World News Insights: Opinion Articles

Feedback on my newsletter about the embrace of “they” as a gender-neutral pronoun referring to a single person — Joel is wearing their green shirt today because it matches their pants — has been, well, pointed. It seems that quite a few people have a major problem with this change in pronominal…

Television fans have been willing to give just about every new streaming-TV service a shot. But “Squid Game” shows how Netflix Inc. has uniquely mastered the art of keeping its subscribers. Netflix surpassed expectations Tuesday when it reported 4.38 million net new members for the third quarter…

History always repeats itself, first as tragedy, then as farce. We seem to have both when it comes to Brexit. The UK is once again threatening to walk away from trade terms it signed with the European Union, lambasting them as unworkable despite having signed up to them in 2019. The EU, even as it…

It has been a rough few months for the internet. In June, Fastly Inc.’s content-delivery network failure forced some of the world’s biggest e-commerce and media websites offline. Later, there were massive data breaches at T-Mobile US Inc. and Amazon.com Inc.’s Twitch streaming service. And last…

Vaccine opponents are seizing on the death of former Secretary of State Colin Powell, who was fully vaccinated yet died of Covid-19 complications, to cast doubt on the vaccination effort against the virus. As usual, these people are dangerously wrong. The death of someone like Powell, who was 84…

Everyone is looking for new ways to get a piece of the global electric vehicle value chain. It’s no longer just car companies or battery firms, it’s the entire range of parts that make up batteries — from the chemicals that form each component to the wiring and everything in between. With all the…

Lebanon’s October 17 movement’s second anniversary passed amid dangerous and violent divisions in the streets and elite political circles over the investigation into the Beirut blast and the Shiite duo’s (Hezbollah and the Amal Movement) demand that Tarek Bitar step aside as had his predecessor,…

How difficult it is to write amid pain and agony! The weeping of a mother who lost her son, the grief of those who lost their brother, and the tears of children who joined the procession of orphans. Every bloodshed inside the homeland is equal to the killing of the homeland itself. Regardless of…

One day in Korea in 1951, a puzzled American soldier peered at a sign above the entrance to a British base, which proclaimed “Britannia Camp.” He quizzed an officer, pointing upwards: “Whaddoes that mean?” Major Gerald Rickord said: “Haven’t you ever heard of Britannia Rules the Waves?” The…

Globalization may have lifted hundreds of millions of people out of poverty, but to its critics, it has long been a dirty word. They associate it with enhancing corporate power, reducing the wages of workers and deepening divides between the wealthy and everyone else. During the pandemic,…

Our energy system is built upon a mountain of waste. Believe it or not, that’s a good thing. Look at the journey that power takes to your plug socket from its original source, and you’ll find excess and overcapacity every step of the way. All electricity grids are designed with a reserve margin …

Going back to 1975, our minds would spew out pages of history that the well-intended among us thought had been turned. Maarouf Saad’s assassination, the Ain al-Rummaneh bus…all were recalled to this present day. The past does not pass in Lebanon. What leaves the past in the present, or perhaps…