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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Iranians are voting Friday in a parliamentary election with limited choices. Many pro-reform politicians were barred from running as candidates. Conservatives are split over the policies of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. -
As Iran prepares to elect a new parliament on Friday, hundreds of reform candidates have been disqualified by a non-elected council. Iran's leaders say this is democracy. Critics in Iran say it's hardly democratic.
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Exit polls are showing Lee Myung-bak, a conservative former mayor of Seoul, winning South Korea's presidential election. Voters overlooked fraud allegations in hope that the former Hyundai CEO will revive the economy. Lee, of the Grand National Party, received 50.3 percent of the vote.
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South Korean voters are set to go to the polls to elect a new president. But unlike most elections over the past 20 years, North Korea and its nuclear weapons are not a major issue. That's because of the Sunshine Policy which has included 10 years of engagement with North Korea.
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The latest intelligence report on Iran seems to be an obstacle to policies of President Bush. The report's main conclusion that Iran ceased a nuclear weapons program in 2003 may raise barriers to the possibility of using military force against Iran and questions economic sanctions. -
A new U.S. intelligence report on Iran says Tehran may be able to develop a nuclear weapon between 2010 and 2015. But the National Intelligence Estimate finds that Iran halted its development program in the fall of 2003 — contradicting claims by the Bush administration.
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The White House on Thursday rolled out new sanctions against Iran, designating Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps as a proliferator of weapons of mass destruction and its elite Quds Force as a supporter of terrorism.
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North Korea's nuclear test claims are presenting a challenge for the Bush administration.
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The U.S. wants Iran to stop its uranium enrichment program. So far, Iran has publicly refused to consider changes to its nuclear program. But now the country is hinting that there may be room for negotiation, after all.
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After more than three weeks of fighting, the Israeli army says it has destroyed Hezbollah's infrastructure in southern Lebanon, including its capacity to launch rockets into northern Israel. But Hezbollah continues to hit Israel with hundreds of rockets each day.
