World News Insights: Opinion Articles

Twitter has never been a place for rational, nuanced speech. Expect it to get much, much worse. The decision by Twitter’s board of directors on Monday afternoon to accept a takeover bid from Elon Musk means the company thinks the social media company would be best served by the ownership of a…

France can breathe again. On Sunday, President Emmanuel Macron was re-elected, taking 58.5 percent of the vote to Marine Le Pen’s 41.5 percent. After a couple of agonizing weeks where the country contemplated the possibility of the presidency falling to the far right, the result seemed to herald…

In a rare convergence, America’s voters are not merely unhappy with their political leadership, but awash in fears about economic security, border security, international security and even physical security. Without a U-turn by the Biden administration, this fear will generate a wave election like…

Turkish President Recep Tayyib Erdogan has many critics in the United States, but his careful balance on Ukraine gives lessons on how diplomacy can change discomfort into political advantage. Erdogan has recaptured influence in the North Atlantic alliance despite its continued close economic…

A new and unexpected obstacle to President Joe Biden’s green ambitions has emerged: a tiny solar-power company based in San Jose. Auxin Solar Inc., which accounts for all of 2% of US solar-module manufacturing, recently persuaded the Commerce Department to open a potentially devastating trade…

Mark Zuckerberg gave his social media giant Facebook a mountain to climb when he switched focus to the metaverse, an abstract concept whose future customers must open their wallets for a relatively experimental technology. His strategy till now: Heavily subsidize the cost of its Oculus Quest…

Inflation is often viewed as an economic phenomenon, with mostly economic effects. Policy makers today worry about what inflation will do to the housing market; they express concern about government borrowing costs. They might note changes in individual economic behavior: a shopper pinching pennies…

It looks as if Twitter Inc. will sell itself to Elon Musk for $43 billion, which would make the deal one of the largest leveraged buyouts in Wall Street history and give Tesla Inc.’s steward a powerful social media perch. The math is sketchy, however, as are Musk’s intentions. Both of those…

Syria has historically been associated with the idea of unity- just as Algeria has been associated with the idea of revolution, Palestine with resistance, and Lebanon with freedom. The late Algerian President, Ahmed Ben Bella, is said to have claimed, when the Syrians welcoming him in Damascus…

The employee was in a state of panic. He couldn’t believe the incoming sentences. He read them again and again. The president must be awakened no matter how tired he is. Information poured from the intelligence and the chief general. The master of the White House woke up to the horrific news. It is…

The return of inflation for the first time in my lifetime also means the return of difficult short-term tradeoffs in economic policy for the first time in the 21st century. To put it another way: The era of free-lunch politics is over — and it’s Republicans, even more than Democrats, who will have…

For the past decade, artificial intelligence has been used to recognize faces, rate creditworthiness and predict the weather. At the same time, increasingly sophisticated hacks using stealthier methods have escalated. The combination of AI and cybersecurity was inevitable as both fields sought…