World News Insights: Opinion Articles

I asked a friend, a diplomat in Moscow, about the scale of Russian losses in Ukraine. He replied that discussing this matter is forbidden, and that the figure is considered a state secret. Russia is different from America, he explained. The mother of a soldier killed in the war, for example, does…

In its defense of Israel’s founding as a state, the Zionist movement spun countless false tales: from “A land without a people for a people without a land,” to the claim that the Palestinians had sold their land and thereby left their country voluntarily in 1948. We know that the “New - Israeli -…

I remember how we learned of Imruu al-Qais’s response to the news that Banu Asad had killed his father, the king of Kindah at school: “Today, wine; tomorrow, serious matters...” In a sense, there is a parallel, though not identical, saying in the Levant: “The drunken stupor is gone, and now the…

On the eve of the launch of Lebanese-Israeli negotiations under full US auspices and, we might add, with US “engineering” of the launching and management of the negotiation track, Lebanon was facing three possible scenarios amid both vertical - in terms of firepower - and horizontal - with the…

The 29th St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF 2026) concluded on Saturday in the historic Russian city of St. Petersburg. The forum, which has been held since its establishment in 1997, brought together participants from 130 countries and territories, led by China and the United…

Are the artificial intelligence models available to the public really the most advanced versions that exist? The versions available to ordinary users are astonishing in both their capabilities and their rapid development. Yet there are elite versions that the public has not seen. The White House…

In decades of journalism, part of it as reporter covering a dozen or so wars in the Indian Subcontinent, Indochina, the Middle East, Africa and Europe, I have never been as puzzled by media coverage of a conflict as I am today with how the Iran-US-Israel war is depicted in much of the mainstream…

Were you to ask me, “Can a university create a market out of nothing?” I would answer: yes, it can. A university can indeed do that. However, intelligent people understand that this does not mean turning a university from an educational institution into a commercial enterprise. Nor do we mean that…

Looking at the newspapers on display at a newsstand, my eyes fell on a copy of an old issue of the Kuwaiti magazine Al-Arabi that generations have grown up with since its launch in 1958. I remember how it used to be sold in the Egyptian market for one and a quarter pounds, meaning that the…

In a climate of disputes reflected in positions and statements over the past few days, several Sudanese political forces have gathered for consultative meetings in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa, from June 3 to 5. Their stated aim is to try to make progress on efforts to end the war and launch…

Wisdom has it that some may try to obscure the truth or diminish its importance, but it remains an undeniable fact. This year’s Hajj season showed that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia continues to offer a model in managing Hajj and serving the pilgrims, drawing on the experience it has accumulated and…

When will this story end? And why do its protagonists keep sneaking onto the Lebanese stage? It is a story of love and resentment of the most beautiful Arab country, the country that brought modernity to the Levant. From writing and publishing to dictionaries and encyclopedias, from journalism,…