World News Insights: Opinion Articles

Americans received their first Covid-19 vaccine doses in December 2020, which means we are now approaching the beginning of the third year of the pandemic’s vaccine phase. And yet hundreds of Americans are still dying each day. Who are they? The data offers a straightforward answer: older adults. …

The American mind thinks in binaries. After the Cold War had split the globe between the communist and free worlds, George W. Bush split the world into two “camps:” an axis of good and an axis of evil. Today, President Joe Biden, per the 2022 US Department of Homeland Security Strategy, has…

Britain is languishing, and the signs are everywhere. Inflation is in double digits, and the recession — the worst of all Group of 7 countries — is expected to last deep into 2024. The National Health Service is on life support, public transport is sputtering, and post-Brexit worker shortages…

The parents of a 2-year-old girl write that their daughter “could die within the next year” because a genetic mutation is causing her heart to fail. “Time is quickly running out for me,” writes a man in his mid-30s whose DNA harbors a genetic mistake certain to destroy his brain within a matter…

Over the past six years, my profession has allowed me to bear witness to significant handshakes in Saudi Arabia. Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s handshake with US President Donald Trump that was followed by the American-Gulf and American-Arab summits. Mohammed bin Salman’s handshake with…

Although I hesitate to use the hackneyed expression “It seems like just yesterday,” it ‌does feel that way as I prepare to leave the National Institutes of Health ‌after over five decades. As I look back at my career, I see lessons that may be useful to the next generation of scientists and health…

The three summits held with the Chinese president in Riyadh recently, which were attended by Saudi, Gulf, and Arab figures, should not be seen from any particular angle. Instead, they should be seen from a different perspective because they are different and their significance goes beyond the…

Some events are inane and idiotic, but conceal important phenomena and worrying potentialities. Such events could present an embellished and fragmented image of these phenomena; indeed, they could sometimes abort them. However, they push these latent phenomena above the surface, perhaps exposing…

It is a part of the viewing experience of World Cup football (soccer, as Americans know it). At the slightest physical contact with an opponent, a player throws himself to the ground and writhes around in mock agony, grabbing a body part (an ankle, a knee) that has been offended by an instance of…

Whether or not the regime dissolves the morality police, the fact that it has made a concession apparent for all to see under the weight of pressure from the protests is exceptionally significant. This is a hopeless attempt to contain those protests. The decision itself remains quite ambiguous…

There has been much media speculation about a rapprochement between Syria and Türkiye. Russian officials, including the Kremlin spokesman and the Russian presidential envoy to Syria last Friday said Moscow is trying to arrange a meeting between Presidents Erdogan and Assad. I don’t expect to see a…

“The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming” is a 1966 American film narrating the Cold War tension with the story of a Soviet submarine that got stuck on a sandbar off the coast of New England. “The Chinese are coming”, however, is what a hotel receptionist told me to justify the lack of…