Hello and welcome to the Intelligence on Economist Radio. I'm your host, Jason Palmer. Every weekday, we provide a fresh perspective on the events shaping your world.

Researchers have made embryos that are part human and part monkey.

It's a corner of science with plenty of potential, to shed light on developmental problems or even grow organs for transplant.

But it's also a discipline with a serious ethical dimension.

And the Arab world has long turned to Egypt for its popular entertainment,

particularly television.

But what's on the tube under the current leadership is looking more and more like propaganda,

so Egyptians and others are changing the channel.

First up, though.

In Hong Kong, nine high-profile democracy activists were sentenced on Friday for their roles in the protests that roiled the territory two years ago.

The list is a who's who of Hong Kong's most prominent, outspoken and storied campaigners who entered the courthouse as defiant as ever.

We are not the first part of prisoner of conscience, and we will not be the last.

I'm ready to face the penalty of the sentencing.

As the defendants exited and were driven away, chance broke out in a sparse crowd, a bold

expression of what remains of Hong Kong's protest spirit.

Hong Kong is supposed to have a unique arrangement with the rest of

China, one country, two systems. Its politics and policing were notionally independent from

the mainlands. But with last week's sentencing, the unilateral imposition of a draconian new

national security law, and changes to Hong Kong's electoral system, it increasingly seems there's

just one system, one that, as on the mainland, leaves little space for dissent.

The nine people who were charged on Friday received prison sentences ranging from eight to 18 months.

Four of them received suspended sentences because of their age and their contributions

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