If current urbanisation trends continue, an additional 500 million people could be living in cities in the Asia-Pacific region by 2020. Credit: Padmanaba01/CC-BY-2.0
ipsnews.net – UNITED NATIONS, May 14 2015 (IPS) – Home to an estimated 3.74 billion people, the Asia-Pacific region holds over half the global population, determining to a great extent the level of economic stability, or chaos, in the world.
A patient is given a nasal endoscopy at Cho Ray Hospital in Ho Chi Minh City. Tuoi Tre
tuoitrenews – Contrary to popular belief that a diagnosis of cancer means a death penalty, experts have asserted otherwise.
The cancer burden would be significantly eased by adopting a comprehensive preventative model, made possible with competent agencies’ effective administrative role and improved awareness.
Dr. Nguyen Chan Hung, chair of the Cancer Association of Vietnam, warned that diets rich in animal fat and meat, tainted food, dried salty fish or pickled vegetables, or insufficient vegetables and fruits are among the contributory factors of different types of cancer.
VNN – Shoko Ishikawa – UN Women Country Representative in Viet Nam
During the recent revision of the Penal Code, National Assembly Deputies debated whether or not the amended provision should explicitly include marital rape. Criminalisation of all forms of violence against women, including marital rape, was one of the recommendations coming from the UN committee of experts on women’s rights. No matter who the perpetrator is or where the incident takes place, rape is rape.
In Viet Nam, there is a common belief that sexual violence does not occur within the family or in locations considered to be ‘secure’ and ‘peaceful’. There is a myth that ‘real rape’ involves strangers, force and/or physical injury. However, a recent review of 462 rape and sexual assault case files tells a very different story.
economist – GUO, the driver, pulls his car to a merciful halt high above a crevasse: time for a cigarette, and after seven hours of shuddering along narrow, twisting roads, time for his passengers to check that their fillings remain in place. Lighting up, he steps out of the car and dons a cloth cap and jacket: sunny, early-summer days are still brisk 3,500 metres above sea level. Mr Guo is an impish little dumpling of a man, bald, brown-toothed and jolly. He is also an anomaly: a Shanghainese in northern Yunnan who opted to stay with his local bride rather than return to his booming hometown.
The ribbon of brown water cutting swiftly through the gorge below is rich with snowmelt. With few cars passing, its echoing sound fills the air. In the distance, the Hengduan mountains slump under their snowpack as if crumpled beneath its weight. Mr Guo recalls the drivers who have taken a switchback too quickly and fallen to their deaths in the valley below. He tells of workers who lost their footing or whose harnesses failed while building a bridge near his home town of Cizhong, 20 or 30 kilometres south. He pulls hard on his cigarette. “This river”, he says, “has taken so many lives.”
The East Asian economic model is running out of steam. Demographics and slowing growth in world trade will force Asia’s developing countries to rely more on internal demand instead of the outward-oriented policies that made their neighbors rich. That will mean slower growth and prolonged regional inequality.
WRI – Yesterday, the U.S. Supreme Court paused implementation of the Clean Power Plan (CPP) to allow an appeals court to consider a legal challenge from a number of states, corporations and industry groups. That case is being expedited, and a decision is expected by the fall.
Importantly, the Supreme Court’s decision to grant a temporary stay was not based on the legal merits of the CPP, which calls for emissions reductions throughout states’ power sectors. Experts agree that the CPP is on solid legal ground and will prevail. Indeed, previously the Supreme Court not only upheld the EPA’s authority to regulate carbon pollution under the Clean Air Act (which the Clean Power Plan builds upon), the Court found the agency had the obligation to do so to protect Americans’ health.
This special report looks at developments in the field of humanitarian response following natural and man-made disasters such as earthquakes, tsunamis, health emergencies and wars.
As connectivity extends to the remotest parts of the world an unprecedented and transformational development of ICT knowledge and skills is taking place. This transformation is leading to a reappraisal of the ways in which crisis situations are managed and to the concept of ‘disaster relief’.
Transnationalizing Viet Nam Community, Culture, and Politics in the Diaspora
Kieu-Linh Caroline Valverde
“Bridging Asian Studies and Asian American Studies, Transnationalizing Viet Nam is a rich and nuanced study of transnational linkages between Viet Nam and its diaspora in the United States. Through fascinating case studies of Vietnamese popular music productions, Internet virtual communities, diasporic art and community politics, Kieu-Linh Caroline Valverde provides a rare glimpse into how Vietnamese have connected their worlds and made meanings for themselves.”
—Yen Le Espiritu, Professor of Ethnic Studies, University of California, San Diego
temple.edu – Vietnamese diasporic relations affect—and are directly affected by—events in Viet Nam. In Transnationalizing Viet Nam, Kieu-Linh Caroline Valverde explores these connections, providing a nuanced understanding of this globalized community. Valverde draws on 250 interviews and almost two decades of research to show the complex relationship between Vietnamese in the diaspora and those back at the homeland.
The newly created Asian Infrastructure and Investment Bank (AIIB) officially opened at a ceremony in Beijing on January 16. In Asiaeditor Alma Freeman spoke with The Asia Foundation’s International Development Cooperation program director, Anthea Mulakala, to find out what makes the bank unique, implications for development approaches, and how the bank could address Asia’s infrastructure deficit.
What is the AIIB, and how is it different from other multilateral banks like the World Bank or the Asian Development Bank?
Technologyreview – In November 2014, an especially chilling cyberattack shook the corporate world—something that went far beyond garden-variety theft of credit card numbers from a big-box store. Hackers, having explored the internal servers of Sony Pictures Entertainment, captured internal financial reports, top executives’ embarrassing e-mails, private employee health data, and even unreleased movies and scripts and dumped them on the open Web. The offenders were said by U.S. law enforcement to be working at the behest of the North Korean regime, offended by a farcical movie the company had made in which a TV producer is caught up in a scheme to kill the country’s dictator.
With cyberattacks getting worse, the urgent need today is for faster responses, smarter technologies, and wider encryption.
Some content on this page was disabled on October 22, 2025 as a result of a DMCA takedown notice from The Economist Newspaper Limited. You can learn more about the DMCA here:
Canadian Solar CEO Shawn Qu welcomed the partnership with the IFC: “With IFC’s commitment, we are able to expand our production capacity to meet the increasing demand for solar energy worldwide.”
pv-magazine: The International Finance Corporation (IFC) has entered into an agreement with Chinese Tier-1 solar power company Canadian Solar to deliver a finance package worth $70 million to aid the company’s overseas expansion plans.
The terms of the deal include a $60 million loan and a $10 million subscription in Canadian Solar common shares.
Today nearly everyone, everywhere, every day, comes into contact with plastics. Plastics have become the ubiquitous workhorse material of the modern economy — combining unrivalled functional properties with low cost. And yet, while delivering many benefits, the current plastics economy has drawbacks that are becoming more apparent by the day.
Significant economic value is lost after each use, along with wide-ranging negative impacts to natural systems. How can we turn the challenges of our current plastics economy into a global opportunity for innovation and value capture, resulting in stronger economies and better environmental outcomes?
cleantecnica – Vietnam Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung has announced his government’s intention to “review development plans of all new coal plants and halt any new coal power development.”
The announcement comes in advance of the Solar PV Trade Mission, scheduled April 18 – 22 in Hanoi and Bangkok. It is hoped the trade missions will assemble diverse high-level delegations of stakeholders from around the world into emerging markets to jointly explore and create business development opportunities.
Around the world, governments are doing their best to strangle funding for the civilian groups that dare to challenge their power and hold them to account.
Civil society is under more aggressive attack than at any time in recent memory. Facing independent civic groups that have further reach, and more outlets to publish their findings and make their case, governments around the world have begun working to silence them by depriving them of their right to seek funding abroad, even when domestic funds are unavailable. From Africa to Eastern Europe to Asia, autocrats have claimed that they are fighting foreign interference to brush aside domestic and international protest over these restrictions.