World News Insights: Opinion Articles

Human Rights Watch has issued a report on the horrific explosion that took place on August 4th, 2020, and devastated downtown Beirut, killing 218 people and wounding about 7,000. The report describes the blast as one of the largest non-nuclear explosions in history. The organization called for an…

Today marks the one-year anniversary of the devastating Beirut port explosion, perhaps the worst non-nuclear blast in a heavily populated area in human history. A large stockpile of ammonium nitrate stored at the port ignited in a devastating eruption that left much of the city shattered. The…

Why should banking watchdogs worry about the consumer internet? The answer, as researchers have been warning for some time, lies in their “DNA loop,” shorthand for data, network, activity. It’s a powerful circuit, which regulators must be prepared to break if they want to stop the next financial…

When US President Joe Biden revives the trope of Russia as a declining power with an economy that produces little except oil and gas, Americans should hope he doesn’t really believe it. That it’s untrue is only half the problem; when US leaders repeat that depiction, they invite trouble, for…

Covid caseloads are rising again, with the seven-day average even exceeding the peak last summer. Just as in the spring of 2020, newspapers are running stories that the White House thinks are exaggerating the threat. Governments are reintroducing mask mandates, and public-health experts are calling…

America’s Covid-19 vaccination rate is about 60 percent, for ages 12 and up. That’s not enough to reach so-called herd immunity, and in states like Missouri — where a number of counties have vaccination rates under 25 percent — hospitals are overwhelmed by serious outbreaks of the more contagious…

The following is a joint statement by the World Health Organization Director General’s Special Envoys for COVID-19. They are WHO Director-General’s Special Envoy for South-East Asia Dr. Palitha Abeykoon, WHO Director-General’s Special Envoy for the Eastern Mediterranean Professor Dr. Maha El Rabbat…

Sanofi is one of the world's largest vaccine makers, with billions in reliable annual sales coming from the business. With its $3.2 billion purchase of Translate Bio Inc., announced Tuesday, the company is coopting a possible disruptor. Translate focuses on messenger RNA, the promising new…

For more than a decade, Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. invested its growing cash hoard into dozens of businesses in a bid to diversify away from its e-commerce roots. But spreading its wings is increasingly difficult as Chinese regulators grow much more aggressive — with the company serving as a…

On Tuesday, the US finally reached President Joe Biden’s goal of having at least 70% of adults receive their first vaccination shot — except that Biden back in May had set the goal for July 4, and Tuesday was the second day of August. That seems like a clear loss for Biden. But it turned out…

At a time of the year when the French are traditionally divided between “juillettistes” (who go on holiday in July) and “aoûtiens” (who go in August), the past few weeks have seen hundreds of thousands of people coming together with a single rallying cry: “Liberté!” These protesters are united…

For days now, vaccinated Americans have been trying to come to terms with new advice from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention regarding the rapidly spreading Delta variant and a spike in Covid cases in states with high populations of unvaccinated people. Authorities have encouraged…