World News Insights: Opinion Articles

Yes, he came to dinner. In the summer of 2014, I received word through a friend that I was being asked to a dinner in Los Angeles that would include Sidney Poitier. I’m not easily star-struck. As you can imagine, in my line of work, you meet all types. Being easily impressed is an…

Israeli scientists monitoring samplings of sewage water in 2013 made a startling discovery: an outbreak of paralyzing polio was imminent. A national vaccination campaign was quickly mobilized and no cases appeared. That same year, Swedish scientists provided public officials with an early warning…

The world’s No. 1 men’s tennis player now has the dubious honor of joining actor Johnny Depp in receiving a harsh lesson on Australian quarantine and border policy. Novak Djokovic tried to enter the country without meeting a clearly stated requirement for receiving a full course of Covid-19…

The video game industry is at a crossroads. Enticed by the prospect of easy profits, game publishers and even a retailer like GameStop Corp. are embracing the opportunity provided by the hottest buzzword of the moment: blockchain-enabled non-fungible tokens, or NFTs. But they should reconsider. …

Unhappy Coup Day to All Who Celebrate A year ago today, a group of energetic tourists, decorated with bracelets and other festive garb and chanting amusing slogans, visited the Capitol to express their feelings about the prospect of Donald Trump no longer being president. In their zeal, they might…

When it comes to elections, the Republican Party operates within a carapace of lies. So we rely on the Democrats to preserve our system of government. The problem is that Democrats live within their own insular echo chamber. Within that bubble convenient falsehoods spread, go unchallenged and…

Protests that began in western Kazakhstan over a sharp rise in fuel costs have turned into days of upheaval, with demonstrators storming government buildings and the airport in Almaty, the country’s largest. That’s bad enough for President Vladimir Putin, who is wary of unrest on Russia’s fringes…

Personal details scrawled on Post-it notes, an unmasked security guard and an hours-long wait in a US rental car. My family was two days from departure for Singapore and the window for getting a negative Covid-19 verdict was closing fast. The line at a drive-in testing operation at the University…

“A tent”… is this new year’s wish. The word was repeated by a 10-year-old girl, Shahad, from a camp in the northern countryside of Idlib after wind and heavy rain ripped her family’s tent apart. Samer’s (11 years old) wish was to escape the camp’s mud and resume his studies in order to become a…

In the next few days we will witness a tsunami of diplomatic agitations spanning over Geneva and Brussels as American, Russian and European leaders try to create the impression that they know what is going on and what must be done about it. The diplomatic marathon is set to start on 9 January…

Amid all the hype about flying taxis and digitally souped-up jets, a simple truth about the aviation industry can get lost: Change happens glacially. This is for a good reason; airplanes that ferry hundreds of people don’t make the best laboratories, and the worst-case scenarios from technology…

For most Westerners, the news that Russia has sent troops to quell a popular uprising in Kazakhstan may seem like a minor event in a far corner of the world. But seen in the context of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s rule, and of his coercion of Ukraine, it takes on a more sinister significance…