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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"I knew I should stop loving him," says Ri Yong Hui. "But I couldn't." She met Pham Ngoc Canh in 1971, when he was in North Korea on an internship. After years of separation, they married in 2002. -
Since U.S. ties improved, Vietnam's growth has surged. "North Korea is now like Vietnam in the past. They are looking for new ways to get out of their isolated situation," says a Vietnamese analyst. -
A militant group aligned with ISIS has claimed responsibility for the bombing of a church in the southern Philippines that killed at least 20 people last weekend. Some experts believe the group will use the bombing as a tool for recruiting foreign fighters.
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The Rooster brand, ubiquitous in the U.S., is now being exported to Thailand, where Sriracha was born. But many Thais who taste the U.S. version are not impressed. "I wanted to gag," says one. -
A young Saudi woman is holed up in a hotel in Bangkok hotel after flying to Thailand en route to Australia, where she said she hoped to seek asylum from her abusive family.
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Officials say the tsunami was triggered by underwater landslides caused by volcanic activity on the island of Anak Krakatau. -
Microcameras installed in public bathrooms for surreptitious filming are an everyday concern for women. Police say the number of "illegal filming" crimes sharply increased between 2011 and 2017. -
Chinese companies are building infrastructure and dams along the vast river that runs through five Southeast Asian countries before emptying into the South China Sea. -
With tensions easing between North and South Korea, the two sides are reviving cross-border reunions that began in 1985. On Monday, 93 South Koreans will board buses to visit relatives in the North. -
The Thai Navy SEALS say four of the 13 people who had been trapped for more than two weeks have been rescued. Rescue efforts began Sunday morning.
