World News Insights: Opinion Articles

Beijing promoted its bid for the 2022 Winter Olympics seven years ago with a video showing skiers and snowboarders performing under crisp blue skies. Clean air was a bold promise, and one that the host city is struggling to fulfill. Two weeks before the opening ceremonies, air pollution levels…

Despite the tragic state of Lebanon, a farcical movement can be seen by conjuring up a past that still exists and is expanding: Since its founding, the Free Patriotic Movement has demanded the “reclamation of Christians’ rights” and going back to the pre-Taif Agreement (1989) days. That means that…

Reuters quoted the lead US nuclear negotiator, Special Envoy for Iran Robert Malley, as saying that his country was unlikely to reach an agreement with Iran in Vienna, unless Tehran releases four US citizens it is holding as hostages. “They’re separate and we’re pursuing both of them. But I will…

The global coalition declared victory against ISIS in Iraq in December 2017 and in Syria in March 2019. ISIS lost territorial control but it did not disappear. A great number of militants were killed. Those who were captured alive were put into prisons like the one in Hasaka. Some managed to…

The Atlantic’s Conor Friedersdorf asks: “You can appoint any American citizen to one term as president...so long as your choice has never run for president before. Who do you appoint to the White House and why?” This sparked … let’s just say that political scientists on Twitter were less than…

Technology stocks have been gyrating lately as investors assess the effects of rising inflation, anticipated rate increases from the Federal Reserve and a possible slowdown in consumer spending. Yet Microsoft Corp.’s latest earnings underscore why the company still looks like a safe bet over the…

At some point in the last 30 years, the concept of the “free world” fell out of favor. Maybe it seemed dated once the Cold War ended. Or an afterthought in an era in which economic development, not political freedom, became the primary measure of human progress. Or too smug in an American…

Each time a new variant of the coronavirus emerges, the world follows a similar pattern. Scientists share the discovery, and panic ensues. Not enough is done between each wave to prevent or prepare for the next one. Omicron caught much of the world off guard. Not by its existence — that’s what…

One of the hardest challenges in geopolitics is figuring out how to conduct a successful retreat. We witnessed that reality last summer in Afghanistan, when the Biden administration made the correct strategic choice — cutting our losses instead of escalating to preserve a morally bankrupt status…

Some people on the political right love robots and hate labor unions. Some people on the political left are the opposite: They hate robots and love labor unions. Then there’s David Autor, a labor economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He loves both. Automation will destroy some…

As Covid-19’s omicron wave begins to subside, one thing seems pretty clear: After it has passed, the number of Americans who are still immunologically naive to Covid-19 — that is, they’ve been neither infected by it nor vaccinated against it — will be quite small. How small? By my rough estimate…

In his 1993 biography of Isaac Newton, Richard Westfall argues that parts of Newton’s watershed work, the Principia, are “nothing short of deliberate fraud.” True or not, it is clear that Newton made compromises in service to his vision. And he was not the only famous scientist who would do almost…