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

A BRUTAL reminder that academics are part of society, rather than standing apart from it, is given by the fact that they are among the many casualties of both the Hamas attacks of October 7 and Israel’s continuing bombardment of Gaza.
As Nature reported earlier this week, those murdered in the Hamas attack included many students and faculty members of universities. Their deaths are a tragedy. Meanwhile, in the West Bank, university buildings have been identified as targets of Israeli bombing.
In-person teaching and research at all higher education institutions has stopped because travelling to campuses is too dangerous. Some 183 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank by Israeli military forces since October 7 — their deaths are a tragedy too.

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