World News Insights: Opinion Articles

Never mind the return to normal, Wall Street’s private equity shops are staging a return to abnormal. Leveraged buyouts are happening at a speed and extravagance that had been unique to 2006 and 2007, the run-up to the financial crisis. Private equity firms have already made $470 billion of…

Thanks to a technicality of British parliamentary procedure, Boris Johnson has managed to avert an embarrassing showdown with lawmakers from his own party over the UK government’s budget for foreign aid. But Parliament will still get to vent on the issue Tuesday, and plenty of other divisions are…

After four-plus months of Joe Biden’s presidency, we can finally say something about his polling numbers with a fair degree of confidence: His initially high disapproval numbers, second only to Donald Trump during the polling era, were likely an artifact of partisanship and had little to do with…

One year on from the protests against racism and police violence that swept European cities such as Paris and London after George Floyd’s death, it’s fair to say the initial impact was short-lived. Protesters confronted politicians, toppled statues and sparked changes — including a pledge to stop…

If you want an example of how major Western companies manage their great taxation sidestep, take a look at Apple Inc.’s chief supplier. Hon Hai Precision Industry Co., the flagship of Foxconn Technology Group and the largest assembler of iPhones, booked $57.4 billion in revenue from the…

Goldman Sachs Group Inc. is staging its next big act in China. The last time the global investment banking giant made a similarly big play was 15 years ago and it was tremendously rewarding. It was, as the Wall Street firm said then, a “historic investment.” This latest overture involves the same…

Labelling misinformation online is doing more harm than good. The possibility that Covid-19 came from a lab accident is just the latest example. Social media companies tried to suppress any discussion of it for months. But why? There’s no strong evidence against it, and evidence for other theories…

Sometimes words haunt the writer. They catch his attention and seize him. Sometimes it’s about words he heard or was touched by, or words he felt and could not forget. As a wandering Arab journalist, I carried the recorder between many Arab capitals, from Khartoum to Baghdad and Sanaa. The word…

During the Gaza war, many voices were heard in Lebanon; two among them are striking, at least on social media: one does not want to empathize with the Palestinians in the slightest, because of Lebanism, and the other wants to open the Lebanese border for war with Israel, citing their enthusiasm for…

When Iran is scheduled to hold its presidential election, Narges Mohammadi will be staying home. One of her country’s most courageous human-rights activists, she views the upcoming vote as a sham. “The principle of absolute jurisprudence has invalidated all the principles of the Iranian…

Theaters went dark in London’s West End last year, while galleries closed and concert halls stood silent. But there was one creative industry that flourished during lockdown: the reading and publishing of books. Many in the industry, as well as parents and educators, are now hoping the habit…

The restaurant and entertainment industry was hit hard by both the Covid recession and the federal government’s response to it. The pandemic kept customers away, and now employees are being kept away by the enhanced unemployment benefits included in President Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion American…