World News Insights: Opinion Articles

With this week’s retirement of Roger Federer coming hard on the heels of last week’s news that Serena Williams had played her final match, encomia have rung out from every corner lamenting the loss of the two greatest tennis players in history. But were they? In every sport, we constantly hear…

It is difficult to keep up with the Israeli military strikes targeting Syria. Whether they hit the airport, its surroundings, or other sites, it seems that only intelligence services or specialized research centers have the capacity to account for them all. This is not the point. Indeed, the…

The latest development in Sweden was not granted the significance it deserves: Together, the right-wing parties won the parliamentary elections, albeit by a narrow margin (176 to 173 seats). The Swedish Social Democratic Party, which had been the leading party in the ruling coalition, still won…

On my desk I have a scuffed silver coin that I had to rummage through a box to find. It was given to me in 1977 — there was one for every child in my British primary school — to commemorate the Silver Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth II. I was 7 and she had already been on the throne for 25 years. My…

Ukrainian forces have reconquered over 3,000 square kilometers of territory over the past week — more than all the territory Russia had added to its occupation in the six months since the start of the war. The Ukrainian flag is suddenly flying again over numerous towns and villages, and the…

Since day one of the crisis in Syria, Iran has been directly engaged and present on the frontlines. Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps, Lebanese Hezbollah, and other Shia militia from Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan have been an essential part of the Assad regime’s war effort. Assad’s other big…

A new study has upended the way researchers think about how air pollution causes lung cancer. The work cracks open a whole new way of thinking about certain cancers and how to treat and even prevent them. It also suggests environmental agencies may have good reason to impose much stricter limits on…

Perhaps you didn’t notice, but back in November, Kamala Harris made history by becoming the first woman to hold presidential power. OK, it was only for an hour and a half. But still. Joe Biden temporarily — very temporarily — transferred executive power to his vice president when he was…

Many are shocked by the submissiveness and passivity of the so-called Axis of Resistance in addressing the ongoing Israeli air and missile strikes targeting this Axis’ military bases in Syria. Adding to their bewilderment is that this servility persisted even as the rules of escalation changed,…

In Iranian mythology, partly reflected in Ferdowsi’s Shahnameh, the national epic, the advice given to young men who aspire to become great warriors is to never reveal their strategy and avoid boastful talk. Rustam, Gudarz, Geeve, Bahman and other heroes of Iranian epic are never seen spilling the…

If 2021 was the breakthrough year for mRNA vaccines, then 2022 may be the breakthrough year for artificial intelligence. So far there have been major advances in text generation and image generation, and now investor Nat Friedman is predicting big developments in AI personal voice assistants. More…

Dmytro Kuleba, Ukraine’s foreign minister, said it best in a tweet this week: “What is Berlin afraid of that Kyiv is not?” Kuleba and his compatriots, along with their friends all over the world, are celebrating the heroic rout by Ukrainian forces of the Russian invaders in Kharkiv over the…