Connie Hedegaard sits down with Bill Gates, the American business magnate and Microsoft co-founder to talk about climate change.Connie Hedegaard (CH): Let me start with a confession: For years, I thought you were not particularly interested in climate change. I vividly recall a closed session at Davos some years back. The discussion turned to climate, instead of other sustainability issues, and you left the room.Now you powerfully and emphatically make the case for urgent climate action.

Lily (not her real name), a Malaysian woman in her late 20s, told The ASEAN Post that she once took a Grab ride for a short 10-minutes journey from her apartment in Petaling Jaya, a city in the state of Selangor to a train station nearby her home.

Before the devastating coronavirus pandemic, during the 2019 ASEAN Summit, Thailand introduced the Eastern Economic Corridor (EEC) initiative to transform three Thai provinces into smart cities – which has turned out to be a success. With the aim to create a centre for trade, investment, regional transportation, and a strategic gateway to Asia - Thailand is confident that it would promote a seamless ASEAN. In accordance with Thailand 4.0, the country aims to achieve 100 smar

Singapore has admitted data collected for contact-tracing can be accessed by police despite earlier assurances it would only be used to fight the coronavirus, sparking privacy concerns Tuesday about the scheme. The city-state has a programme called "TraceTogether" for tracking close contacts of COVID-19 patients, that works via both a phone app and a dongle.

Kudos to the European Commission (EC) for finalising a new investment agreement with China. Europe’s active diplomacy also played a role in China’s recent commitment to achieve carbon neutrality by 2060 – a decision that was quickly followed by Japan’s pledge to decarbonise by 2050.

COVID-19 stormed across the planet in 2020, striking first in Asia and then surging throughout Europe and the Americas in what seemed like an endless tidal wave of grief. With each passing milestone – the first 100 deaths in January, followed by the first 1,000 in February, 10,000 in March, 100,000 in April, and one million as of September – the question always has been when it will it end. Despite its virulence, many simply assume that the pandemic will end sometime in 2021.

Asia is a technological force to be reckoned with.

Geostrategic tensions, global mistrust and the dark side of the digital world are significant threats that could fracture the world, according to the United Nations (UN) Secretary-General during the UN General Assembly in September 2020.

As of 25 October, over 800,000 cases of the coronavirus disease have been reported across ASEAN, inching closer towards the 900,000 mark. The deadly virus has also taken some 21,000 lives in the region.

There is a growing consensus that one or more COVID-19 vaccines will become available at some point in early 2021. Within a year, many people in the United States (US), and some other countries, will be vaccinated. For some childhood diseases, the development of a vaccine was by itself decisive.