World News Insights: Opinion Articles

A civilization “is born stoic and dies epicurean,” wrote historian Will Durant about the Babylonians. Our civilization was born optimistic and enlightened, at least by the standards of the day. Now it feels as if it’s fading into paranoid senility. Joe Biden was supposed to be the man of the…

I’ll always remember Sept. 11 as something that happened in the evening. At the time I was living in a town in northern India, and I watched the towers fall on a TV someone had dragged into the street. Because I was so far away, I’ll never know the terror people in New York and Washington felt on…

Never mind the howls of outrage from Paris or the indignation of Beijing. Australia’s scuttling of a $65 billion French submarine contract in favor of yet stronger ties with the US and UK is significant but hardly earth-shattering. The true import of the contretemps is that it underscores long…

Germans are known for angst in general, and angst about inflation in particular. After all, hyperinflation during the Weimar Republic led to the rise of Adolf Hitler and the Nazis, right? That collective memory has been cited countless times both inside and outside of Germany as the…

The Maldives and Sri Lanka, both highly tourism-dependent tropical islands, have seen the pandemic devastate their economies and finances. Government debt this year is expected to linger above 100% of gross domestic product in the two small Indian Ocean nations. Unsurprisingly, both have similar —…

Reshuffle is the right word for it — as in, take a deck of cards and mix it around. Boris Johnson’s new cabinet is mainly populated by names of those who have already been part of the ministerial team. As of Wednesday evening, at least four cabinet members have been sacked, while others have…

I’m a strong supporter of getting a vaccination for Covid-19. (I’ve had two plus my booster.) And I agree that getting shots into the arms of most of the 70 to 75 million US adults who remain unvaccinated is a matter of public urgency. But the libertarian in me believes that means are as important…

The small but diverse group of classical-music lovers is in deep mourning after one of the pillars of its community died. Primephonic, a Dutch-American app that streamed a wide catalogue of classical music went dark last month, after being acquired by Apple Inc., which aims to fold the service into…

Got both shots? Great, now please stay home. High vaccination rates may not be the passport to economic reopening and a thriving social life that we’d once hoped. As Asia’s inoculation drive recovers from a slow start, the revival of commerce is half-hearted at best. A shadow of 2019 may be the…

Boards are notorious for group think and spinelessness. In Facebook’s case, a board could make a difference. Documents reported by the Wall Street Journal earlier this week revealed a secret system at Facebook to coddle the posts of politicians and celebrities, as well as internal stats on the…

After 13 months of foundering under caretaker prime ministers, Lebanon finally has a government. That is very good news for a country suffering from the effects of economic collapse, political intransigence, financial malfeasance and the interference of foreign powers. And all that on top of…

For a brief moment last month, amid the chaotic and tragic final days of America’s longest war, it looked as if a Democratic Congress would perform honest oversight of a Democratic administration. The chasm between the reality on the ground and the rhetoric from the White House was too wide. It…