VOA August 29, 2018 6:10 AM

Ralph Jennings

FILE – The cleaning operation of the area that was used for storing Agent Orange is seen from a plane taking off from Danang international airport.

The Conversation | 18 December 2018 isds.bilaterals.org

The fossil fuel era is coming to an end, but the lawsuits are just beginning

by Kyla Tienhaara

Canada Research Chair in Economy and Environment, Queen’s University, Ontario

“Coal is dead.”

These are not the words of a Greenpeace activist or left-wing politician, but of Jim Barry, the global head of the infrastructure investment group at Blackrock — the world’s largest asset manager. Barry made this statement in 2017, but the writinghas been on the wall for longer than that.

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The uptake of Chinese surveillance technology in the region sparks fears it could be subverted both by local governments and Beijing

BY RAQUEL CARVALHO,  SCMP 21 DEC 2018

Surveillance software at the Security China 2018 exhibition. Photo: Reuters

CNA Insider

In 2016, more than 100 pro-Donald Trump websites were being run from one town in Macedonia.

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In Asia, December 19, 2018

Season’s Greetings. 2018 has been an eventful year, in Asia and in the stories shared here in the InAsia blog, where I had the pleasure in May to take over the reins from longtime editor Alma Freeman. We’re all grateful, at year’s end, for the continued engagement of our readers, and for the thoughtful contributions of our bloggers, who brought us their unique perspectives and insights on developments in Asia. Here are a few of the year’s most fascinating essays, some of them favorites of our readers and some favorites of yours truly. Enjoy! And be sure to join us in 2019, when our January 2 edition will feature predictions for the year ahead from our country representatives across Asia.

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Two surveys over an eight-month period found more than 10,000 ivory items on sale. Image courtesy of TRAFFIC.

New York Times Dec. 21, 2018

Decades after the war with America ended, Vietnamese families continue to search for the remains of their kin who are still missing in action.

By Joseph Babcock  (Mr. Babcock, a teacher of writing, is working on a book about contemporary Vietnam)

On July 27, the day a collection of remains believed to be those of American soldiers lost in the Korean War were flown out of North Korea, I was driving from Hanoi to Vietnam’s rural northern province of Yen Bai. My host that morning was Ngo Thuy Hang, the 42-year-old vice director of Marin, a local nonprofit devoted to helping Vietnamese families locate the remains of their loved ones.

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January 2, 2019 By The Asia Foundation

Happy New Year, and welcome to the first edition of InAsia for 2019. In our last issue we looked at some of our top stories from the year just ended, stories that chronicled the successes and failures, the triumphs, and the tribulations of 2018 through the eyes of our experts in Asia. This week, we invite you to look ahead with us to a still-young 2019, as The Asia Foundation’s country representatives offer their predictions of the stories that will dominate the news from Asia in the coming year. Here, to kick off 2019, are perspectives from our 18 offices in Asia. —John Rieger, editor, InAsia

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