World News Insights: Opinion Articles

Since Elon Musk became the owner of Twitter last week, there’s been a brouhaha over his plans for it, especially the possibility of various fees, like one for verification badges. Those are the blue check marks that let people know an account belongs to whom it says it belongs. They have mostly…

Zeynep Tufekci

After long rounds of negotiations following the Climate Summit in Glasgow last year, world leaders will meet tomorrow in Sharm El-Sheikh at the 27th summit (COP27). After two days of speeches, in which states present their visions and set their conditions, with leaders setting the stage for…

Najib Saab

Tesla Inc. would have delivered more cars in the most recent quarter but for a shortage of boats. It’s having problems finding vessel capacity out of Shanghai. No wonder: China recently overtook Germany as the world’s second-largest auto exporter. China’s auto exports rose over 50% in the first…

Anjani Trivedi

Artificial intelligence has been moving so fast that even the scientists are finding it hard to keep up. In the past year, machine learning algorithms have started to generate rudimentary movies and stunning fake photographs. They’re even writing code. In the future, we’ll probably look back on…

Parmy Olson

Elon Musk is now the proud owner of Twitter. The danger here is not that we have a rogue billionaire in our midst — that has happened before, and it will happen again — but that this one will be in control of what he has rightly referred to as our “digital town square.” Musk is the face of 21st…

David Nasaw

The protests that have been ongoing in Iran for the past two months are not expected to lead to radical changes to the nature of the Iranian regime in the short or even medium term. However, the protests sparked by the death of Mahsa Amini, which have turned into a social movement, have begun…

Mustafa Fahs

The Brazilian elections have just concluded. Former President Lula has accomplished a dramatic comeback by winning the elections for the Brazilian presidency. Elections that received the most international attention of all Brazilian elections since the restoration of democracy in 1985. This is…

Ramzy Ezzeldin Ramzy

The kitchen is the same, as is the chef. The ingredients are also the same. But when the witches’ brew is served in the restaurant, Chez Ayatollah, would-be clients reject it in disgust. This is the image that comes to mind as the Islamic Republic in Iran struggles to crush the latest popular…

Amir Taheri

El Buen Samaritano, an Episcopal outreach ministry in Texas, serves the east side of Austin, the poorer of the two sides of the city split by I-35. There are fewer services there, including many neighborhoods that don’t have a health center. The population is mainly people of color, many whose…

Bryce Covert

Harlan Krumholz, a cardiologist at the Yale School of Medicine, says he worries about two kinds of long Covid. There’s the obvious version where people suffer prolonged virus symptoms like fatigue, and a stealthier version in which people recover yet carry an added risk of blood clots and strokes. …

Faye Flam

The presidential term of Michel Aoun, his party the Free Patriotic Movement, and his son-in-law Gebran Bassil is over. Characterizations of the past six years in which he ruled can be divided into two main categories: depreciation and demonization. Claims that he and his entourage are responsible…

Hussam Itani

The Covid pandemic still isn’t over, but it has gone remarkably flat. It’s been nearly a year since Omicron was discovered in South Africa and Botswana, and no new variant of concern has been declared since then by the World Health Organization. That’s a notable interlude, since five were…

David Wallace-Wells