World News Insights: Opinion Articles

How to respond to climate change is often postulated as the central question of our time, and while that’s undeniably important, I have another nomination: How will we stop our new and often splendid technologies from being weaponized against us? I use the term weaponization quite literally —…

There is a foundational contradiction, rarely ever referred to, in the narrative Hezbollah and its supporters have developed about themselves. They say, at the same time, sometimes with the same phrase, that they are defending Lebanon. They have volunteered to take this task upon themselves, paying…

“In the beginning was the Word.” John was exaggerating in his Gospel — there had been rather a lot going on even before words. But he was on to something. Whenever humanity took a leap, words weren’t far. They first became the Next Big Thing during the Stone Age. Once we started enunciating and…

If Russia invades Ukraine, President Vladimir Putin will face an immediate and difficult choice: how far to go. Most analysts believe he will probably move forward with an invasion, but is likely to have his military stop within the pro-Russian enclaves of southeastern Ukraine. This would allow him…

I was surprised to see the news this week that the F.D.A. may be getting closer to authorizing a Covid vaccine for children under 5. Why surprised? Because Pfizer and its partner, BioNTech, put out a less-than-crystal-clear news release in December, helpfully encapsulated by The Times’s Apoorva…

When scientists in South Africa noticed an uptick in Covid-19 cases in the Gauteng Province last November, they began investigating the source. These researchers and others in Botswana quickly discovered the Omicron variant and heroically shared their discovery with the rest of the world. And yet…

Two weeks ago, ISIS launched its biggest attack in Syria and Iraq since its territorial defeat nearly three years ago, in March 2019. According to the Syrian Democratic Forces, as many as 300 ISIS militants launched an assault on al-Sina Prison in Hasakeh city late on January 20. Two suicide…

History is a powerful weapon: Just ask Vladimir Putin, who is using it as part of his escalating campaign to undermine an independent Ukraine. And Putin isn’t the only leader who is invoking — and abusing — the past as a means of asserting global influence. Geopolitical authority often begins with…

Senator Ben Ray Lujan, a New Mexico Democrat, suffered a stroke last week. He’s expected to make a full recovery and to return to Washington in a few weeks. Until then, the Democrats won’t be at full strength, which is causing a fair amount of panic among some observers. After all, the party…

Facebook parent Meta Platforms Inc. has suffered a string of public challenges in the past year as regulators intensified their scrutiny of the company and Apple rolled out a privacy feature that crimped a key source of user data. But as Meta’s wobbly revenue outlook made clear Wednesday, the…

From the way people have worried about it, you might think that the world’s value chains have been in turmoil for much of the past two years. Searches for the term “supply chain” on Google roughly doubled between June and October, when they briefly overtook “interest rates” as a topic of concern…

Two years ago, on days like today, we would stand before the throne of cancer, the emperor of all diseases, with fear and awe. That was the case for many years. Today, a new visitor has come to Earth and is fighting for cancer's throne. It is COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus. The…