World News Insights: Opinion Articles

Twitter Inc.’s shares are rising after another weak earnings performance. While it’s tempting to play down the reaction as just a relief rally after the stock’s recent plunge, there are legitimate grounds to be more optimistic about the social media company. Yes, the perennially underachieving…

Browsing the internet has never really been free. Each time you visit a website, a silent auction for your eyeballs is conducted to show you an ad that effectively makes you pay with your personal information. Location, birthday, browsing data and more are broadcast to hundreds of vendors within a…

States across the US have dropped their mask mandates this week, worrying Americans who think they’re still needed and cheering people who are ready to go “back to normal.” Both groups need to take a deep breath: Dropping mask mandates isn’t the same thing as ignoring Covid-19. Masks have been…

“Will Russia invade Ukraine?” has become the biggest guessing game in Washington. Most US officials apparently think the answer is “yes” — and soon, as National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan warned on Friday. Russia continues to deny any intention to invade. Yet if Russian President Vladimir…

Nothing is more complicated than distressing neighbors. If they live near your home, you have no choice but to leave, moving to take up residence elsewhere, whatever the cost. However, what would you do if you lived next to an aggressive country, given that moving your country elsewhere isn’t…

There were no encouraging signs in the Labor Department’s report Thursday that showed the consumer price index surged a greater-than-forecast 7.5% in January from a year earlier, marking a fresh four-decade high. The gains were broad and deep, suggesting that inflation is becoming entrenched and…

There has been no shortage of explanations for the sudden, spectacular swoon in Facebook’s stock value last week. Meta, Facebook’s parent company, said in an earnings report that its user growth had stalled. Young people, its most valuable demographic, keep spending time on TikTok, the irresistible…

In his lightning trip to Beijing last week Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a "Strategic Partnership" treaty with his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping. The event coincided with the 20th anniversary of another "Strategic Partnership" deal that he had signed in 2002 with the then US President…

While the world waits and waits to see whether Donald Trump will seek the presidency again, it is worth looking back at one of the enduring puzzles of his time in office: why he failed to achieve some of his key goals on immigration even when the opportunity to win seemed to be handed to him. …

Hate speech is reverberating from India to France, and victims of ethnic and sectarian violence are falling from Ethiopia to Myanmar. Hundreds of thousands of Rohingya and Uyghurs have been expelled from their homes, and the Amharas and Muslims of India are being persecuted because of differences…

The visuals on the split screen this week made a striking contrast. On one side, the leaders of Germany and the US sat in front of the fireplace of the Oval Office, their body language cordial and relaxed, their messages coordinated. Facing the press later, Olaf Scholz, the German chancellor,…

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 —…