World News Insights: Opinion Articles

“I am scared I’ll die anytime,” the teenager said in his 11-second voice message. “Please help me.” He was a human shield for ISIS, one of about 150 foreign minors taken hostage in a prison in northeastern Syria last month. Even if he survived the siege, his prospects were bleak. While the West…

Military deployments and maneuvers from Russia and the US and its allies are clear signs of further escalation, giving rise to fears of eventual military action. Russia has Ukraine surrounded from all possible sides, including Belarus and the Sea of Azov. The US and its allies are also deploying…

At least three factors gave Zionism, as the Jewish nationalism, its loathsome face: firstly, it was one of the nationalisms of Eastern and Southern Europe that came late, born tense and hostile; secondly, it was shaped by its displacement and settlement project, forcing out the original inhabitants…

He stood alone at night before the map. The decisive appointment is not made by voters. It is an appointment by the spirit of the nation that is awaiting a strong man on whom it can hang its concerns and hopes. A long deep history has charged him with an important task that he will not hesitate in…

President Joe Biden’s White House usually gets the nuts and bolts of the presidency right. Recently, one example of getting it very wrong was in the news, and it’s worth considering what lessons it holds. The story: White House science adviser Eric Lander, who had cabinet status, resigned after…

People think they know misinformation when they see it. But I’ve spent more than a year studying medical misinformation as part of a Pulliam Fellowship and have come to find the term isn’t particularly enlightening. The dictionary calls it “false information, especially that which is deliberately…

“There’s no value in digging shallow wells in a hundred places. Decide on one place and dig deep.” This advice comes from the ancient Yoga Sutras as interpreted by Swami Satchidananda, an Indian guru who died in 2002. The trouble is, the insight is only half-true, and therefore in need of an…

It is conventional wisdom that misinformation — particularly about Covid and vaccines, and often enabled by social and other media — is worse than it’s ever been. It’s hard to measure misinformation over time. But the premise that there was ever a golden age of accurate information, especially…

Local media is rife with speculation about Hong Kong leaning on the mainland to rein in the latest Covid-19 outbreak, with cases rising to record numbers since the start of the pandemic. Over the last week, the government has severely tightened restrictions on just about every aspect of life in…

Democrats have been frustrated in their hopes to pass a comprehensive voting rights bill. But with Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia on board, things are looking up for the most important voting rights legislation that is actually possible right now: the Electoral Count Modernization Act. The…

The first shipment of liquefied hydrogen, which recently left Australia for Japan, heralded a new era in energy technology and trade. It is true that the extraction of hydrogen by electrolysis is not a new discovery, and the properties of hydrogen as an efficient energy carrier are well known;…

Last Wednesday, during the mass service on Saint Maroun's Day attended by most Lebanese leaders, Maronite Patriarch Bechara al-Rahi looked into the eyes of President Michel Aoun and said, with an assuaging tone, that, “We are struggling together so that Lebanon does not continue to be a…