World News Insights: Opinion Articles

From container-ship pileups at West Coast ports to the Ever Given’s viral weeklong blockage of the Suez Canal to shortages ranging from the quirky (cream cheese) to the catastrophic (semiconductors), the supply chain has never been as top of mind as it was in 2021. Case in point: The best…

Forget the debate over how scared we should be of omicron. What matters is putting our energy into solutions that work — taking action that matters on a personal level and demanding effective actions from world leaders. Scientists are already scrambling to learn how well our existing vaccines…

The consensus among the foreign ministers of the European troika taking part in the nuclear deal negotiations in Vienna (France, Britain and Germany) is that the second phase of the seventh round of negotiations, which resumed Thursday, is the last chance for Tehran to return to compliance with the…

When I was 7 years old, my best friend was a kid named Rob. I can’t recall most of the particulars of Rob’s life, but he seemed to be the luckiest kid at our school. His lunches were always packed with sugar, and his room was filled with toys. This, of course, built up quite a bit of resentment…

Covid-19 continues to call the shots in our economy. This past summer, the Delta variant slowed growth and juiced up inflation. After Delta receded, growth rebounded. With the Omicron variant now spreading across the globe, the next few weeks will give us a sense of how much economic peril lies…

Two widely followed surveys “significantly overestimated” how many American adults got their first dose of a Covid-19 vaccine last spring, says an article in the scientific journal Nature that was published online on Wednesday. The surveys have large numbers of participants but nevertheless aren…

As a writer, podcaster and economist — not necessarily in that order — I receive numerous emails asking for advice. People ask for my opinion not only on economic questions, but also about what kind of job they should get, if they should return to school, whether they should marry a given person,…

«The greatest achievement of Imam Khomeini’s Islamic Revolution!” This is how the daily Kayhan in Tehran, believed to reflect the views of Supreme Guide Ali Khamenei, describes what it labels a “Resistance Front” led by Iran. The paper’s editorial does not say why it needs to raise the…

Amazon.com Inc.’s ubiquitous cloud-computing network, the spine for a lot of digital communications and transactions across the US, went dark for several hours on Tuesday. Here are some things that might have freaked you out: • You were jogging and couldn’t order your Roomba to vacuum the…

In 2014, Winston Chiu quit his successful career in private equity to groom his six-year-old daughter for greatness. Now 12, she’s a golf and tennis sensation who has qualified for junior tournaments all over the world. Through the years, Chiu has attended not just every competition, but every…

On Monday, the White House announced that American officials will boycott the Beijing Olympics in February over China’s human-rights record. Australia, Canada and the UK soon joined in. Other democracies will likely follow. Predictably, China has promised “resolute countermeasures.” Whatever…

I don’t know if I will come to love China one day. I don’t like ambiguity in life, be it individual, group, or nation. The late, beloved Amin al-Hafez always returned from parliamentary conferences around the world irked by the Chinese delegations. He said his Chinese colleagues would laugh, or…