A new book tells the story of Fazlé Hasan Abed, the “mild-mannered accountant” who helped lift Bangladesh from the ashes of its violent birth and reimagined international development.  

Last week, The Asia Foundation presented our Chang Lin Tien Distinguished Leadership Award to the pioneering Philippine news site Rappler and its founding team, Maria Ressa, Glenda Gloria, Chay Hofileña, and Beth Frondoso, for their courageous online journalism. Once a scrappy startup, Rappler at 10 years old has become a political lightning rod with an average of 40 million page views a month and a history of discomfiting the powerful.

Founded in 2012 by a team of veteran journalists, Rappler’s impact reverberated far beyond the Philippines as it modeled a style of fast-paced, online journalism that upended established newsrooms. It was also a canary in the coalmine of social media, as a tool that once seemed like a new voice for democracy took a darker turn towards online attacks and disinformation.

John and Tracie sat down in San Francisco with two of Rappler’s founders, Executive Editor Glenda Gloria and CEO and President Maria Ressa, to talk about their careers, what it’s like to win a Nobel Peace Prize while threatened with years in prison, and which of the four founders is the mean one.

How a two-year program helped vulnerable communities in South Asia protect themselves from Covid-19 and the “fake-news pandemic.”  

Meet twenty young leaders from the U.S. and the Asia-Pacific, the first graduates of The Asia Foundation’s LeadNext Fellowship program. Read the full blog about the LeadNext fellows.

After beating a path to postwar prosperity that’s been the envy of Asia and the world, South Korea suddenly finds itself in a profound malaise, with plummeting birthrates and a generation of disaffected youth who call their country “hell.”  Read the full blog by our Country Representative Kwang Kim. 

In this special episode we present an unabridged version of last week’s conversation with former ambassador Ted Osius about the improbable reconciliation of America and Vietnam. 

In our last episode, we spoke with former U.S. ambassador Ted Osius about his latest book, Nothing Is Impossible: America’s Reconciliation with Vietnam, which chronicles the 25-year journey of Vietnam and the United States from implacable foes to friends and partners. 

In this extended version of that conversation, Ambassador Osius expands further on his views of U.S.-Vietnam friendship, the founding of an American-style university in Hanoi, and his regret at the demise of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, and he reflects on his experience—in conservative Vietnam and an equally conservative State Department—as the father of two in a same-sex, interracial marriage. 

This week, former ambassador Ted Osius discusses the remarkable journey of America and Vietnam from bitter adversaries to friends and partners. 

The market town of Torkham stands on the Old Silk Road, with one foot on either side of the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. As Islamabad seeks to secure its frontier, Torkham illustrates the tension between trade and security in conflict-affected border towns. Read the full blog post and report. 

In Vietnam, rural women drawn to the booming cities for domestic work are often unprepared and undocumented. A technology that made its public debut with cryptocurrencies offers a solution. Read the full InAsia blog.

A marathon coding competition in Bangkok hatches a winning app that could transform the food supply chain—and your relationship with your refrigerator. Read the full blog now!