The death knell for the Palestinian village of Atouf, on the western slopes of the Jordan valley, arrived in the form of a trail of paper, a series of eviction notices taped to homes, greenhouses and wells, marking a straight line across the open fields.

The notices, which appeared overnight, informed the local farmers that their land would be confiscated and that they had seven days from the date of their delivery, 4 December, to vacate their properties. A military road and accompanying barrier was to be built by Israel right through the area.

On Monday, Paramount Skydance launched a $108bn takeover bid for Warner Bros Discovery, the entertainment giant that owns Hollywood movie studios, along with CNN, HBO and other media businesses. The bid is led by David Ellison, son of the tech billionaire Larry Ellison – a prominent Donald Trump supporter and Republican donor. Netflix had already prevailed over Paramount in a previous bidding competition for the purchase, but Trump announced on Sunday that he would “be involved” in his administration’s review of the Netflix deal. The president suggested the sale “could be a problem” because Netflix is already dominant in the US streaming market.

On June 5th, Kash Patel, the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, was in Austin, Texas, to record a podcast interview with Joe Rogan. Patel had recently declared that the F.B.I. had moved on from its investigation into Jeffrey Epstein’s sex crimes, but his agents were still looking into other “coverups,” including the Covid-19 lab leak and the role that the Bureau’s own operatives supposedly played in the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. In Rogan’s studio, Patel, wearing an olive-green hoodie and smoking a fat cigar, laid out a new conspiracy, in which the Chinese Communist Party was systematically killing Americans with fentanyl as part of a “long-term plan” to “wipe out tens of thousands of Americans a year” who “might grow up to serve in the United States military or become a cop or become a teacher.”

Como es obvio, en cualquier sistema judicial tiene que haber una instancia que concluya definitivamente los procesos, especialmente los polémicos y poco claros, que establezca la verdad judicial, resuelva el caso, afirmando o negando la existencia de un delito. Solo así puede pasarse página del conflicto social que siempre está en la base de un proceso penal. En los casos normales,