HUGH LANNING says there is no path to peace without dismantling Israel’s control over Palestinian land, lives and resources
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Deep-sea discovery challenges theories of oxygen as an alien life marker
ROX MIDDLETON, LIAM SHAW and MIRIAM GAUNTLETT explore how metal nodules producing oxygen on the ocean floor complicate the search for extraterrestrial life and our understanding of Earth's early atmosphere
MORE QUESTIONS THAN ANSWERS: Field of polymetallic nodules of type C in the north equatorial Pacific, photo taken from the submarine Nautile - NODINAUT campaign. The formations can be found as deep as 20,000 feet below the ocean's surface
[Philweb/CC] 
CJ ATKINS reports on the stand that saw Ayman Odeh and Ofer Cassif hauled out of Israel’s parliament during Donald Trump’s vainglorious address
ROGER McKENZIE argues that Western powers can see the beginning of the end in the rise of the global South — and racist reactions are kicking in
The Tory conference was a pseudo-sacred affair, with devotees paying homage in front of Thatcher’s old shrouds — and your reporter, initially barred, only need mention he’d once met her to gain access. But would she consider what was on offer a worthy legacy, asks ANDREW MURRAY
Taking a brief look at who the US president surrounds himself with reveals a team dedicated to the complete erasure of Palestine, not justice and civil rights for its people, writes TERRY HANSEN
As the Global Leaders’ Meeting on Women begins in Beijing, it’s clear that China has fulfilled its commitments set 30 years ago and delivered amazing progress in women's education and equality, writes YU BOKUN
SOME astrophysicists try to understand the composition of planets that go round other stars — so-called “exoplanets.” They do so by looking at how light from the star is absorbed as the planet orbits around it, which allows them to find out the compounds that make up the planet’s atmosphere.
The technique allows scientists to understand something about these distant planets, though they are separated by many light years.
Some scientists believe that by identifying specific molecules in the atmospheres of these planets, we will be able to observe the signature of life. These signatures would be “biomarkers” — molecules that can’t be produced by simple chemistry, but can only be made by living organisms.
The difficulty in assessing these molecules and the remoteness of the planets make others sceptical that any biomarker would, by itself, ever be enough to categorically say that life exists.
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High pressures squeeze and crush, but low pressures damage too. Losing the atom-level buzz that keeps us held safe in the balance of internal and external pressure releases dangerous storms, disorientation and pain, write ROX MIDDLETON, LIAM SHAW and MIRIAM GAUNTLETT
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
