By organising TICAD (Tokyo International Conference on African Development) for the first time in Africa in August 2016, Japan intended to accelerate and deepen its relationship with the continent. 

The decision of German Chancellor Angela Merkel to welcome over one million refugees in the years 2015 and 2016 had been interpreted by some to be a strategic choice to cope with the demographic problems that Germany is facing: the expected decline in the population, especially in its work force, as well an ageing population. 

What makes you middle class? Is it your income, occupation, or education? Your family background or maybe the house and neighbourhood you live in? It is probably all of these things. 

In its fifty-year existence, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) has developed a complex, progressive and balanced approach to regional integration. Rather than the European Union’s far-reaching statements of ever-closer union, ASEAN combines highly diverse economic and political strategies of different States whose main priority is to safeguard sovereignty.

When it was created 50 years ago, ASEAN's (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) economic ambitions were rather modest. However, up until 1992 it progressively integrated the economies of its member states.

The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) strives to deal with security problems in an inclusive and flexible way. In 2003 it established a Security Community which has since expanded through several institutions and partnerships.

Since Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014, the peninsula’s demographics have changed. Thousands have left and new arrivals – Ukrainians fleeing conflict in the east of their country and Russians – have moved in.

The reasons for the result of the UK’s June 2016 referendum reveal nothing we didn’t already know. They have to do with the development of British society and political debates particular to the UK.