World News Insights: Opinion Articles

One of cryptocurrencies' biggest selling points is that they allow people to break away from traditional banking systems. Now banks are hoping to convince you otherwise. As US regulators look more closely at the world of crypto, it's likely that American banks will soon be following their big…

The tech world was locked in a debate this week about the potential for Web3, a decentralized version of the internet underpinned by digital currency that proponents would like to see replace the current, corporate-dominated Web2. Rarely will you see geeks argue with such a religious fervor on…

Over years of following American politics, I’d come to regard Joe Biden as harmless — a back-slapper without strong conviction, given to exaggeration and the occasional outright lie, but no worse than average for a career politician and no threat to the republic. Lately I’ve been wondering if I…

Many might consider this title controversial, but it has personal and public dimensions to this author. On a personal level, it is no secret that my relationship with Iran starts at home, with my father, his relations with the revolution’s leadership early on and his ties to state institutions…

Until earlier this month, Kazakhstan, the largest of Central Asian republics to become independent after the dissolution of the Soviet Empire 30 years ago, appeared the most stable entity in the region. Under President Nursultan Nazarbayev’s iron-fist leadership it had avoided the religious…

On Christmas eve, Gazprom, the Russian state-owned natural gas giant, tweeted a rather unfestive message: Gas inventories in Europe were depleting quickly. Since then, Gazprom has been reminding the world of the trend every few days. “It should be noted that gas reserves in Europe’s UGS …

For more than two weeks, the government of Xian, a Chinese city of 13 million people, has confined residents to their homes as it tries to extinguish a Covid outbreak amounting to fewer than 2,000 infections. It's a continuation of the “zero-Covid” policy that crushed the initial outbreak in Wuhan…

Contemplating Orbs: Imperialism Edition Vladimir Putin might aspire to be the reincarnation of Peter the Great, but another model of an OG empire-builder he might want to consider is James Monroe. America’s fifth president bought Florida for roughly the modern-day price of Max Scherzer’s MLB…

Over the years, as social media companies gorged themselves on the data of billions of people to fuel vast profits, the information flow never went the other way. Now the tables are turning. One of the most promising pieces of legislation in Congress tackling tech giants’ undue influence, out of…

The United Nations initiative to hold talks to find a solution for the Sudanese crisis does not inspire much optimism. The apathy with which all parties received UN envoy Volker Perthes’ call for talks, especially the opposition, highlighted that the initiative has no practical dimension or vision…

From Russian President Vladimir Putin’s point of view, last week’s unrest in Kazakhstan was a godsend just as negotiations with the US over Russia’s security demands were about to start in Geneva. With an instant deployment of an unnecessary “peacekeeping force,” and now a planned rapid withdrawal,…

Director Adam McKay’s climate satire “Don’t Look Up” isn’t exactly subtle. The hair is big, the parody obvious, the targets as plentiful as the star-studded cast competing for space — and the planet is about to explode. The whole enterprise is a monument to anger and frustration, which may…