World News Insights: Opinion Articles

The question used to be: “Have you had Covid?” Now it’s: “How many times have you had it?” Both of us have had a Covid (re)infection in recent months. Many of us know people currently sick with Covid or recently recovered. In the week ending June 24, an estimated 1 in 30 people in the UK (some…

The world’s biggest car company, Toyota Motor Corp., reluctantly released an electric vehicle in May. Weeks later, it recalled 2,700 of them because there was a risk their wheels — the most fundamental component — would fall off. If that’s the level of quality and safety traditional auto giants are…

The Russian war on Ukraine dominated the two summits that brought Western countries together in the German province of Bavaria and the Spanish city of Madrid. G7 leaders sought to show their unity as they declared their support for Ukrainian President Zelensky and affirmed that they are standing by…

India’s attempt to reform military recruitment — which has set off political convulsions that show no signs of abating — once again shows that its aspirations to superpower status are no match for a below-par economy. India’s military — particularly its army — is antiquated in organization and…

Early bicycles came in a variety of sizes, shapes and styles, and they had colorful nicknames. The “dandy horse” had no pedals and was propelled by the rider’s feet pushing the ground — essentially wheel-assisted walking. The “penny farthing” had pedals, but the rider sat above a huge front wheel…

While Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping are marketing their authoritarian rules as alternatives to a “moribund” Western democratic system, the Khomeinist mullahs in Tehran are also throwing their hat, sorry turban, into the ring as contenders for leading a new…

Japanese virologist Hitoshi Oshitani has an impressive record fighting pandemics. As one of the leading experts advising the government during Covid, he helped formulate a strategy that has kept deaths in the country with the world’s oldest population lower than any other developed nation, without…

There are things in life that are fated to be governed by facts and figures, with sentiment playing no role at all. Some of these facts and figures may be painful, but to dress them up is to fabricate them, and doing so would harm the party concerned before anyone else. One of the most…

He’s the son of a brutal dictator, fudged his own educational credentials, and his family owes up to $3.6 billion in estate taxes, yet he still won a landslide election to become the Philippines’s next president. When Bongbong Marcos gets sworn in Thursday, the 64-year-old might want to add Chinese…

The leaders of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization countries are in Madrid for the alliance’s most consequential summit in a generation. NATO appears to have overcome Turkish diplomatic blackmail to bring in two new members, Sweden and Finland. It must approve a new concept for transatlantic…

In 2033, a US spacecraft will return to Earth carrying the second cache of rocks ever collected from the surface of Mars. The first cache? It will have been collected by China two years earlier, in 2031, according to plans released last week by one of China's top space scientists. Of course,…

People no longer know what to do about the Covid pandemic. Part of the problem is the very language we use to talk about it. Words such as “breakthrough,” “booster” and even “sick” mean different things to different people — and to experts and the general public. The solution is for experts to be…