World News Insights: Opinion Articles

US President Biden has accepted an invitation to visit Israel in the near future, probably before the end of June. This would be his first visit to Israel and the region since he has taken office in January 2021. From the outset of the Biden administration, it was obvious that the Middle East…

This is a season — an age, really — of American pessimism. The pessimism comes in many flavors. There is progressive pessimism: The country is tilting toward MAGA-hatted fascism or a new version of “The Handmaid’s Tale.” There is conservative pessimism: The institutions, from primary schools to…

“I strongly supported Obama for President,” Elon Musk tweeted late last month, part of the spree of ideological comments accompanying his continuing takeover of Twitter, “but today’s Democratic Party has been hijacked by extremists.” Around the same time, he set the social-media platform ablaze by…

Beijing’s new requirement that government agencies ditch foreign computers and buy local is designed to wean the nation off overseas products. The move will certainly boost sales of Chinese-made PCs domestically, but it won’t do much to advance the nation’s long-held ambition to deepen its tech…

The light on the harbor; the hum of escalators on the MTR; the battered orange Ikea sofa that I will leave behind. Even the most mundane sights and sounds have become invested recently with the rare and precious significance that impending loss brings. More than 100,000 Hong Kong people have taken…

Presenting the leader as a demi-god is among the features of Lebanese cronyism. Those who present him this way are followers drawn to him by kinship loyalties, primarily sectarian, which are reinforced with services that take an array of forms, the most prominent of which is the provision of…

Bashar al-Assad conducted a secret visit to Tehran, the second since 2019. What’s the significance of its timing? Its purpose? And what does it purport, especially following efforts to remove Assad from the arms of Iran? Before answering the above questions, we must stop at two statements…

China’s consumer-tech companies are riding an endless train of trouble. Just as the government seems to be easing its regulatory crackdown, consumer fatigue — even disinterest — is setting in. At an April meeting of the Politburo, the top government policymaking body, Beijing vowed to support…

First the whiz and then the explosion a second later. One after another. One after another. I was hiding in an underground dugout — it would be difficult to call it a bunker: no solid entrance door, no proper stash of food and water. The walls were wooden and there were two sort-of beds, a…