The recent terror attack on Berlin's Christmas market – which killed 12 and injured more than 50 – cast a pall over this year's holiday celebrations across Europe. Viewed from Tunis, where I happened to be during the fallout, the attack has also had a major, albeit different, impact. Tunisia, after all, is the home country of Anis Amri, the alleged perpetrator.

In the fourth century, Japan's emperor looked out from a small mountain near his palace and noticed that something was missing:

This past year changed everything, except how governments think. Nowhere is that more apparent than in the pre-negotiations for Brexit.

The first step to addressing this problem is to identify which factors breed success – and which impede it. Here, perhaps the most important observation relates to how the solution is linked to the reality on the ground. After all, technology is an enabler for the innovation of health-care delivery, not an end in itself.

While the presidential oath is required by the US Constitution, a candidates' oath wouldn't have to be. Political and market pressure would be enough, if print, television, and social media simply refused to carry campaign advertisements from candidates who refused to take the oath.

For all these reasons, the golden age of stability and predictability that was the third quarter of the twentieth century seemed to have abruptly drawn to a close, to be succeeded by a period of greatly heightened uncertainty.

On November 8, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced that, at the stroke of midnight, some 14 trillion rupees worth of 500 and 1,000 rupee notes – 86 percent of all the currency in circulation – would no longer be legal tender. With that, India's economy was plunged into chaos.

The same is true for the economy. Women need opportunities and support to develop and run their own businesses, to innovate, and to become financially independent.

It has been five years since Egypt and Tunisia underwent regime change, and both countries are still suffering from low economic growth, large fiscal deficits, high unemployment, and rising public debts.

Perhaps the best way to kick-start this process is to identify areas where the region can gain the most from integration, and take steps that will bring quick returns.

Does Donald Trump's election as United States president mean that globalisation is dead, or are reports of the process' demise greatly exaggerated?

As governments across the Middle East try to wean themselves off natural resources and build diversified, resilient economies, they should take some lessons from Dubai. It's a remarkable story.

The problems posed by the disaffected Americans – resulting from decades of neglect – will not be solved quickly or by conventional tools. An effective strategy will need to consider more unconventional solutions, which Republican corporate interests are unlikely to favour.

One major casualty of Donald Trump's victory in the bruising US presidential election is, without a doubt, America's soft power around the world. It is a development that will be difficult – perhaps even impossible – to reverse, especially for Trump.

Angry American voters who feel slighted by the Washington establishment have had their say. A stunned world must now come to terms with what the election of Donald Trump as the 45th President of the United States means for global stability in the years ahead.

After two and a half years without a president, Lebanon's Parliament has elected Michel Aoun to the post. Now, Lebanon can turn its attention to oil and gas production, with policymakers' expectations running high – verging on irrational exuberance – that an energy windfall will jumpstart the country's economy, which has suffered from poor political and economic governance and the spillover effects from Syria's civil war.

Democracy advocates in civil society and government have managed to push back against global corporations, but much of their progress hangs in the balance this month.

Tokyo is in the midst of a construction boom, with old high-rise office and apartment buildings being rebuilt in more modern and elegant forms, all while maintaining stringent environmental standards.

The Middle East, and especially the Arab world, is experiencing a period of fundamental change and even more fundamental challenges.

Oh, the anger of the fusty at the announcement of Bob Dylan's Nobel Prize! What an outcry from the academy – not the Swedish one,