World News Insights: Opinion Articles

Amid all the scandals and controversy, Facebook Inc. watchers were on pins and needles going into the company’s most hotly anticipated quarterly report in years. In the end, it fell a bit short. But with many expecting far worse, sometimes avoiding disaster is good enough. Late Monday, the…

The climax of Kati Marton’s captivating new biography of Angela Merkel, “The Chancellor,” comes in 2015, when the German leader refused to close her country’s borders to a tide of refugees fleeing civil war and state collapse in the Middle East and Africa. “If Europe fails on the question of…

Leading the European Union and its predecessor organizations has always been a difficult task. For a long time, France and Germany, the two largest founding members, managed it relatively collaboratively. Leaders — among them Helmut Schmidt and Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, Helmut Kohl and François…

“Al-Burhan has written his end with his own two hands… The power of the masses will uproot Burhan and his Council and leave them trampled and destroyed.” This statement is attributed to the Sudanese Professionals Association, the group of trade unions leading the confrontation in Sudan. It…

With the Lebanese terrified by the specter of civil war, Sheikh Naim Qassem offered us his definition of this war or its equivalents: It is Tarek Bitar who “brought the problems and calamities upon us, and he should leave so that the situation stabilizes.” To many, this phrase echoed by…

For five decades, international environmental meetings have been riven by a north-south divide. While the rich nations of the global north have led calls to rein in emissions, their less affluent counterparts have largely remained on the sidelines. The Kyoto Protocol was in essence a treaty…

Microsoft Corp. is in the technology sweet spot. With another stellar quarter fueled by growth of the cloud computing business, the software giant is showing that it could have the best fundamental outlook among its tech giant peers. The company said revenue totaled $45.3 billion in its fiscal…

Ten years ago, in a townhouse near the White House, I was a somewhat star-struck young naval officer listening to Colin Powell talk about, of all things, squirrels. He was visiting with my class of White House fellows — Mr. Powell himself was the program’s most notable alum. He recounted an Oval…

The final James Bond outing for Daniel Craig, “No Time to Die,” also marks a notable milestone for Bondian geopolitics: The franchise just completed a five-movie arc with a single lead actor, and amid all the globe-trotting and intrigue you would barely know that China existed. Shanghai and Macau…

Hong Kong is intent on keeping its 7.5 million residents in and blocking almost everyone else out. In doing so, it’s moving further away from a Covid-19 exit strategy. As most of the world opens up, Hong Kong’s quarantine policy has made it close to impossible for residents to leave and reenter…

Covid-19 is not the only respiratory infection the globe has been fighting, especially in the colder months. Last winter, the flu nearly disappeared worldwide because precautions taken against Covid-19, including masks and social distancing, also worked to prevent it. These precautions may have…

The messaging on vaccine boosters is muddled and confusing, yet the science is pretty straightforward and reassuring. Your vaccine is still cutting your risk of getting a severe case or dying from Covid-19, even if it has been a number of months since you got it. Whenever they received the first…