World News Insights: Opinion Articles

The first seven months of the Biden presidency have been easy compared with what’s coming down the pike. Key provisions of Covid relief legislation came to an end on Aug. 1, with more set to follow — including a cessation of moratoriums on evictions and mortgage foreclosures, termination of…

In 1990, V.S. Naipaul delivered a celebrated lecture on the subject of “Our Universal Civilization.” The Berlin Wall had fallen, liberal democracy was ascendant, and Naipaul wanted to reflect on what the universal civilization — by which he meant the West — meant for someone like him, a Hindu son…

In the fall of 1965, Ralph Nader, then 31, published a blistering attack on the poor safety record of the American automobile. Tens of thousands of Americans were dying needlessly every year on the nation’s highways, and the blame lay with the federal government, Mr. Nader argued in his first book,…

FC Barcelona’s inability to retain Lionel Messi is not just indicative of how badly the giant of Spanish soccer has been mismanaged. It also underscores the foibles of fan ownership. The club announced on Thursday that Messi, the talismanic superstar who has driven the club to 10 La Liga and…

Corporate America has ample evidence of Covid-19’s fury. New cases, hospitalizations and daily death tolls have surged as the delta variant barrels across workplaces and communities. The emergence of an even more contagious and lethal mutation of the virus is possible, too. Yet most business…

For much of the pandemic, Britain provided a cautionary tale in how not to manage a crisis. It charted some of the world’s worst death rates, a care home infection fest and a series of policy reversals that sorely tested public trust. Should it now be the country the US looks to as an example of…

As part of efforts to pay for President Joe Biden’s proposed $3.5 trillion spending plan and ahead of a burst in expected infrastructure outlays, Senate Democrats are proposing the US impose tariffs on carbon-intensive imports. This idea resembles the European Union’s newly unveiled border…

In international politics, what do you do when you don’t know what to do but wish to appear to be doing something? The answer is: you convene an international conference. The gimmick started with the notorious Versailles Conference after the First World War that morphed into a series of…

A certain school of thought holds long-term targets as meaningless, as the people making them will no longer be in their job by the time they are proved right or wrong. That’s especially the case for a two-term limited US president. But when it comes to Joe Biden and electric vehicles, it hardly…

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…