Ashley Westerman
Ashley Westerman is a producer who occasionally directs the show. Since joining the staff in June 2015, she has produced a variety of stories including a coal mine closing near her hometown, the 2016 Republican National Convention, and the Rohingya refugee crisis in southern Bangladesh. She is also an occasional reporter for Morning Edition,and NPR.org, where she has contributed reports on both domestic and international news.
Ashley was a summer intern in 2011 with Morning Edition and pitched a story on her very first day. She went on to work as a reporter and host for member station 89.3 WRKF in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, where she earned awards covering everything from healthcare to jambalaya.
Ashley is an East-West Center 2018 Jefferson Fellow and a two-time reporting fellow with the International Center for Journalists. Through ICFJ, she has covered labor issues in her home country of the Philippines for NPR and health care in Appalachia for Voice of America.
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China has taken dramatic steps to fight climate change, including shutting major coal power plants. But now it plans to build hundreds of coal plants abroad.
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The more than 250-mile, $6 billion railway is set to cut through the northern part of Laos and is primarily financed and built by the Chinese. So far, the project has mostly employed Chinese workers.
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Laos is known as the "Land of a Million Elephants." But after decades of loss of habitat, there are fewer than 1,000 left. Now those remaining may be endangered by a Chinese-backed rail line.
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Alex Dehgan, a former State Department official who ran the Wildlife Conservation Society's Afghanistan program, argues science diplomacy can play a key role in rebuilding the country.
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Maria Ressa, the CEO of the news outlet Rappler, which has been critical of President Rodrigo Duterte, was arrested earlier this week and charged with violating the country's cybercrime law.
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Verlon Jose, vice chairman of the Tohono O'odham Nation, says President Trump's proposed border wall would cut through the reservation, with negative impacts.
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Buddhist militants attacked four police posts in Myanmar's restive Rakhine state on the day the country celebrates its 1948 independence from Britain.
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Independence of Taiwan is "a dead end," China President Xi Jinping said Wednesday during a speech marking the 40th anniversary of when Beijing sent a message to Taiwan calling for unification.
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Letitia James says "it is the highest honor" to begin her time as the state's top legal officer. She is the state's first black attorney general and the first woman to be elected to that post.
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The law requires Internet companies to store locals' data in Vietnam and hand over user information if the government asks for it, among other contentious provisions.