Cornelia Waibel

Bianca Charamsa made her way to Japan during this year's cherry blossom season to get to grips with the country's character through conversations with some of its artists. Although two violent atomic catastrophes - the bombing of Hiroshima and the Fukushima nuclear disaster - have shaken and shaped modern-day Japan, the artist Takahiro Iwasaki believes that memory of 6th and 9th August 1945 is slowly fading, despite all the folded cranes left by visitors to the memorial sites. Natural catastrophes like sea- and earthquakes also rock Japan time and time again; perhaps this explains why the Japanese aesthetic Wabi Sabi incorporates both beauty and decay...much like the beauty of the cherry blossom as it withers during the annual festival of Hanami

A close-up of the dizzying escalation of nuclear risk since the largest power station on the European continent fell into the hands of Russia at the start of the war.

Right in the heart of the South China Sea, the Philippines find themselves on the front line of the conflict between Beijing and Washington. As tension mounts between the two countries, we take an in-depth look at the situation in the archipelago.