World News Insights: Opinion Articles

Every Chinese leader stamps their mark on the country they rule for five, 10, (or 15) years. Xi Jinping’s brand is indelible, but the technology companies which have powered China’s economic rise over the past decade will be searching for clues on how to navigate his third term. When Xi took…

Unrealistic as it was technically, the idea of a pan-Asian currency always had some political support: Since 2005, the Japanese have published the exchange value of something called the Asian Monetary Unit, a precursor to what would one day become the region’s equivalent of the euro. The debt…

For some, it is difficult to let go of old clothes when they become worn out, frayed, and unwearable. The reason is a sentimental attachment they have for these clothes and an old familiarity with them, which makes disposing of them akin to ripping out part of the person’s past and memory and…

The foreign ministers of the European Union will discuss on Monday the transfer of Iranian drones to Russia and their use in Ukraine. They might also agree on future sanctions tied to the matter, according to Reuters. The delay in the response of the Europeans and, before them the Americans, in…

What do Neanderthals have to do with medicine? More than enough, it turns out, to earn Svante Pääbo Monday’s Nobel Prize in medicine for sequencing the Neanderthal genome. It may sound more like a feat worthy of an anthropology prize, but scientists are already using Neanderthal DNA to make…

The wave of protests in Iran ignited by the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini on September 17 continues to this day. The number of people killed is unknown but it is said to be close to 200 and maybe even more. In fact, this is one of the many crises Iran has experienced throughout the years…

The big economic news of the week was, of course, Thursday’s report on consumer prices. And there’s no way to spin that report: It was ugly. There has been a lot of buzz from private-sector observers to the effect that inflation is rolling over, but there was no sign of that in the official numbers…

Just a few months ago, the concept of using artificial intelligence to generate unique artwork seemed cutting-edge and futuristic. Pretty soon it will be as mundane as running a Google search. Microsoft Corp. announced this week that it was making the most of its $1 billion investment in OpenAI,…

President Biden shocked me when he said on October 6 that we are closest to a nuclear war since 1962 and the Cuba Missile Crisis. Biden pointed to President Putin and stated that it is hard to stop an escalation from using smaller, tactical nuclear weapons to total nuclear Armageddon. Excuse me,…

More profound than an understanding between two belligerents, the Palestinian-Israeli Oslo Accords, at their core, are an approach. The Accords changed the rules, turning them from rules governing the conflict to rules governing the settlement. What Palestine’s Oslo Accords and Lebanon’s recent…

As the uprising in Iran enters its fourth week speculation about its future is rife. Participants insist that they are on the path to victory, achieving regime change. They cite a number of reasons. To start with this is the first time that a national uprising isn’t about any particular…

Year three of the Covid-19 pandemic is now more than halfway over, believe it or not — with a fall surge likely on the way. But the emergency phase is far enough in the country’s rearview mirror that the experience of the pandemic thus far can be examined a little more clinically and a little less…