World News Insights: Opinion Articles

The metaverse is coming. It was once a science-fiction fantasy, most notably in Neal Stephenson’s novel “Snow Crash,” of an all-encompassing virtual universe that would exist alongside the physical one. But technological advances have brought this transformation of human society close enough to…

Last weekend I considered what the Democratic Party should expect from politics after Covid — the hope of revived popularity for Joe Biden under return-to-normalcy conditions, the danger that the left-tilting party might be losing ground across multiple different demographic groups. Now, after an…

From time to time, there emerge those who shame “Lebanese liberals” (!?) for allying, sympathizing or going along with illiberal forces, both Lebanese and non-Lebanese. If we were to recall the initial meaning of liberalism, weakening the state and reducing the scope of its role, these …

Opening the window doesn't necessarily mean entering the storm, approaching chaos or threatening one's identity. There is no room in the new world for the fearful, for those who hesitate in trying or taking chances or risks, for those who do not accept competition or are unprepared for them. …

A moment’s sympathy, please, for Joe Biden. Five months ago, when he basically declared victory over the pandemic in a big July 4 speech, it seemed possible that a kind of victory really was at hand: not the eradication of the virus, but a world where rising vaccination rates and pre-existing…

The past two years blur in my mind into a reel of fuzzy memories, stresses and changes, Covid alert levels, protests, violence, political animosity, Twitter fights, masks and yard signs. And that’s just what happened in the wider world. In my own life, there was a cross-country move, the birth of a…

Mississippi may be about to double down on its dubious distinction as the state where the tide of progress is blocked and pushed back. During Reconstruction, Mississippi became a Black power center in this country. There were not only more Black people than white ones, there were also more…

President Biden came away from his summit with China’s President Xi Jinping on Nov. 15 committed to prosecuting what he called “simple, straightforward competition” with China. Yet Beijing is already beating the United States and its allies in one crucial domain: data. Data is the oil of the…

On Tuesday the Royal Standard flag representing the Queen was lowered for the last time in almost 400 years over Barbados, the Caribbean island that is now a republic with a president as head of state. At the handover ceremony declaring Barbados’s constitutional independence, Prince Charles gave a…

I’ve never been a fan of litigating election results in court, and the lawsuit filed last month by the loser of the Democratic primary for a Florida seat in the US House of Representatives seems as frivolous as they come. Yet one of its several charges deserves more thought. Not because it’s true —…

Finance research is in a difficult moment, with one influential professor estimating that half the market-beating strategies published in leading journals are duds. The academics shouldn’t be too hard on themselves. It’s only human to see patterns and construct narratives around events that are…

Transition to a Green Economy is the broad motto of Germany's new three-party coalition, led by Social Democrats, which takes the helm next week. The groundbreaking plan, coming shortly on the heels of the Glasgow Climate Summit, constituted a concrete embodiment of the summit’s conclusions. Such a…