Mike Shuster
Mike Shuster is an award-winning diplomatic correspondent and roving foreign correspondent for NPR News. He is based at NPR West, in Culver City, CA. When not traveling outside the U.S., Shuster covers issues of nuclear non-proliferation and weapons of mass destruction, terrorism, and the Pacific Rim.
In recent years, Shuster has helped shape NPRs extensive coverage of the Middle East as one of the leading reporters to cover this region – traveling in the spring of 2007 to Iraq to cover the increased deployment of American forces in Baghdad. He has traveled frequently to Iran – seven times since 2004 – to report on Iran's nuclear program and political changes there. He has also reported frequently from Israel, covering the 2006 war with Hezbollah, the pullout from Gaza in 2005 and the second intifada that erupted in 2000. His 2007 week-long series "The Partisans of Ali" explored the history of Shi'ite faith and politics, providing a rare, comprehensive look at the complexities of the Islamic religion and its impact on the Western world.
Shuster has won numerous awards for his reporting. He was part of the NPR News team to be recognized with a Peabody Award for coverage of September 11th and its aftermath. He was also part of the NPR News teams to receive Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Awards for coverage of the Iraq War (2007 and 2004); September 11th and the war in Afghanistan (2003); and the Gulf War (1992). In 2003, Shuster was honored for his series "The Middle East: A Century of Conflict" with an Overseas Press Club Lowell Thomas Award and First in Documentary Reporting from the National Headliner Awards. He also received an honorable mention from the Overseas Press Club in 1999, and the SAJA Journalism Award in 1998.
Through his reporting for NPR, Shuster has also taken listeners to India and Pakistan, the Central Asian nations of Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, and Tajikistan, and the Congo. He was NPR's senior Moscow correspondent in the early 1990s, when he covered the collapse of the Soviet Union and a wide range of political, economic, and social issues in Russia and the other independent states of the former Soviet Union.
From September 1989 to June 1991, Shuster was stationed in England as senior editor of NPR's London Bureau. For two months in early 1991, he was assigned to Saudi Arabia to cover the Gulf War. While at the London Bureau, Shuster also covered the unification of Germany, from the announcement of the opening of the Berlin Wall to the establishment of a single currency for that country. He traveled to Germany monthly during this time to trace the revolution there, from euphoria over the freedom to travel, to the decline of the Communist Party, to the newly independent country's first free elections.
Before moving to London, Shuster worked as a reporter and bureau chief at NPR New York, and an editor of Weekend All Things Considered. He joined NPR in 1980 as a freelance reporter covering business and the economy.
Prior to coming to NPR, Shuster was a United Nations correspondent for Pacifica News Service, during which he covered the 1980 election of Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe. He traveled throughout Africa as a freelance foreign affairs reporter in 1970 and again in 1976; on this latter trip, Shuster spent five months covering Angolan civil war and its aftermath.
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The former prime minister, who had been in a coma after suffering a massive stroke in 2006, died on Saturday. Sharon's career spanned the birth of the nation and most of its essential turning points. Israelis had a love-hate relationship with him that was beginning to soften only shortly before his death.
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Reports over the weekend said the U.S. and Iran had agreed to face-to-face negotiations, but both countries deny that's the case. Still, symptoms of economic and social instability may be pushing Iran toward the negotiating table. -
Crowds of anxious Iranians are flocking to foreign exchange offices as the rial continues to plummet; it lost about one-third of its value in just a day. Tough economic and banking sanctions, and an oil embargo, are at the heart of the crisis. Tehran is blaming outsiders, and seems unable to stop the free fall. -
Talks on Iran's nuclear activities appear to be at a halt, but there is action behind the scenes. Iran's public position hasn't changed. But privately, debate is growing over whether the nuclear program is worth the economic pain of harsh banking and oil sanctions that continue to do their work. -
The International Atomic Energy Agency believes Iran has something significant to hide at Parchin. The suspicion is that Iran used the site to test explosions involving uranium metal, which is used in developing a nuclear weapon. Talks with Iran on its controversial nuclear program are set to intensify in the coming days.
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Iran is facing its most serious challenge since the war with Iraq in the 1980s. Abroad, the Syrian uprising is threatening to oust the Assad regime, Iran's sole Arab ally. At home, the EU oil embargo and U.S. banking sanctions are hurting the economy. And domestic criticism is growing. -
The thought of bagpipes usually conjures up images of Scottish men in skirts — not auto-rickshaws and South Asian spices. But no country manufactures more bagpipes than Pakistan, and no place in Pakistan makes more of them than Sialkot, a bagpipe-crazy city near India-administered Kashmir. -
Pakistan's Supreme Court has given the prime minister until Wednesday to ask Swiss authorities to reopen an old corruption investigation of President Asif Ali Zardari. The premier has refused, and the court is threatening to find him in contempt of court and remove him — as it did his predecessor. -
Earlier this month, a young woman who ran a women's rights group was shot and killed near Peshawar. She'd been warned several times about her work. Her death isn't the first of its kind in northwest Pakistan. Still, despite the dangers, such work continues.
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Pakistan reopened border crossings last week for U.S. and NATO convoys heading into Afghanistan, resolving a seven-month-long dispute. But other challenges remain, including disagreement over U.S. drone strikes inside Pakistan and the pro-al-Qaida Haqqani network.
