World News Insights: Opinion Articles

Political opponents are usually too quick to label each other “anti-science.” But the label is entirely deserved when it comes to the US Congress, which has spent months denying a White House request for billions in additional Covid-19 research funds. There’s still so much to learn about the…

Prime Minister Boris Johnson will be remembered for Britain’s exit from the European Union long after the world has forgotten the tousled hair, the quotations in Homeric Greek, the fibs, fabrications and scandals — not to mention the time he got stuck on a zip line while serving as London mayor,…

The Federal Reserve’s runway for raising interest rates to tackle the worst inflation in 40 years just got a little bit longer after a Labor Department report Friday showed unemployment remained near generational lows in June. That means the Fed is likely to deliver on another 75-basis-point…

Samsung Electronics Co. reported just enough earnings data Thursday to tease us about what might be heading our way. Second quarter revenue and operating profit at the South Korean Goliath portend a tough second half for global technology hardware manufacturers. Sales pipped estimates by a…

No single term is as ubiquitous in the strategy documents of the free world today as “Indo-Pacific.” And yet the phrase never appeared in defense white papers or summit readouts two decades ago. The geopolitical, geo-economic, and military links between these two great oceans, as well as the…

Japan has been brought to a standstill by the news that former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe died after being shot on the campaign trail for Sunday’s upper house elections. A lone gunman attacked Abe, who was pronounced dead at a hospital in Nara from wounds in his chest and neck. This is a tragedy…

As a shorthand phrase “the war in Ukraine” may please headline writers and politicians keen on facile simplifications. The phrase gives the impression that the war is going on in a remote place called Ukraine and only tangentially affects the rest of the world. The rest of the world is divided into…

One of the world’s biggest battery companies is mulling a reversal on a $1.3 billion project to churn out electric vehicle powerpacks in Arizona. South Korea’s LG Energy Solution Ltd. cited surging costs and slowing demand as it now rethinks the investment announced in April. That’s a blow to…

Responding to news indicating that he backed off from his electoral promise to relinquish Saudi Arabia, US President Joe Biden initially replied by saying that he might visit Israel but probably not the Kingdom. Later, following the leak of further confirmed news on a potential visit to Riyadh, he…

Billionaires who get on the wrong side of the law aren’t an easy object of sympathy. The trial of Xiao Jianhua merits attention, though, even if its subject may not be deserving. The circumstances and conduct of the case have ramifications that go beyond the fate of this one Chinese-Canadian tycoon…

This time last year I visited Bab Al-Hawa, the last crossing on the Turkish-Syrian border through which the UN is authorized to deliver vital aid into north-west Syria. I saw first-hand how important the UN’s role is for getting aid to millions of Syrians on Turkey’s border. UN aid access is a…

The global cybersecurity community was set alight this week by news that data on more than 1 billion people were leaked from a Shanghai police database. The implications could be wide-ranging, yet the most astounding aspect of this case may be the fact that it likely wasn’t a hack that caused it,…