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 science, sex and gender debate
Does science 'disprove' transgender identity? No, argue 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
BIOLOGICAL SEX is an important adaptive function for a vast number of plant and animal species. The recombination of genes during sexual reproduction allows fast adaptation by producing a kaleidoscope of new possibilities. Species that use sexual reproduction have sex gametes which divide up and recombine genes from each parent to produce a new organism.
Many species of plants and animals are also hermaphroditic. This means a single organism has both male and female sex cells, allowing for self-fertilisation where sexual reproduction does not require another organism. Other species convert between different sexes depending on their age, the sex of their peers, or their environment. Other species do not have different sexes at all.
The observation of nature is a fascinating resource to draw on when understanding ourselves as animals. We can observe both similarity and difference between ourselves and other organisms, whatever they are, as a function of our imagination and capacity to think through analogy.
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
