World News Insights: Opinion Articles

The war in Ukraine revealed the sensitivity of climate agreements to wars and major geopolitical developments, especially if they affect food and energy supplies and plunge the global economy into recession. No matter how stubbornly some may try to prove the opposite, there is no denying that…

Alphabet Inc. CEO Sundar Pichai sent a surprising memo to his staff this week: “Moving forward, we need to be more entrepreneurial, working with greater urgency, sharper focus, and more hunger than we’ve shown on sunnier days,” he wrote, according to tech news site The Verge. Not only did his…

In 1984, during the darkest period of Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu’s Stalinist rule, I visited Targovishte, over an hour northwest of the capital, Bucharest, on the Wallachian plain. It was a hellish town of mud-strewn streets, a few battered cars, without any decent place to eat and garbage…

It’s getting harder for some emerging markets to hide from the dollar’s rampage. Staying on the sidelines or going slow while US interest rates climb risks further degradation of already weakened currencies — and a consequent worsening of inflation at home. To stand against this tide requires…

Russian President Vladimir Putin must be delighted that Germans, Poles, Israelis, Ukrainians and others are suddenly in each other’s hair about a historical figure named Stepan Bandera. Part of Putin’s web of lies is that Ukraine, a democratic country he attacked without provocation, is…

It may not have enough electric vehicles, powerpacks or the capital, but India has found a way towards mass electrification: swap batteries. The solution, where empty batteries can be exchanged for charged-up ones, is still in nascent stages in China, the world’s largest EV market, where it is…

The cybersecurity community was set alight last week by the announcement of new cryptographic algorithms designed to protect our digital futures. Now the race us on to roll out software and hardware that will secure computers against a threat that still only exists in theory. After a six-year…

The ways we think about the Covid pandemic have evolved with the virus: In 2020, it was a potentially deadly threat we could avoid by being careful; in 2021, it was something that was likely to infect everyone eventually; and now, it’s becoming seen as a persistent health hazard that can re-infect…

A ‘leak’ refers to material exiting a container through a crack or a hole, a gradual process by definition, or someone disclosing secret information. In Iraqi politics, however, leaks can be explained in various and divergent ways. It starts with identifying the leaker and the setting in which the…

It is hard to believe but it was only a year ago that Boris Johnson, imagining himself at the peak of glory as a political leader, was waxing lyrical about his “strategic goal” of rescuing millions of Britons out of poverty and neglect. Adopting the sobriquet of a 17th-century movement known as the…

If you lean toward supporting Russia in its invasion of Ukraine, or if you’re a pacifist convinced of the inherent criminality of armed conflict, you’ll find evidence that, for all of its adroit messaging, Ukraine’s conduct during the war is hardly impeccable. There’s the recent United Nations…

It is customary, when someone is near death, to reflect on the life that person lived: Was time spent wisely, or wasted? Were good deeds done, or harm caused? It is much the same with a political death. As Boris Johnson’s government gasps its final breaths, many of us are reflecting on how this…