NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS/Reuters/File

The Curiosity rover picked up where NASA's previous rovers left off in the search for habitability on Mars.

The Curiosity rover landed on Mars in 2012 with a detective’s mission: to find clues about whether or not life could exist on the Red Planet. On the top of scientists’ wish list was evidence of organic matter, which emerged in 2013. But the organic molecules identified by the car-sized rover then were too few and ambiguous. So mission scientists sent Curiosity on a four-mile journey to the base of Mount Sharp in hopes of finding more conclusive evidence buried in old lake sediments.

And that did the trick. Mission scientists announced today in a paper published in the journal Science that Curiosity discovered a whole catalogue of preserved organic matter in the first rock layers that the rover checked there.

“We have just satisfied a mission objective for Curiosity,” says Jennifer Eigenbrode, study lead author and a member of the Mars Science Laboratory mission team.

Is this the discovery of Martians? It could be. Organic molecules are the building blocks of all known forms of life. But chemical reactions that don’t involve life can also produce them. In this case, the scientists couldn’t tell how these organics were formed.

But finding a trove of organic molecules on Mars is a big breakthrough for astrobiology, as organic molecules could be food for microbes, even if it doesn’t represent life itself. And this discovery ushers in a new phase in the search for life on Mars.

“All sorts of big questions could be answered by finding life on Mars or by not finding life on Mars,” says David Weintraub, a professor of astronomy at Vanderbilt University in Nashville and author of the book “Life on Mars: What to Know Before We Go.” “We now have really good reasons to look a whole lot harder,” he says.

Courtesy of NASA

Curiosity has detected organics embedded in the sediments of the 'Pahrump Hills' area of Gale Crater. The rover can be seen (center) in this image captured by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.

NASA actually isn’t looking for life on Mars right now. Sure, if a Martian strolled by a rover’s cameras scientists would see it, but the rover is not equipped to make an unambiguous detection of life.

That was the goal when NASA deployed Viking 1 and 2 in 1976, which were the first mechanical envoys to set foot on Mars. The rovers performed experiments designed to detect Martian life, but they largely found none. The one experimental result that wasn’t an outright “no” was controversial. Despite its aspirations, the Viking program never even found signs life on Mars. And NASA didn’t launch another mission to Mars for over a decade.

“It made us much more cautious,” says Alexandra Pontefract, an astrobiologist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge. “We didn’t want to fund an incredibly expensive mission and come up short again.”

What went wrong? There were too many uncertainties, Dr. Eigenbrode says. NASA was only just setting foot on the Martian surface, so scientists didn’t know enough about the environment to be able to get a clear yes or no answer. 

“Viking was this sort of shot in the dark,” says David Grinspoon, an astrobiologist with the Planetary Science Institute. “And then we went, ‘oops, not only did we not find it, but we don’t really know what we’re looking for if it’s not exactly like Earth.’ And maybe that was not the best way to go about it.”

Scientists realized that they had to take a step back and try a more cautious, methodical approach. Much as a detective figures out whodunnit by filling in all the details of a crime first, astrobiologists set about piecing together a picture of the Martian environment to figure out if the planet could even support life, now or in the past.

Building a case for habitability

Over the years, scientists have amassed a number of clues that can help answer the question of Mars’ habitability, including evidence of liquid water. And now they’ve added a catalogue of organic molecules to that list.

“If there are no organics, we can pretty much forget about there being life or ever having been life on Mars,” says Dr. Weintraub. Finding organics is critical.

The term “organic” means something different to a chemist than it does to a produce manager at a grocery store. In chemistry, nearly all molecules containing both carbon and hydrogen are organic compounds.

On Mars, organic molecules could have been produced by some form of either present or past lifeforms. But they could also be the result of abiotic chemical reactions on the surface of the planet. They could even have been transported from elsewhere in the solar system. Regardless of how these molecules originated, they are a key sign of habitability.

The case for past habitability on the Red Planet is bolstered by the discovery of preserved organic compounds revealed today, as they are as old as the around 3.5 billion year old sedimentary rocks in which they were found. But scientists revealed tantalizing hints about present-day Mars today, too. In another paper published simultaneously in the journal Science, they describe background levels of methane, also an organic, in Mars’s atmosphere that varies seasonally.

Methane gas can be a byproduct of life on Earth, but there are geological processes that can produce it, too. So like the organic molecules, it's not an unambiguous biosignature.

With future missions, scientists may be able to figure out whether or not the organic compounds are indeed biosignatures. “This gives us a lot of hope going forward in terms of organic detection on Mars,” Dr. Pontefract says.

Key details about the organics may have been obscured in Curiosity’s sample because the rover can only drill two inches into rock. The Martian surface is bombarded with radiation that can degrade organic compounds, explains Eigenbrode. But the planned ExoMars 2020 rover, part of a joint mission of the European Space Agency and the Russian space agency Roscosmos, will have a drill that can reach a depth of about 6.5 feet. 

Furthermore, Pontefract says, ExoMars and NASA’s Mars 2020 mission will use tools that take a different approach to analyze organics. To look for organics, Curiosity drills about two inches into a rock, collects the dust created, then lights it on fire to break the samples down to their chemical components (which is a similar process to Viking’s). From those components, scientists work backward to figure out what molecules the rock was originally made of. The planned missions will use tools that can look for organic compounds directly in the rock.

The next chapter

This latest discovery of organics does more than open the door for more study of organic matter on Mars. It also signals the next step in our astrobiological investigation of Mars. That next step is to try to figure out if life is involved. 

If Viking was phase one of our search for life on Mars, and the methodical quest for clues of habitability that followed was phase two, says Grinspoon, “this is the successful culmination of phase two.”

Previously, it was an open question whether signs of life might be preserved on the now-harsh Martian surface. This new discovery of old organics strengthens that possibility and offers new insights into how things preserve in Mars rock, Grinspoon says. “Maybe phase three would be to say, ‘okay, now we know there are preserved organics, let’s go for it and find the fossils.’ “

The next stage might not be just about past life, Pontefract says. “I think we’re moving toward extant [the opposite of extinct] life detection again.”

“I think part of the Mars community is frustrated with these incremental advances,” she says, so there’s a push to go look for life directly again.

The methodical approach since Viking has set scientists up to look directly for signs of life, Eigenbrode says. And, she says, it gives us an idea where to look. For present life, some scientists say we should look below the surface, in soils or in caves, where there might be liquid water still flowing and organic compounds around. For extinct life, scientists have an idea where lakes and rivers used to flow and sedimentary rocks might have built up, preserving life that may have flourished around those Martian waters.

“The next chapter of Mars exploration is just getting going,” Eigenbrode says. “And Mars always surprises us.”

Victoria Jones/PA/AP/File

Christopher Steele, the former MI6 agent who set-up Orbis Business Intelligence and compiled a dossier on Donald Trump, poses in London where he has spoken to the media for the first time March 7, 2017.

In the run-up to the 2016 presidential election, some of the most aggressive investigative reporters in the US were hard at work trying to verify an array of explosive allegations made in what would come to be known as the “Trump dossier.”

The series of confidential memos were compiled by Christopher Steele, a former British intelligence officer. He was hired by a Washington-based consulting firm that was being paid by the Democratic Party and Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign to unearth damaging information about her Republican opponent, Donald Trump.

Although a few news reports about the former spy’s work appeared prior to the November 2016 election, no news organization was able to verify the most alarming allegations – including that Mr. Trump and his associates were colluding with the Russians to undermine the Clinton campaign.

Despite this lack of confirmation, in early January 2017, the web-based media organization BuzzFeed decided to publish the entire dossier.

Now, more than 17 months later, BuzzFeed is a defendant in a Miami federal court case that is testing the scope of press freedoms at a time of acute public distrust of the media, and amid repeated presidential accusations about “fake news.” The fact that it centers around a controversial document at the heart of the Trump-Russia investigation makes it all the more significant.

In the months following its publication, the dossier has become a lightning rod for countless conspiracy theories and allegations on both the right and the left involving Trump, the Russians, Clinton, the Democrats, the Republicans, and the so-called Deep State.

The clash is playing out via a defamation lawsuit filed by a Russian businessman, who says his personal and business reputations were savaged when BuzzFeed published a portion of the dossier accusing him and his companies of being involved in the hacking of Democratic Party officials in 2016. The businessman, Aleksej Gubarev, owns an array of internet services and hosting companies under the umbrella firm XBT Holding, including Webzilla, a Florida corporation. Mr. Gubarev is based in Cyprus.

At issue is whether BuzzFeed acted negligently or in reckless disregard for the truth by publishing the entire Trump dossier without first verifying its contents.

The theft and subsequent leaking of private emails of various Democratic National Committee officials was one of the most dramatic developments of the 2016 campaign, and Clinton supporters say it undermined her presidential bid. The operation is alleged to have been carried out by hackers working on behalf of Russia.

Special counsel Robert Mueller has indicted Russians for engaging in deceptive social media tactics in the US during the election, but no one – American or Russian – has yet been identified or charged in connection with the hacking of the DNC.

Gubarev says the allegations in the dossier of his involvement in the hacking are false. He says no one from BuzzFeed contacted him or his companies to seek to verify or disprove the allegations. His lawsuit accuses BuzzFeed of fomenting “one of the most reckless and irresponsible moments in modern ‘journalism.’ ”

Sixty-eight words

The Gubarev case is focused on allegations made in the last of 17 memos produced by Steele. The entire dossier is 35 pages. The portion that allegedly defames Gubarev is 68 words.

“[REDACTED SOURCE NAME] reported that over the period March-September 2016 a company called XBT/Webzilla and its affiliates had been using botnets and porn traffic to transmit viruses, plant bugs, steal data and conduct ‘altering operations’ against the Democratic Party leadership.”

The memo continues: “Entities linked to one Alexei GUBAROV [sic] were involved and he and another hacking expert, both recruited under duress by the FSB [Russian intelligence]…, were significant players in this operation.”

Steele has said he was horrified when he learned that the dossier had been published. He says his memos contain unverified, raw intelligence, and that his sources could be compromised.

In addition to the Miami case, Gubarev has also filed a defamation suit against Mr. Steele in London. The Miami case is set for trial in November.

BuzzFeed has assembled a formidable legal team to respond to the suit, including Roy Black, a highly-regarded defense lawyer in Miami perhaps best known for successfully defending William Kennedy Smith in a 1991 rape trial.

In court filings, lawyers for BuzzFeed argue that the media organization performed an important public service by allowing citizens to see for themselves what triggered an FBI investigation and high-level government briefings by intelligence officials. Publication of the Trump dossier was essential to public understanding of the unfolding Trump-Russia controversy, they say.

As BuzzFeed wrote in an accompanying article at the time: “BuzzFeed News is publishing the full document so that Americans can make up their own minds about allegations about the president-elect that have circulated at the highest levels of the US government.”

Significantly, the news organization also openly acknowledged that it knew that at least some parts were false: “The dossier… includes specific, unverified and potentially unverifiable allegations,” the article advised readers. It added: “[The dossier] is not just unconfirmed: It includes some clear errors.”

Nonetheless, the news organization went ahead and published the dossier anyway.

Fair report privilege

According to many legal experts, that action places BuzzFeed in a precarious position.

The well-established standard for a public official to prevail in a libel case against a news organization is “actual malice” – that the journalist acted “in reckless disregard for the truth.” That is a high bar that provides substantial protection for reporters who seek to be fair and accurate.

But what about journalists who know their report contains false information?

“To say we are knowingly publishing falsehoods, that’s kind of the textbook definition of what actual malice is,” says Jane Kirtley, a media law expert and professor at the University of Minnesota Law School.

In this case, however, BuzzFeed’s lawyers are arguing that the media organization and its staff are protected under a legal doctrine called the “fair report privilege.”

The fair report privilege shields reporters from liability in a defamation lawsuit even if their news report contains false information that harms someone’s reputation. It is designed to foster robust press coverage of government affairs by carving out an area where reporters are protected from defamation lawsuits if they fairly and accurately portray the information obtained from a privileged source, even when some of the privileged information is false and/or defamatory.

If it weren’t for that protection, news reporters might avoid reporting certain kinds of stories. For example, someone named in a criminal complaint who is later acquitted at trial might come back and sue a reporter for writing about the case and harming that person’s reputation.

Moreover, the protection doesn’t just apply to reporters.

“Witnesses wouldn’t dare testify or people wouldn’t appear before legislative committees in controversial matters if they had to worry that they might be sued later for remarks they made,” says Robert Drechsel, a media law expert and emeritus professor at the University of Wisconsin School of Journalism and Mass Communications.

“Judges, attorneys, legislators – everybody would be vulnerable to an enormous range of libel suits,” he adds. “The [freedom to engage] in public discussion of important issues could be badly damaged.”

Professor Kirtley says the principle behind this approach was articulated by Supreme Court Justice William Brennan in the 1964 landmark high court decision New York Times v. Sullivan.

“He talked about the notion that sometimes falsehoods are inevitable when the press is covering matters of legitimate public concern,” she says. “If we are left with a situation where the press has to be the guarantor of the accuracy of everything they publish, that will act as a deterrent and cause them to self-censor.”

She adds: “What I think Justice Brennan would have been saying in a situation like this is, are you giving the public enough information that they can independently decide for themselves whether they want to believe this or not. Or will they come away saying, I still don’t know?”

A victory this week

Traditionally, the fair report privilege has applied to statements made in public proceedings, like an open court hearing, a city council meeting, or a public hearing in Congress. It also covers government documents generated as part of such public proceedings. But this determination is not an exact science.

In the Miami case, Gubarev’s lawyers argue that the fair report privilege should only apply to public proceedings and documents related to those public proceedings. They argue that the Trump dossier was written by Steele as part of a paid, private, political opposition research assignment. The fact that he provided information from the dossier to the FBI does not make Steele a government official and it does not make his information a privileged government report, they say.

BuzzFeed’s lawyers say the fair report privilege applies to a broader array of documents that should include the Trump dossier, as it is related to government action.

In a ruling this week, US District Judge Ursula Ungaro gave a green light for BuzzFeed to argue its broader reading of the fair report privilege in the Gubarev case.

The order, announced on Monday, is a victory for BuzzFeed because it potentially allows lawyers to side-step the thorny issue of BuzzFeed’s apparent decision to publish unverified and false information.

The ultimate outcome will depend on evidence uncovered during pre-trial discovery.

In her ruling, Judge Ungaro identified two key areas of dispute about whether the government had taken “official action” concerning the dossier: Did intelligence officials conduct classified briefings for President Obama and President-elect Trump about the dossier? And did the FBI investigate aspects of the dossier?

“If discovery reveals that they did not, then there was, in fact, no official action,” the judge said in her ruling.

A spokesman for BuzzFeed praised the judge’s ruling. 

“A confidential briefing to the President/President-elect by the four most senior intelligence directors in the country is official action,” Matt Mittenthal said in Tweet. “So too is an FBI investigation into the truth of the Dossier’s allegations.”

A gray area of the law

It is clear from various statements and documents released over the past year and a half that the dossier was a subject covered in presidential briefings and was at least partly investigated by the FBI.

But Gubarev’s lawyers say the relevant inquiry must focus on the portion of the dossier that involves their client. In other words, was the FBI investigating the allegations against Gubarev and his companies? And were Obama and Trump briefed about the allegations against Gubarev and his companies?

“We are confident that, when discovery is complete, there isn’t going to be any evidence that the December Memo – which is the only memo that mentioned Gubarev, Webzilla, or XBT – was the subject of any ‘investigation’ or government action at the time BuzzFeed published the dossier,” Gubarev’s lawyer, Evan Fray-Witzer of Boston, wrote in an email to the Monitor.

Steele is known to have met with the FBI and provided information from the dossier to the FBI. But that cooperation ended in October 2016, well before the December memo was written.

After obtaining the full dossier in late December 2016, BuzzFeed reporters attempted to verify parts of it. On Jan. 10, CNN produced a story summarizing key portions of the dossier and reporting that President Obama and President-elect Trump had both been briefed on it, and that the FBI was investigating allegations in the dossier.

According to court filings, BuzzFeed’s editor “concluded that since official action with the Dossier had reached the highest levels of government, it should be published.”

BuzzFeed published an article that same day and included a link to the full 35-page dossier. Within a month, the dossier had been viewed nearly 6 million times.

Professor Kirtley says the BuzzFeed case exists in a gray area of the law. “If this were an FBI report there would be no question in my mind that it would fall under the fair report privilege,” she says. “But what we have here is something which was generated by some outside entities and is now subject to a governmental review.”

She adds: “If it were introduced as evidence in a court case, for example, then it would be covered by the fair report privilege. What makes it more complicated is whether, to the extent it is being scrutinized by the government, is that tantamount to saying it is now part of a formal government investigation?”

Reporter’s note: An example of how the fair report privilege is routinely used by reporters is on display in this report. The article reproduces all 68 words from the dossier that Gubarev alleges are defamatory. Repeating those words is potentially a form of libel, causing yet another alleged injury to Gubarev’s reputation. But because the passage is at the center of a lawsuit and is repeated in the context of reporting about a court case, the Monitor’s decision to publish those words is fully covered by the fair report privilege. It should also be clear from the article that the purpose of repeating the 68 words is not to harm Gubarev’s reputation (although it might do so), but to help readers understand Gubarev’s case and the underlying issue. That is one example of how the privilege works and why it is so important to journalists.

Yahya Sinwar, the Hebrew-speaking leader of Hamas in Gaza who spent 22 years in Israeli prison, is known more for stealth military action than speech-making.

When Palestinians launched the still-running series of Friday protests along the Gaza-Israel fence this spring, Mr. Sinwar vowed to keep the protests going until the border itself was breached.

The demonstrations, held to denounce Israel’s economic blockade of Gaza and symbolize Gazans’ yearning to return to ancestral homes in Israel, marked “a new phase in the Palestinian national struggle on the road to liberation,” he declared.

To emphasize his call for perseverance, he used especially grisly language, saying instead of Palestinians going hungry as they eke out an existence amid 44 percent unemployment, they should “eat the livers of those besieging” them.

That comment seemed to cement Israelis’ worst fears about a man former Israeli security officials describe as a ruthless terrorist and Islamic radical, unmoved by violence.

For Gazans, however, Sinwar, 56, whose parents like so many other Palestinians were displaced by the creation of Israel in 1948, is a man of the people. To this day, he lives in a Gaza refugee camp.

But for many he is also a riddle. Is he an extremist or a pragmatist?

A founder of Hamas’s military wing, Izzedine al-Qassam, Sinwar has long been considered a hard-liner who, like the charter of the organization he now leads, regards the Jewish State as an enemy that must one day be eradicated. But analysts and those who know him say he seems practical enough to realize Israel won’t be defeated militarily anytime soon. Instead, they suggest, he is in it for the long haul, satisfied to inflict pain on Israel – wound by wound.

Evidence of his more practical side is Hamas’s overture to Israel for a truce last week after tensions peaked with rocket attacks into Israel and Israel striking targets inside Gaza.

His pragmatism, analysts say, arguably is shaped less by an ideological pivot by Hamas than its own dire financial straits and a public weary of another conflagration after three recent wars with Israel.

And Sinwar may have been satisfied with the international outrage over Gazans being gunned down by the dozens – 64 were killed in one day alone – as they surged toward the Israeli border.

Man of the people

Adnan Abu Amr, a political science professor at Gaza's Ummah University, speaks to the difficulty of unraveling the riddle of Sinwar.

“Perhaps the inability to analyze his personality is why we put both possibilities together. The man seeks to achieve his political ideas and ambitions of struggle and patriotism in any form, both military and peaceful,” Professor Abu Amr suggests.

Mkhaimar Abu Sada, also a political science professor in Gaza who teaches at Al-Azhar University, has this analysis: “Sinwar does not want to be portrayed as aggressive or radical. He wants to portray himself as pragmatic even if he is not a moderate, as someone committed to fundamental principles of Palestinian nationalism and Palestinian rights including the right to resist. That’s why he was not willing to surrender Hamas’s weapons to Fatah” in the latest reconciliation talks between the rival Palestinian political movements.

“He’s popular in Gaza, among Hamas members and Palestinians in general. They consider him a strong figure who can deliver,” Professor Abu Sada adds.

Sinwar has been able to use the “Great Return” march movement as a way to present himself as a man of the people and to deflect attention on how Hamas is governing, instead showing how Hamas is defying Israel.

“He saw a new way of putting pressure on Israel since the armed struggle has become difficult and expensive. He was one of the Hamas leaders who visited the rallies, encouraged the demonstrators, and instigated them, which has earned him more power and popularity,” says Abu Amr.

And his personal example – of living a modest life in the refugee camp where his family settled after being uprooted from their village in what is today the Israeli city of Ashkelon – also speaks volumes, says Yusef Ahmed, a former senior Hamas adviser.

“He is very nationalistic and tries to be close to the people,” says Mr. Ahmed. “Living in refugee camp shows he has not changed his character. It shows he is a regular person.”

Overtures to Fatah

It was in prison where Sinwar came to understand not only Israelis better, but also Fatah, since he was imprisoned with senior members of Hamas’s political rival as well.

Fatah runs the Palestinian Authority, but only in the West Bank. They were overthrown by Hamas in Gaza in a violent coup in 2007. The rift between the factions has left Palestinian politics adrift and acrid. But right after Sinwar was elected, he made reconciliation talks his focus.

During the talks in Cairo, he scored points with the Egyptians, who, according to Abu Sada, found him decisive and a welcome change from other Hamas leaders they perceived as saying one thing in meetings but not following through on commitments.

Sinwar reportedly made intelligence deals with Egypt, agreeing to bolster security along their shared border to help the Egyptians crack down on Islamic militants in the Sinai.

Even though the reconciliation talks floundered, the perception in Gaza is that Fatah, not Hamas, was to blame.

Yet another piece of the Sinwar puzzle is his reputation for the brutal policing of Palestinians’ ranks. He founded a Hamas intelligence unit that, according to Israel, targeted collaborators. Sinwar reportedly confessed to having killed several Palestinian informants.

Israeli security officials said he was convicted of “terror activities” that he carried out as part of Hamas's military wing that included, they said, the “killing of Palestinian collaborators.” He is also reported to have masterminded a 1988 kidnapping and killing of two Israeli soldiers.

Release from prison

In 2011 Sinwar emerged from 22 years in Israeli prison grey-haired, with sunken cheeks and serious dark eyes, and still committed to Hamas and its cause. He speaks fluent Hebrew from his prison days, where he is said to have become a keen student of Israeli thinking.

When he was released, it was part of a prisoner swap: 1,000 Palestinians in exchange for one captured Israeli soldier, Gilad Shalit. But even though Sinwar was a prisoner himself, he was among those in the Hamas leadership pushing to have even more Palestinian prisoners freed rather than accept the deal.

Unlike the majority of his counterparts who seemed eager to retreat into a quiet post-prison existence, he dove back into public life, campaigning steadfastly among Hamas members to ensure he would have enough votes to secure the leadership of Gaza.

In early May he spoke to young people in Gaza, many who, like him, are descended from refugees and are bitter about what good the future might hold when their daily lives are so bleak.

“We would rather die as martyrs than die out of oppression and humiliation,” he told them. “We are ready to die, and tens of thousands will die with us.”

Jon Nazca/Reuters

People take part in a protest in Malaga, Spain, on April 26, after a Spanish court condemned five men accused of the group rape of an 18-year-old woman. The placard reads: 'The wolf pack are us.' The men described themselves as 'the wolf pack' in communications with each other.

She was just 11. And when it was over, she called her mom and told her that a man she met in the park took her back to his apartment and had sex with her. Her mother called the police to report rape.

But when the case went on trial, the perpetrator initially only faced charges of sexual abuse – a misdemeanor – because the girl had not been subjected to “threat, violence, surprise, or constraint.” One of the four elements is necessary for a rape conviction in France, even for minors.

The case went public just as the sex assault claims came showering down on Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein, and France, like much of the West, was in the throes of the #MeToo movement. Many in France were outraged. President Emmanuel Macron promised to set a minimum age of consent, putting France in line with the norm in many European countries.

And yet, as France’s new bill intended to clamp down on sexual violence heads to the Senate in July, the text adopted by the National Assembly in May ditched plans to set a legal minimum age of consent, which would have been 15. Victims of rape, even at age 11, must still prove an element of threat, violence, surprise, or constraint.

Nearly 180,000 people have signed an online petition to urge Mr. Macron to reconsider, taking what they see as the only logical step in a post-#MeToo era. But France is not alone in debating how to stop rape and whether consent is the right tool to try and clamp down. While Sweden just passed a new law in May that redefines sex without consent as rape, less than a third of European countries have such “consent laws” on the books.

For feminists, this is a sign of how patriarchal – and outdated – justice systems remain in much of the West. And many argue that laws on consent can only go so far if the deeper issues of machismo and gender inequality are left unaddressed. For the biggest skeptics, consent laws can be counterproductive, resulting in more “he said/she said” testimony that is difficult to prove and vulnerable to a judge's interpretation.

“The response to all this isn’t by criminal law,” says Pierre-Jérôme Delage, senior lecturer in criminal law at the University of Caen. “The solution is through education. If we really want mentalities and behaviors to change, laws can help a little, but it’s through education that things will evolve.”

'If there is not consent, it's an act of violence'

Sweden is now the tenth country of 33 in Europe to rewrite legislation to define rape on the basis of the absence of consent, according to Amnesty International. It joins Germany, Ireland, all four nations of the United Kingdom, Belgium, Iceland, and Cyprus to have followed Council of Europe recommendations to include consent-based laws on sexual violence. Some US states, like California and Florida, have affirmative consent laws, too.

With the highest rate of registered rape in Europe, due in part to the way it is tallied and how frequently it is reported, Sweden’s debate about rape has been at the center of politics. And the affirmative consent bill in Sweden (expected to go into force on July 1) is seen as a response to the pressure mounting under #MeToo.

Anna Błuś, women’s rights researcher for Europe at Amnesty International, says such laws respond to the reality of sexual violence and tackle perceptions that it’s up to women to protect themselves from rape. In a 2014 study in the European Union, 9 million women reported having been raped at age 15 or older. Many of them don’t resist, often paralyzed by fear or in fear for their lives. “Swedish law goes beyond ‘No means no,’” says Ms. Błuś. “It should be about whether there was a yes. Silence or lack of no does not mean a yes.”

Stina Holmberg, senior researcher at Sweden’s National Council for Crime Prevention, agrees the new law sends a powerful message to men “to be careful, don’t take anything for granted.” Yet she says it also raises new questions about what consent is. She doubts it will lead to more rape reporting, or to more convictions. “Because these are very intimate situations, it’s difficult to legally regulate them,” she says.

In Spain, many believe a Swedish-style consent law could have made the difference in a verdict in an assault case in April that has generated widespread protests.

The case dates back to 2016, on the sidelines of the “Running of the Bulls” festival in Pamplona. Five men led an 18-year-old to a basement and each had sex with her. They filmed it, showing her with eyes closed.

The five men were handed nine years in prison each for sexual abuse, because the judges ruled the girl didn’t consent. But they didn’t receive the 20-plus years they may have if their actions had been ruled gang rape, because the judges said there had been no intimidation or violence, the Spanish legal definition of rape. “Spanish society didn’t realize that to be assaulted sexually, without consent, that isn’t considered violence,” says Irantzu Varela, a feminist activist in Bilbao. “So now our fight is that the law changes. If there is not consent, it’s an act of violence.”

Symbolic politics?

Critics of consent laws, however, see in them a quick political fix that could have unintended consequences.

The Norwegian parliament debated a consent law this spring but rejected the proposal. Tereza Kuldová, a social anthropologist and researcher at the University of Oslo, says that judges argued that the burden of proof would remain the same, while the law would increase evidence that pits one’s word against another’s. She dismisses Sweden’s new consent law as “symbolic politics” and argues that it makes men guilty before proven innocent.

But in that argument, common among skeptics, many feminists see parallels to the backlash against #MeToo, which cast doubt on women’s stories in the name of concerns about harming innocent men. “It shows that the primary thought in society is that women are making up these stories, even when it comes to young girls,” says Fatima Benomar, spokesperson for the feminist group Les Effronté-es, referring to the consent debate for minors in France.

The case of the 11-year-old was re-opened as a rape case, a victory for the victim, and some of France’s new sexual assault bill has been praised, including punishing catcalling on the streets. But the debate over consent remains a live one.

In a Eurobarometer poll from 2016, 27 percent of respondents said sexual intercourse without consent could be justified in certain situations – showing how far attitudes lag behind the laws.

Błuś agrees that consent laws might in themselves not increase rape convictions, but they could help shift societal attitudes. “If things follow from such legislative changes, if they filter down to the broader society and are accompanied with different measures, like training for police or judges, then I think these laws have the potential to prevent rapes.”

Erik De Castro/Reuters

Policemen collect trash in the waters off the beach at the holiday island of Boracay in the Philippines. Nearly 8 million metric tons of plastic enters the oceans from land every year.

Are straws the new plastic bags?

They’re the latest single-use plastic item getting increased attention as an unnecessary (for most people) tool that too often ends up clogging waterways, seas, and beaches.

A video that went viral in 2015 of a sea turtle getting a bloody straw removed from its nostril helped spur some of the growing momentum to ban or limit plastic straws in many cities, states, countries, and businesses.

But while straws are the current target of some legislative action, scientists and environmental activists caution that – with 8 million metric tons of plastic entering the ocean from land every year, the equivalent of one dump truck of plastic entering the ocean each minute – any real solution is going to take a combination of efforts.

“We’re really hoping that we create a system shift,” says Dianna Cohen, chief executive officer of the Plastic Pollution Coalition, a global alliance of individuals, organizations, and businesses. Ms. Cohen, like others, says a solution will require a combination of changing consumer behavior, source reduction, producers that change the way they package or take responsibility for that packaging, and improved waste management systems.

“Plastic is, just like any other material, potentially a valuable material,” she says. “But when we began designing and making things made out of plastic with a specific focus for them to be single-use, or ‘disposable,’ or ‘convenient’ – this is when we really made a wrong turn.”

Plastic pollution, particularly its effect on the oceans and sea life, has been under the spotlight lately. It was the theme of the United Nations’ World Environment Day this week. In India, Prime Minister Narendra Modi used the occasion to announce a plan to ban all single-use plastics by 2022, and that the country would join the UN’s Clean Seas campaign, which works to tackle pollution and raise awareness of the issue.

That announcement came on the heels of a European Union proposal to phase out most single-use plastics by 2030. Britain, Taiwan, Belize, Costa Rica, Chile, and several African countries have also enacted various bans. In Kenya, which has enacted the harshest ban on plastic bags, offenders can even face jail time.

In the United States, action has been more city by city – with the exception of California, which rid itself of most plastic bags two years ago, and just introduced a bill that would ban plastic straws, except when requested. Seattle will soon go strawless, and New York is considering doing so. Last week, the food service company Bon Appétit announced it would phase out straws in all of its cafes, joining other companies with similar plans, including Alaska Airlines.

A thoughtful approach

To some, the current focus on straws can seem arbitrary, and it has generated a backlash from the disabled community, for whom straws can be a necessity in order to drink. Replacements – like bamboo, metal, or glass straws – aren’t always feasible, comfortable, or safe for all people.

Many environmental advocates agree that it’s important to recognize the gray area for items like straws. They say it shouldn’t be too hard to carve out exceptions, but insist that the rate at which straws are currently ending up on beaches and in the ocean demands action.

During the International Coastal Cleanup, a single day in September when communities around the world head out to clean up beaches, volunteers have collected 3 million discarded straws over the past five years, says Nicholas Mallos, director of the Ocean Conservancy’s Trash Free Seas program.

Bans and legislative action can start to have an impact on the actual amount of trash that gets into waterways, he says. “But just as importantly, the legislation signals to consumers and companies that this is something people care about, and that change is needed.”

Jenna Jambeck, the lead researcher of the landmark 2015 report that first quantified the amount of plastic trash entering the ocean, says that she’s always wary of talking about the need for bans in a blanket way because the local context can vary so much: A disabled person might need a plastic straw. Someone in a region without potable water might need bottled water. There are high-poverty countries where citizens collect water using plastic bags.

“There are so many intersectional issues with poverty and homelessness,” says Dr. Jambeck, an associate professor at the University of Georgia in Athens and a National Geographic Explorer. “I don’t think they should prevent us from taking these actions, but we should be thoughtful with how we approach these situations.”

Like Mr. Mallos, Jambeck emphasizes the importance such campaigns can have on people’s awareness of the issue. Alaska Airlines’ straws probably weren’t a big source of litter, she says, but not getting a straw on an airplane might make some people think differently.

Already, most plastic pollution advocates say they’re seeing a sea change in both awareness and behavior.

“I think we’ve passed a tipping point and are cresting a wave right now of awareness,” says Cohen, of the Plastic Pollution Coalition. Social media and the internet have been incredibly helpful tools in demonstrating the scope of the problem, she adds. In addition to the sea turtle video, there was the photo of the sea horse gripping a pink Q-Tip, the recent footage of 80 plastic bags pulled from the stomach of a pilot whale who died in Thailand, and the news last year about the highest density of trash recorded in the world on a remote, uninhabited Pacific island.

“Everyone is affected when they see those pictures of animals caught in plastic,” says Lisa Emelia Svensson, director for Ocean at the UN Environment Programme (UNEP). “It gives us a tool to communicate.”

Peter Andrews/Reuters/File

A giant green turtle rests on a coral reef at a diving site near the island of Sipadan in Celebes Sea east of Borneo. A video that went viral in 2015 of a sea turtle getting a bloody straw removed from its nostril helped spur some of the growing momentum to ban or limit plastic straws in many cities, states, countries, and businesses.

The way forward

A report released Tuesday by the UNEP documents the significant legislative action being taken globally, but also injects a note of caution about implementation pitfalls. Of the 60 laws the UN documented, about 30 percent are making a difference, says Ms. Svensson. In many cases, enforcement or institutional capacity to carry out the bans is lacking.

The report delves into case studies like Rwanda’s ban on plastic bags, which led to a 2008 nomination as cleanest city in Africa but also a black market.

The report suggests a 10-step roadmap for policymakers, emphasizing things like incentives to industry, engaging stakeholders, and raising awareness as bans or levies are slowly phased in.

Meanwhile, activists on plastic pollution emphasize that this is an area where individual action matters, and can be critical to slowly shifting collective behavior.

Everywhere she goes, says Cohen, she now carries a few key items that fit in her purse: a fold-up reusable bag, a double-walled steel cup, bamboo utensils, a stainless steel straw. At restaurants, she tells waiters when she orders not to bring a straw – which can open up a thoughtful conversation. Her coalition recently contributed to an updated list of alternatives people can look for.

“I want to be as positive as possible and empower every single person I meet,” says Cohen, who – despite the scope of the problem – remains optimistic. “The amount of change and shift in language and perception and awareness we see growing right now is tremendous. I could not have imagined this 10 years ago.”

AP Photo

Famous investor Warren Buffett (l) and JP Morgan Chase Chairman and CEO Jamie Dimon are encouraging public companies to stop predicting their quarterly earnings and focus on long-term goals, part of a broader plea from the Business Roundtable.

In a June 7 statement, nearly 200 chief executives of major American firms put out a special plea through a group called the Business Roundtable. In essence, these titans of industry and finance gave their support to companies that are patient in growing their underlying value rather than continually panicked about producing quick results.

Specifically, they suggested executives not provide stock analysts with “guidance” every three months about expectations for the company’s earnings and instead think more about the families and others who invest for retirement and expect profits over decades.

“Public companies should be managed for long-term prosperity, not to meet the latest forecast,” the statement said. “Such short-termism is unhealthy for America’s public companies and financial markets – which are critical to economic growth and financial prosperity.”

One “unhealthy” aspect of so-called quarterly capitalism is that executives sometimes distort or even lie about their company’s activities. They neglect investments in research or employee training. They don’t take the time to recruit top talent or create a consensus among all stakeholders about long-term goals.

The practice of offering earnings guidance really took off two decades ago. But as its downsides have become better known through studies, more companies have moved away from it. Jamie Dimon, chief executive officer of JPMorgan Chase, says only about 20 percent of Business Roundtable members still do quarterly guidance while about 60 percent now provide annual targets. The rest do something in-between.

A recent study of about 600 firms by the McKinsey Global Institute found that 73 percent of public companies are short-termist. Firms that are long-termist saw profits that were 36 percent higher between 2001 and 2014.

Investors are often told to be patient about a company’s stock, focusing more on fundamentals like innovative research than a stock’s volatility or temporary disruptions in a market. Now that virtue is being touted by America’s business elite. “Patient capitalism” is difficult to measure or put in a financial report. Yet here’s a tip from some of the most successful companies: It works.