World News Insights: Opinion Articles

You don’t see them, but they’re there: hundreds of thousands of people sitting at keyboards for hours on end to keep online services humming along seamlessly. It can seem like the Internet operates entirely automatically, but it doesn’t. Humans are often hidden behind the scenes, working in real…

Before Jack Ma got into trouble with Beijing for his free-wheeling ways, there was Wang Jianlin. Once China’s richest man, the founder of commercial real estate giant Dalian Wanda Group Co. was forced to unload trophy assets by the government after an acquisition spree that hit an estimated $16…

A question that often preoccupied political thought: ought non-democrats be allowed to take part in the democratic process? A more glaring question faces countries like Iraq and Lebanon today: Ought armed organizations that can impose their will by force be allowed to take part in the…

The omicron variant spreads so rapidly that sometimes it feels as if resistance is futile. It’s disheartening to hear of omicron infecting people who are up-to-date on their shots and wear an N95 mask every time they leave home. Even some well-known public-health experts are getting infected. But…

It has the feel of a surrealist watershed, the moment that brought home the nature of Hong Kong’s dystopian journey more vividly than any other. Perhaps we will look back one day, when this is all over, and remember where we were when they decided to kill the hamsters. The scientific basis for…

The snafu over 5G cellular service at US airports is unfortunate and unnecessary. From what I can tell, most of the blame falls on a bureaucratic battle between sister agencies, the Federal Aviation Administration and the Federal Communications Commission. Politics trumped economics. The latest:…

It’s a shame that Ukraine was largely absent from talks last week among American, European and Russian diplomats. Especially since it is our future that is at stake — and Kyiv’s asks might come as a surprise. Our country is not brimming with hope about a Western savior or a NATO rescue in the…

It is easy to welcome the decision of the court in Koblenz that convicted Anwar Raslan of responsibility for torture, rape and murder at Branch 251 in Damascus. When I was ambassador in Damascus I heard from Syrians about several detention centers, among them Branch 251. We knew intellectually…

In June a statistic floated across my desk that startled me. In 2020, the number of miles Americans drove fell 13 percent because of the pandemic, but the number of traffic deaths rose 7 percent. I couldn’t figure it out. Why would Americans be driving so much more recklessly during the pandemic…

Deaths among working-age Americans were up more than 40% over the pre-pandemic norm last summer and fall, the chief executive officer of an Indiana-based insurance company said late last month. His assertion has been reverberating around social media since, inspiring a much-shared Twitter thread…

The current and clear state of discrepancy between the Arabs and their neighboring countries did not suddenly emerge. It simply reflected a path that affected almost most of the interactions of the past decade and was expressed by the growing appetite of Israel, Iran, Turkey, and Ethiopia, to…

Forecasts for a second year of strong global growth face two main dangers: the health of China’s economy and the prospect of much higher US interest rates. How the world’s commercial poles navigate these risks will determine whether 2021’s rapid expansion was a blip or whether the recovery will…