Jason Beaubien
Jason Beaubien is NPR's Global Health and Development Correspondent on the Science Desk.
In this role, he reports on a range of issues across the world. He's covered the plight of Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh, mass cataract surgeries in Ethiopia, abortion in El Salvador, poisonous gold mines in Nigeria, drug-resistant malaria in Myanmar and tuberculosis in Tajikistan. He was part of a team of reporters at NPR that won a Peabody Award in 2015 for their extensive coverage of the West Africa Ebola outbreak. His current beat also examines development issues including why Niger has the highest birth rate in the world, can private schools serve some of the poorest kids on the planet and the links between obesity and economic growth.
Prior to becoming the Global Health and Development Correspondent in 2012, Beaubien spent four years based in Mexico City covering Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean. In that role, Beaubien filed stories on politics in Cuba, the 2010 Haitian earthquake, the FMLN victory in El Salvador, the world's richest man and Mexico's brutal drug war.
For his first multi-part series as the Mexico City correspondent, Beaubien drove the length of the U.S./Mexico border making a point to touch his toes in both oceans. The stories chronicled the economic, social and political changes along the violent frontier.
In 2002, Beaubien joined NPR after volunteering to cover a coup attempt in the Ivory Coast. Over the next four years, Beaubien worked as a foreign correspondent in sub-Saharan Africa, visiting 27 countries on the continent. His reporting ranged from poverty on the world's poorest continent, the HIV in the epicenter of the epidemic, and the all-night a cappella contests in South Africa, to Afro-pop stars in Nigeria and a trial of white mercenaries in Equatorial Guinea.
During this time, he covered the famines and wars of Africa, as well as inspiring preachers and Nobel laureates. Beaubien was one of the first journalists to report on the huge exodus of people out of Sudan's Darfur region into Chad, as villagers fled some of the initial attacks by the Janjawid. He reported extensively on the steady deterioration of Zimbabwe and still has a collection of worthless Zimbabwean currency.
In 2006, Beaubien was awarded a Knight-Wallace fellowship at the University of Michigan to study the relationship between the developed and the developing world.
Beaubien grew up in Maine, started his radio career as an intern at NPR Member Station KQED in San Francisco and worked at WBUR in Boston before joining NPR.
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Ukraine's counteroffensive saw many Russian forces flee advancing troops in the northeast of the country. But soldiers on the ground say it was more difficult than some headlines have portrayed it.
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The so-called referendums — which Ukraine, the U.S. and others have denounced as shams — are widely viewed as an initial Kremlin move toward formal Russian annexation of the territories. -
Nearly seven months of war in Ukraine, Kyiv's counteroffensive succeeded and Russia ordered more troops to mobilize. Ukrainian lawmakers have been visiting Washington to petition for more arms.
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One Ukrainian woman planted flowers after Russia took over her town — to show she wasn't going anywhere. Now the Russian forces are gone and she and the town are trying to pick up the pieces.
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With a strengthening dollar and rising commodity prices, developing nations are having a hard time paying their debts. -
The Russian invasion has taken a toll on Ukrainian metalworks — the country's second-largest industry — and there's still no deal to ship iron and steel products to customers. -
Even relatively inexpensive drones can provide valuable intelligence to units on the battlefield. "This is our task," a Ukrainian drone surveillance unit member says. "We sit the whole day and watch." -
Business is clawing back in Ukraine, but it won't be anything like normal for a long time. -
As the war in Ukraine nears its sixth month, people in the northeastern city of Kharkiv are finding a new normal. Construction crews are cleaning up bombed buildings and people are returning to work. -
Neither snow, nor rain, nor heat, nor gloom of night — nor even threats of Russian missiles shall keep the garbage haulers of Kharkiv from their appointed rounds. We hit the streets with one crew.
