there have been millions of cases. In contrast, a disease like malaria has been with humans ever since we emerged as a species.
An early species of Plasmodium, the parasite which causes malaria, was found in mosquitoes that had been preserved in amber for nearly 30 million years. Yet this is no guide to a disease’s impact. During 2020, more people on the continent of Africa died of malaria than Covid-19.
While it took less than a year to develop a vaccine for Covid-19, a vaccine for malaria has proven near-impossible. However, that may be about to change.
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
