World News Insights: Opinion Articles

I was delighted by the news that Iranian diesel fuel tankers arrived in Lebanon via Syria. I was even more delighted by the celebrations accompanying the convoys, firing bullets and rockets in the air, and with them slogans, flags and pictures of the senior leaders of the Iranian Revolutionary…

It’s been less than two weeks since President Joe Biden said the federal government would throw its weight behind new Covid-19 vaccine and testing mandates for corporate America. And there are already signs of progress. Last week, Biden hosted some of the country’s top business leaders at the…

Shortly after the attacks of Sept. 11, an English teacher in central Washington State assigned her eighth and ninth graders to write poems based on the lead article in The Times. The teacher, Tammy Grubb, said her intention was to give the students a way to process their feelings. The poems were…

Through its recent legal threat against Coinbase’s new interest-bearing cryptocurrency account program, the Securities and Exchange Commission has created a stir in both finance and tech — two worlds that have always been intertwined, but because of the implications of digital technology itself,…

Somehow, one may say that few regional and international powers did not “contribute” to the formation of the new Lebanese cabinet. However, this cabinet is nothing more than a “crisis management team”. Its task is to deal with a problem whose solution would be an inseparable part of the much larger…

Vladimir Putin has a right to be relieved. Every crack in the US-led alliance delights him. This time, he is overjoyed because he is not in the eye of the storm. The crisis clearly expresses America’s preoccupation with the Chinese challenge. True, it is not the first time that public disputes…

Many Lebanese have noticed that the steep decline in the quality of ministers. Every new government is more mediocre than that which preceded it. Every new government has a greater number of ministers suffering from extreme drabness. That is what most people from all walks of life say to each…

Climate change is having a breakout performance this year. Throughout the US, the slow-motion calamity long described in scientific studies and news articles has been visible to the naked eye or felt on tingling flesh — here too wet, there too dry, everywhere too hot. It’s only human to wonder…

There have been many dark moments in the two decades since 9/11, some of them in Kabul last month. I remain especially haunted by a snapshot from 2007 Iraq. British political adviser Emma Sky was riding a Blackhawk with US commander Gen. Raymond Odierno. She mentioned to her boss over the intercom…

The American economy has come a long way. It was only 18 months ago when the coronavirus pandemic struck in full force, igniting a devastating recession. But as the recent wave of infections and hospitalizations from the highly contagious Delta variant of the virus makes clear, the pandemic is not…

Was it worth it? I don’t mean the wars — it’s nearly impossible to argue the wars were worth it, surely — but what about our service in them? Did it mean anything? This question haunts many veterans on the 20th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks. Did anything we do in the years that followed…

It is not easy to forget that terrible day, and even after 20 years it is still disturbing and frightening that it can happen again anywhere in the world, and dreadfully replicable. Two decades later, the number of al-Qaeda fighters has increased, their areas of deployment have expanded,…