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 tectonic shifts in Chile's ancient geology and new politics
The Atacama desert and the Andean mountains are brimming with natural history and cutting-edge contemporary science
(L to R) The supercontient Gondwana 420 million years ago; rare rainfall events cause the flowering in southern Atacama Desert
[(L to R) Fama Clamosa/Creative Commons + Javier Rubilar/Creative Commons] 
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
THE Andes rise high above the Atacama desert on the western coast of South America, higher in fact than a model based on basic plate tectonics would indicate. Their height is part of why the Atacama desert is so dry.
Unlike in Britain, where the west coast is wetter than the east, the prevailing winds from the oceans around southern South America come from the Atlantic, rather than the Pacific. These winds were called the “trade winds” by European nations who used them in their imperial and colonial expansions.
Just like on the island of Britain, but switching east for west, the prevailing winds pick up water over the ocean, and on hitting the mountains rise, cool and squeeze out their water load into rain clouds that keep the east coast of southern South America lush and fertile.
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
