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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"It's like a wine," says a grower. "You can taste it like a wine, and then you can keep the taste in your mouth for a very long time." White peppercorns can cost up to $100 per ounce. -
A building boom in the Southeast Asian country has pushed up demand for sand in a river that 60 million people rely on. -
Indonesia calls them a national security risk. But that decision has sparked criticism from some, who say most of the refugees are actually the wives and children of former ISIS militia.
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There are many ways to kill a river. With Southeast Asia's storied Mekong, China's upriver damming is taking a heavy toll, but downstream neighbors share the blame. The No. 1 threat: sand mining.
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The International Court of Justice in The Hague on Thursday approved emergency measures to protect Myanmar's Muslim minority Rohingya. Gambia has accused Myanmar of genocide against the Rohingya.
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Aung San Suu Kyi is defending Myanmar before the International Court of Justice in a complaint of genocide conducted against the minority Muslim Rohingya.
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Aung San Suu Kyi aims to convince an international court that charges of genocide against the Muslim minority Rohingya are false. About 700,000 refugees fled a brutal crackdown in 2017.
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Thailand will ban three popular pesticides starting Sunday over public health concerns. Many farmers aren't happy. The U.S. government is urging Thai officials to reconsider.
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Southeast Asia's biggest lake is in serious trouble. Drought, dam building and overfishing have brought the Tonle Sap to a tipping point. And as the lake goes, so goes the greater Mekong ecosystem.
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The death of Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi is a setback for ISIS. But its ideology is thriving in places like Southeast Asia, where self-radicalization is a growing problem.
