Hannah Bloch
Hannah Bloch is lead digital editor on NPR's international desk, overseeing the work of NPR correspondents and freelance journalists around the world.
Her first contributions to NPR were on the other side of the microphone when, as a writer and editor at National Geographic, she was interviewed by NPR for her reporting from Afghanistan and on the role failure plays in exploration. During her 2004-2014 tenure at National Geographic, she also reported from Easter Island and covered a range of topics including archaeology and global health.
From 2014-2017, Bloch wrote the "Work in Progress" column at The Wall Street Journal, highlighting efforts by social entrepreneurs and problem-solvers to make a measurable difference in the world.
Earlier in her career, she was Time Magazine's first full-time correspondent in Pakistan and Afghanistan, covering the rise and fall of the Taliban regime, Pakistan's nuclear tests, and the regrouping of al-Qaida after Sept. 11. She also established and led CNN's first bureau in Islamabad.
Bloch was part of NPR's Peabody Award-winning team covering the Ebola outbreak in 2014 and was the recipient of a John S. Knight Professional Journalism Fellowship at Stanford University and a Freedom Forum Asia Studies Fellowship at the University of Hawaii.
She is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania and earned master's degrees in journalism and international affairs from Columbia University.
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U.S. combat forces left last year and there have been a number of troubling signs this year. They include a rise in deadly attacks and renewed friction between Afghanistan and Pakistan. -
Asia Bibi, a 50-year-old mother of five sentenced to death in 2010 for insulting Islam, has been granted a reprieve — for now. Pakistan's Supreme Court will hear her appeal, but no date has been set. -
The Pakistani education activist, who was shot in the head in 2012 by a Taliban gunman, marked her birthday with refugees in Lebanon. She warned that the world is "failing ... Syria's children." -
It's enormous, and it grew relatively quickly — less than 900 million years after the Big Bang. -
Drones aren't the only airborne worry in Europe this week. An aggressive owl is terrorizing the Dutch town of Purmerend. Hormones, perhaps? Or maybe it's just hungry. -
They each were cut when they were young. As outspoken opponents of the practice, they're accused of going against their religion. (They're not.) And of being brainwashed by white women. (Also untrue.) -
Around the world, patients acquire new infections simply from spending time in a hospital. One way to fight back: replacing hospital bed rails with copper, a natural infection-killer. -
Amid hopeful news from Liberia of dwindling numbers of Ebola cases, an outbreak of the disease started late last month in a remote part of the country. Health worker Lorenzo Dorr gives us an update. -
A high-end jewelry company recycles the components of assault rifles into watches, rings and other luxe jewelry items. Each sale then funds the destruction of weapons in Africa. -
Fear of the virus has prompted Pyongyang to ban tourism and quarantine all foreigners. It's a curious stance since the Hermit Kingdom has plenty of other, more pressing health woes.
