Defence officials from members of the ASEAN Regional Forum, Asia’s largest security grouping led by ASEAN, met in Seoul, the Republic of Korea, on May 2nd to discuss regional security issues.
The event, which is an annual meeting of the ARF Defence Officials'
Dialogue, was co-hosted by the RoK and Thailand.
The officials
discussed measures to strengthen maritime security capabilities in a
coordinated manner and to build trust among them.
They also shared
experience on humanitarian assistance and disaster relief, and explored ways to
cooperate in those fields.
The ARF, formed in
1994, gathers 10 member countries of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations
(ASEAN), the bloc’s 10 dialogue partners - the EU, Australia, Canada, China,
India, Japan, New Zealand, the RoK, Russia and the US - along with Papua New
Guinea, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, Mongolia, Pakistan, Timor
Leste, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka./.
The Foreign Ministers’ Meeting of the world’s leading developed and emerging economies (G20) recently held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil emphasised the need to reform global governance institutions, especially the United Nations Security Council. The meeting is also an opportunity for G20 to find solutions to a series of hot issues facing the world, such as poverty, climate change, and conflict.
The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Foreign Ministers on December 30 issued a statement on maintaining and promoting stability in the maritime sphere in Southeast Asia.
The world economy has overcome a challenging year, but has proven more resilient than expected. The Financial Times (UK) commented that 2023 was a positive year for the world economy as the economic surprise index collated by Citigroup shew that actual data have underwhelmed economists’ predictions for much of the past months. These economic trends are the basis for optimism about the world economy in 2024.
Laos has announced the theme and logo for its the Chairmanship of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in 2024.
Vietnam was elected a Vice President of the 42nd session of the UNESCO’s General Conference, representing the Asia-Pacific, on November 8.
Since the "blockbuster" ChatGPT was launched a year ago, the prospects for the development of artificial intelligence (AI), as well as concerns about the risks from this technology, have become hot topics in the technology world.
