World News Insights: Opinion Articles

The UK’s “Freedom Day” has been declared a damp squib by taxi firm Addison Lee, and it’s hard to disagree. Even with hospitalizations and deaths low — and cases falling — mobility is plateauing and below pre-pandemic levels in some areas. Brits are exercising their freedom to mingle selectively. We…

Joe Biden has promised to make his presidency an era of democratic multilateralism. The world’s democracies, he argues, must come together to deal with a surging authoritarian challenge. Yet the fate of two big-ticket policy initiatives is showing how hard it is to rally global democratic…

A nation allegedly attempting to kidnap its own athlete and another incensed at its political rival getting attention. For all the pretense that the Olympic Games are about sport and not politics, Tokyo 2020 has abruptly reminded us that such a divide is impossible. One of the most dramatic…

Messages flooded his phone. The callers informed him that a strange smell was pervading the country. A strong and confusing smell. Deep anger and violence. Sadness mingled with dark resentments. The smell of widespread oppression and deep desire to object, to protest against the officials’ and…

Could the world be on the brink of a new, cleaner era of aviation? That’s certainly what you might think from the way some people are talking. Mandates for blending so-called Sustainable Aviation Fuel into jet kerosene form one plank of the European Union’s recently announced plans to reduce…

How weird is the future going to be? Just a little bit — or plain flat-out radically unthinkably weird? And is this future 1,000 years from now — or 100? The notion that the future will be weirder than we think, and come sooner, is a possibility raised by Holden Karnofsky, the co-chief executive…

There’s a strong case that Congress should give legal status to millions of immigrants who are here illegally, at least under certain conditions. There’s a case, reasonable though not as strong, that we ought to have legislative rules that allow a bare majority of Congress to make that change in…

Despite hopes of a summer free from Covid-19 worry, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is now recommending that vaccinated people wear masks in certain areas. While masks are important for protecting against infections, the United States must proceed carefully. Health officials spent…

Among the arguments that persuaded British people like me to oppose Brexit was that it would create a raft of new diplomatic headaches the UK does not need, in exchange for an anemic sort of new “freedom.” True, the European Union is a mess: I do not think it can survive into the next decade…

As students return to school in the coming weeks, there will be close attention to their mental health. Many problems will be attributed to the Covid pandemic, but in fact we need to look back further, to 2012. That’s when rates of teenage depression, loneliness, self-harm and suicide began to…

The screen goes blank. A message appears in crude, Google Translate English, advising that all your files have been encrypted — rendered unusable — and can be restored only if you pay a ransom. After some back and forth, you pay out in Bitcoin or some other cryptocurrency, most likely to a…

Leading into the Tokyo Olympics, Covid-19 was understood to be a key danger for athletes, officials and the local community. So far, efforts to control its spread at the games seem successful, even as cases are spiking more widely in Japan. But now it’s time to consider another health risk that’s…