A day before he signed the Paris Agreement on climate change at the United Nations headquarters last week, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau stopped by a Brooklyn gym, where he gave boxing lessons to a group of disadvantaged youth. While Trudeau put the youngsters through their paces, for the past six months it’s the prime minister’s passport that has been getting a workout.

As far as awards ceremonies go, the Sugoi Japan Awards were a fairly flashy affair. Held on March 22, the prizes recognized recent titles in anime, manga and fiction that an online poll of Japanese fans wanted to do well overseas. Winners included “One Punch Man” and “Your Lie in April,” and the guest list to the event included pop culture critics, studio executives and, of course, the artists themselves.

Tourism is one of the fastest growing sectors internationally with approximately 1.2 billion international tourists and $1.25 trillion in international tourism receipts worldwide. This gives it a direct influence on many areas such as economic development, employment, environmental awareness, cross-cultural peace and dialogue and country image. [...] Thus, it is a source of honor and pride for us to host EXPO 2016 in Antalya under the theme "Flower and Child" and motto, "A Green World for the Next Generations."

"This is Dange Nwe Radio, refugee-to-refugee segment, from 8am to 12 noon, broadcast in Kurmanji and Arabic," a female broadcaster announces in a southern Iraqi accent. [...] The new refugee radio program on Dange Nwe (New Voice) Radio is staffed exclusively by Syrian and Iraqi women displaced by the rise of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS) and the war in Syria.

[I]nvesting is now global – and policy decisions made by individual nations have significant consequences. As government leaders seek to attract capital, they need to think about themselves in a new way: as brands. [...] Countries can no longer afford to operate in isolation, unconcerned with establishing and growing international business relations. 

China's economic growth has begun to flatten out, so it has sought to evolve from manufacturing to service. And professional soccer [...] is a service. In a country newly rich and besotted by Western luxury goods, the sport has become a paradigm of sorts for embracing and importing foreign commodities. Only in this case, those commodities aren't yachts or Ivy League educations, but rather soccer players.

Brazil launched its occupation strategy in 2008, the year after it won the right to host the 2014 World Cup and a year before Rio won its bid to host the 2016 Summer Olympics […] human-rights campaigners argue that armed conflict has increased as a result of major sporting events, imposing a particularly high cost on poor and homeless children.

The President of PRCAN, John Ehiguese, who led his team to receive a delegation from Brand South Africa in Lagos, said there were learnings that Nigeria could draw from the strategies deployed by Brand South Africa in its own destination branding programme [...] there were salient opportunities for Nigeria to consider arising from the successful nation branding of South Africa.