World News Insights: Opinion Articles

During the Covid pandemic, we Britons have developed a tabloid obsession with “saving Christmas,” as if it were a beloved pet in danger of being run over. Yet our Christmas is indeed in peril. The Omicron coronavirus variant, which Prime Minister Boris Johnson said could lead to a “tidal wave”…

Even at the peak of the internal conflict between Gulf states, none of the six Member States withdrew from the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) they had collectively founded in 1981. Ambassadors kept representing their states, and GCC staff kept working in the headquarters throughout the period of…

Think the cost of electricity in Europe — where fuel shortages and the approach of winter recently drove prices over $200 per megawatt-hour — is crazy? You should check out Singapore. The city-state has seen wholesale prices rising as high as S$2,947 ($2,184)/MWh in October and $1,121/MWh last…

According to Vladimir Putin, “true sovereignty of Ukraine is possible only in partnership with Russia.” Besides the delicious contradiction there, it shows how far the Russian president’s designs on Ukraine stretch beyond the gas pipelines that fueled previous crises. (You can read the whole,…

By the middle of this century, India will have 1.6 billion people. That’s when the country’s population will finally start to decline, ending up at perhaps a billion by 2100. While that is still around 250 million more people than China will have then, every time India’s population is projected,…

Most people are familiar with the concept of a placebo, where merely providing positive information can improve perception of well-being. Yet the opposite also occurs, with negative data making people feel worse about their own health. That’s a nocebo — Latin for “I shall harm” as opposed to “I…

The scene we saw recently at the Burj al-Shamali refugee camp next to the southern Lebanese city of Tyre on Friday is one we have seen many times before. It is a play of three successive acts. Act one: the tragedy. In this camp, where over 20,000 people live, weapons and ammunition depot…

One of the biggest electric-vehicle battery companies in the world is going public. South Korea’s LG Energy Solution, which makes powerpacks for the likes of General Motors Co., is looking to raise up to almost $11 billion in a listing that could value the company at close to $60 billion. Big, bold…

As the world braces to deal with yet another SARS-CoV-2 variant, this one called Omicron, there’s speculation on social media and elsewhere that the virus will become milder, as if this is a predetermined outcome. Some believe that logically the inevitable path of any virus is to become more…

Over the coming days and weeks, scientists from around the world will be sharing early information about the new Omicron variant of SARS-CoV-2. We are two researchers who study the evolution of viruses, and we will be keeping a close eye on the data as it becomes public. This new research will…

In Equatorial Guinea, a tiny, oil-rich country on the Atlantic coast of Africa, a global clash of strategy between the US and China may play out in the next few years. The Pentagon is alarmed at reports that China may build a multipurpose naval base there, providing Beijing with military access to…

Last weekend some smart alecks managed to breach the defenses of one of the most ubiquitous media platforms, access the mouthpiece of the leader of one of the world’s most populous countries, and grab the opportunity to broadcast whatever they wanted to 73 million followers. And they used it to…