World News Insights: Opinion Articles

The forces driving European defense are in flux, with four key variables affecting the way the continent’s leading nations engage not only their own security, but the entire world’s. Taken together, this is the most significant set of issues the transatlantic security alliance has seen since the…

As the coronavirus spread through Europe last year, cartoons and posts began going up on French social media that might as well have come straight from the 14th century. In one series, Agnes Buzyn, who is Jewish and was France’s health minister until February 2020, was depicted with grotesquely…

Merck & Co. and Ridgeback’s antiviral pill molnupiravir is a potential pandemic game-changer, judging from the positive test data that arrived Friday. To make the most of this promise, governments and global health organizations need to prepare to manufacture the pills in great quantities. The…

A longstanding business variable is gaining in relevance: Which time zone are you in? This is going to be a bonus for some parts of the world, and a setback for others. The relevant driver of change is the growth of remote work. That started with the pandemic, but the movement has taken on a…

In his first statements on foreign policy, Islamic Republic’s new President Dr Ayatollah Ebrahim Raisi made two claims: First that he would be the ultimate arbiter of Tehran’s foreign relations and, second, that his top priority is to “establish close ties with neighbors and promote peace and…

We’re just six weeks into the Taliban’s second shift as Afghanistan’s rulers, and the picture could not be bleaker. Bodies hang in public squares and women are banned from their jobs. High schools are closed to girls, the women’s ministry has been replaced by the Ministry for the Promotion of…

We’re often told that humans are lousy at judging risk, and the pandemic seems to have confirmed this in spades. What else can explain vaccine hesitancy or otherwise healthy people wearing two masks as they walk alone, outside? Yet despite all the evidence pointing to our inability to make sense…

In the US, central bankers trade stocks and federal judges hear cases of companies in which they hold financial interests. The first is legal (but controversial); the second is illegal but not uncommon. In China, however, the official position on such issues is: No. As President Xi Jinping reins in…

The balances of power in the region are shifting as new alliances advance and others recede. Each faction has its own reading of these developments, and so they strive to push things in the direction they see as serving their interests. Every decision-maker is worried about the region’s…

Relations between China and the US may be scraping new lows, but that hasn’t stopped Chinese consumers from snapping up the iPhone 13. Shortly after pre-sales for the phone opened on Sept. 17, some colors sold out in minutes. Apple Inc.’s China website crashed. Social media erupted. A week later,…

All the world has heard about and seen photos of Amazon.com Inc.’s $1,000 home robot. But that was not the company’s biggest product launch this week. Far more important, and carrying wider ramifications for Amazon’s business, is New World — the company’s first major video-game hit. The…

Never let a good energy crisis go to waste. That’s been the maxim of lobbies on each side of the climate debate as power prices have spiked and blackouts spread from Australia, to Texas, and the UK in recent years. Those who rightly wish to speed the transition away from fossil fuels see the…