Michael Sullivan
Michael Sullivan is NPR's Senior Asia Correspondent. He moved to Hanoi to open NPR's Southeast Asia Bureau in 2003. Before that, he spent six years as NPR's South Asia correspondent based in but seldom seen in New Delhi.
Michael was in Pakistan on 9-11 and spent much of the next two years there and in Afghanistan covering the run up to and the aftermath of the U.S. military campaign to oust the Taliban and al Qaeda. Michael has also reported extensively on terrorism in Southeast Asia, including both Bali bombings. He also covered the attacks on the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998. Michael was the first NPR reporter on the ground in both Thailand and the Indonesian province of Aceh following the devastating December 2004 tsunami. He has returned to Aceh more than half a dozen times since to document the recovery and reconstruction effort. As a reporter in NPR's London bureau in the early 1990s he covered the fall of the Soviet Union, the troubles in Northern Ireland, and the aftermath of the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan.
Before moving to New Delhi, Michael was senior producer on NPR's foreign desk. He has worked in more than 60 countries on five continents, covering conflicts in Somalia, the Balkans, Haiti, Chechnya, and the Middle East. Prior to joining the foreign desk, Michael spent several years as producer and acting executive producer of NPR's All Things Considered.
As a reporter, Michael is the recipient of several Overseas Press Club Awards and Citations for Excellence for stories from Haiti, Afghanistan, and Vietnam. He was also part of the NPR team that won an Alfred I DuPont-Columbia University Award for coverage of 9-11 and the war in Afghanistan. In 2004 he was honored by the South Asia Journalists Association (SAJA) with a Special Recognition Award for his 'outstanding work' from 1998-2003 as NPR's South Asia correspondent.
As a producer and editor, Michael has been honored by the Overseas Press Club for work from Bosnia and Haiti; a Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award for a story about life in Sarajevo during wartime; and a World Hunger Award for stories from Eritrea.
Michael's wife, Martha Ann Overland, is Southeast Asia correspondent for The Chronicle of Higher Education and also writes commentaries on living abroad for NPR. They have two children.
Michael is a graduate of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. He's been at NPR since 1985.
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Thai police have arrested leaders of a student-led, pro-democracy movement. The group has been challenging Thailand's government despite strict laws against criticism of the monarchy.
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Sunday saw the largest anti-government demonstration in Bangkok since a military coup six years ago. Some demonstrators called for reform of the monarchy, the country's most revered institution. -
Students in Thailand have been protesting in recent days over the military's involvement in Thai politics.
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The Philippines has overtaken Indonesia as the coronavirus hot spot in Southeast Asia — the country has more than 122,000 confirmed cases. Critics say it has no coherent pandemic response plan.
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Parts of Asia that seemed to have COVID-19 under control have witnessed fresh outbreaks. China, Japan and Vietnam, which had few or no cases in the past month or so, are seeing a resurgence.
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Vietnam had been a success story in beating the coronavirus: zero deaths and only 430 confirmed cases. But a new cluster has changed things. The prime minister warns every province is under threat.
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Najib Razak was found guilty in the first of multiple trials related to the siphoning of billions of dollars from the country's 1MDB sovereign wealth fund. -
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has called out Beijing over China claiming most of the South China Sea and says the U.S. will stand by Southeast Asian nations with competing claims.
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The archipelago nation has been hit by the virus far more than any other country in Southeast Asia. Epidemiologists cite government failures. -
While the United States debates the reopening of schools, NPR correspondents discuss experiences of Germany, Israel and Thailand as they reopen classrooms during the pandemic.
