Israel continues to operate with impunity in what seems to be a brutal and protracted experiment, while much of the world looks on, says RAMZY BAROUD

EARLY in Oppenheimer, the protagonist, who led the US atomic bomb development programme during WWII, attempts half-heartedly to poison one of his supervisors by injecting an apple with poisonous chemicals.
As a science student in an experimental lab, he has easy access to these chemicals. As the film explores, these poisonous materials are not the most deadly things that Oppenheimer works with in his life. The Manhattan Project that Oppenheimer and many thousands of others worked on in strict secrecy culminated in the first atomic weapons: two bombs that killed at least 130,000 people in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
The rationale behind the secrecy was obvious. They were designing the deadliest bomb anyone had ever seen, and trying to do so before the Nazis. Since then, there have been no further uses of atomic bombs in war, although how to build an atomic weapon is no longer secret.

A maverick’s self-inflicted snake bites could unlock breakthrough treatments – but they also reveal deeper tensions between noble scientific curiosity and cold corporate callousness, write ROX MIDDLETON, LIAM SHAW and MIRIAM GAUNTLETT
Science has always been mixed up with money and power, but as a decorative facade for megayachts, it risks leaving reality behind altogether, write ROX MIDDLETON, LIAM SHAW and MIRIAM GAUNTLETT

