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 plague on all of our houses
Why has monkeypox, which has been infecting people around Congo Basin at a low level for decades, suddenly become noteworthy in the West? Surprise, it’s racism!
An electron microscope image of mature, oval-shaped monkeypox virions
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
IF YOU have been following infectious disease news since the Covid-19 pandemic, you may have already seen that Britain has reached over 300 cases of monkeypox. Monkeypox is a disease caused by the monkeypox virus, which belongs to a small family of viruses that also includes smallpox. In fact, monkeypox is so similar to smallpox that it was only recognised as a distinct pathogen after smallpox was eradicated in the 1970s. Smallpox vaccines are often also quite effective at preventing monkeypox.
Other members of the family include horsepox, cowpox, and camelpox — each named for the animal that they were believed to primarily affect. The viruses are transmitted between infected animals, with rodents acting as a reservoir of infection that can reintroduce the virus into other animal populations. Many of these animal poxes are also “zoonoses” (pronounced zoo-no-sees) since human infection with these viruses is possible through contact with an infected animal.
The exception in this virus family was smallpox due to its ability to only infect humans, with frequently debilitating or fatal consequences. Smallpox was eradicated through a considerable worldwide effort using the technique of “ring” vaccination.
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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
