World News Insights: Opinion Articles

When the Glasgow Climate Summit kicks off in a week, all eyes will be on what new commitments world leaders will make to cut carbon emissions and finance climate change programs. However, all of these measures remain confined to a circumstantial management of the symptoms, and fall short of a…

Since the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan two months ago, the international community has tentatively engaged with the new ‘government’ in Kabul, seeking to explore what kind of relations are possible with a Taliban-run entity. Until now, this phase of exploratory dialogue has resulted in very…

Mark Zuckerberg wants to rechristen Facebook Inc., giving the financial powerhouse — and social media hothouse — a fresh identity. While Zuckerberg’s corporate baby has handily weathered prior crises, boasts an enviable global footprint and continues to rake in massive profits, critics have turned…

The supply chain has huffed and puffed, but it hasn’t knocked industrial demand down — at least not yet. A dangerous combination of logistics logjams, widespread parts shortages, hiring difficulties and rising inflation had threatened to make this earnings season a particularly ugly one for the…

China recently sank to new depths, sending the Haidou 1, a remote-controlled submarine, 10,908 meters into the murky waters of the Mariana Trench. That’s exactly one meter past the submersible’s previous world-record mark. For the engineers and oceanographers involved, the feat means bragging…

The first step toward understanding the Great Supply Chain Disruption of 2021 is to recognize that the phrase itself is not quite accurate. Supply chains are not disrupted so much as overloaded, and the effects are more national than global. This understanding has implications not only for US…

One hundred years after Greater Lebanon’s establishment in 1920 and eighty years on from the country attaining its independence, in 1943, based on the Lebanese framework known as the national pact, which was built on the formula of equally shared representation between Muslims and Christians and…

Digital businesses are helplessly losing their Indian customers. And nobody knows how many will eventually return and after how long. From smartphone apps to websites, anyone with a regular, card-based payment arrangement with subscribers has run into a roadblock put up by the central bank. For…

Intel Corp.’s future is looking a bit grim. Late Thursday, the chipmaker posted worse-than-expected sales results with adjusted revenue of $18.1 billion in the quarter ended in September, up 5% compared with the prior year, and below the $18.24 billion median estimate of analysts surveyed by…

A friend in need is, as Beijing well knows, a friend indeed. In the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic, as the West turned inward, China sent African nations protective equipment and test kits, enlisting support from Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. co-founder Jack Ma. Beijing promised vaccines and…

Desperately trying to retain a modicum of relevancy in the Syrian imbroglio, the United Nations has shaken an old ghost out of slumber to claim a few headlines. The UN Special Envoy on Syria Geir Pedersen has brought the so-called “Constitution Committee” out of its two-year hibernation to “start…

Two years after the October 17 protests began in Lebanon, the scene has gone back to normal. The revolution, whose participants had claimed they wanted to evade the fatal curse of civil wars, it seems, with all its crowds, supporters, songs and slogans, very far from today’s reality of armed…