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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The Constitutional Court ordered dissolution of the party, which won elections last year, saying it violated the constitution by proposing to amend the law against defaming the country’s royal family. -
The Pheu Thai party and the progressive Move Forward Party made a strong showing, in a repudiation to the military-backed government of Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha. -
Myanmar's expected release of more than 5,700 prisoners is expected to include the U.K.'s former envoy to the Asian country, an Australian economist and a Japanese filmmaker, according to state media. -
The former prime minister was sentenced to three years for violating the official secrets act, on top of a 20-year sentence already handed down by the military junta that took power in 2021. -
Vickie Bowman and her husband were detained for sending information to an activist group and others opposed to military rule, a senior military official said.
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The Leonardo DiCaprio film The Beach helped put Maya Bay on the "must see" list of every visitor to Thailand. But that proved too much for its delicate ecosystem. The pandemic helped change that. -
Cambodia is one of the most fully COVID-19 vaccinated countries in the world. Besides help from China, the success is also due to systems already in place to combat malaria and other illnesses.
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U.S. vaccine diplomacy is in full swing, especially in Southeast Asia. This distribution of millions of shots is an effort aimed in part at helping regain influence across several countries.
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Myanmar is reeling under a new wave of COVID-19 infections. The health care system has all but collapsed as badly needed doctors are hunted by the military for their opposition to the Feb. 1 coup.
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Indonesia, the world's fourth most populated nation, is overwhelmed by the pandemic. Critics of the government say it failed to take the virus seriously and kept the country open while it spread.
