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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Businesses in Ukraine face numerous challenges in the midst of the war. Some have shutdown entirely, while others are scrambling to find new ways to operate.
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At least 30 people have been killed in a missile strike in Chasiv Yar in Ukraine. Airstrikes in the east have continued despite Russia pausing its offensive.
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Russia says it controls Ukraine's Luhansk region, one of the two eastern regions that have been the focus of its invasion. The announcement comes after Ukrainian troops withdrew from Lysychansk.
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Vsevolod Kozhemyako, one of Ukraine's wealthiest men, has set up his own battalion to fight Russian forces. He funds, trains and leads a light infantry unit on the front lines. -
Even as conditions improve in Ukraine's second largest city, some people just outside Kharkiv continue living in basement bomb shelters.
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Ukrainian troops are pushing Russian forces away from the country's second-largest city. That's allowing residents to move out of shelters, assess damage and try to resume something of a normal life. -
Thousands of people continue to risk their lives to flee the besieged Ukrainian city of Mariupol.
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During the pandemic a trend in other countries caught on with wealthy Iraqis: buying lions for keeping at home.
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A new analysis from the Institute of Health Metrics and Evaluation shows nearly twice as many people worldwide died from antibiotic resistance in 2019 than from HIV/AIDS.
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In the Peruvian Amazon, geography, religious beliefs and logistics make getting COVID-19 vaccines extremely difficult. But health care workers have not given up.
