VIJAY PRASHAD looks at the web of militias and drug-trafficking gangs that emerged in the Sweida region through the Syrian civil war, and how they relate to recent clashes and Israel’s intervention

LABOUR are — rightly — doing well out of the growing “second jobs” scandal in Parliament: the MPs with big-bucks-second-jobs and the ones who have tried to influence the government for their paymasters are overwhelmingly Tory.
Boris Johnson’s ham-fisted attempt to get Owen Paterson off for breaking the rules has led to anger about how far MPs are allowed to moonlight for corporations within those rules and calls to tighten the rules.
Keir Starmer’s team have pressed on how Conservative MPs are helping their corporate friends and themselves, not the voters. They’ve done it with more vigour than we are used to, which is good.

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

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

US General Stanley McChrystal has been invited to advise on creating a ‘team of teams’ for healthcare transformation. His credentials? He previously ran interrogation bases where Iraqis were stripped naked and beaten, reports SOLOMON HUGHES