World News Insights: Opinion Articles

In a press conference on Thursday, following the killing of ISIS’s leader in Idlib, Syria, US President Joe Biden said that the operation “sent a strong message to terrorists around the world: we will come after you.” After announcing the killing of Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurashi in a counter…

This year, astronauts will likely complete construction of Tiangong, China’s answer to the International Space Station. It’s the next step in China’s progress toward becoming a major space power. It also looks like a bet that the US lacks the planning and willpower to replace its much bigger…

Ever since the roadshow known as “nuke talks with Iran” started almost 15 years ago we have witnessed an event unique in diplomatic annals. On the surface the whole process is designed to deal with something simple: Iran should comply with the terms of Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) of which…

Alphabet Inc. and Meta Platforms Inc., the world’s biggest digital advertising platforms, once again raked in astonishing amounts of money in 2021. “So what else is new?” you’re probably wondering. Almost every year for the past decade, the companies also known as Google and Facebook set profit…

International-relations scholar Dalia Dassa Kaye has a question after reading a New York Times story about the possibility of the US rejoining and reviving the nuclear-weapons agreement with Iran: This piece says the restoration of the JCPOA would “almost certainly become a campaign issue in the…

Thirty-one years after the liberation of Kuwait, many people still think America undertook that operation because of oil. Richard Haas who was the top Middle East official at the White House in his memoirs recalled that President Bush the father threw Iraqi forces out of Kuwait not because of oil…

Israel is an apartheid state. That is the conclusion Amnesty International reached based on irrefutable facts, and no Israeli government has a reasonable argument against Amnesty’s categorization. What Israel is doing in the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and Jerusalem, and even within its state,…

If you’re thinking of investing in obscure battery materials to take advantage of the energy transition, there’s one company you should be watching right now: Zhejiang Huayou Cobalt Co. Shares in the Shanghai-listed business have soared four fold over the past three years, to the point that it’s…

When Neil Young launched his boycott of Spotify over its hosting of popular podcaster Joe Rogan, whom the rocker accused of spreading Covid misinformation, the Polish startup FreeYourMusic sprang into action. It tweeted the hashtags #cancelspotify and #byespotify to draw attention to its main…

Predicting how Covid-19 will behave next remains notoriously hard. Predicting how humans will react is much easier, since history can be a guide. One of the most prescient articles written about the pandemic’s future was Gina Kolata’s May 2020 New York Times article “How Pandemics End,” with…

There are instances of benign interventions one country could make in another. Here are some examples of cases where that is the case: - The regime of state (A) is committing acts of genocidal against its people, so state (B) intervenes to stop it (Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, al-Assad’s Syria,…

I don’t think it is difficult to predict the response to the paper submitted by Kuwaiti Foreign Minister, Sheikh Ahmed Nasser Al-Mohammed Al Sabah, to the Lebanese officials, regarding confidence-building measures to end the crisis with the Gulf. Whoever deals with the intra-Lebanese crisis can…