Leila Fadel
Leila Fadel is a national correspondent for NPR based in Los Angeles, covering issues of culture, diversity, and race.
Most recently, she was NPR's international correspondent based in Cairo and covered the wave of revolts in the Middle East and their aftermaths in Libya, Tunisia, Egypt, and beyond. Her stories brought us to the heart of a state-ordered massacre of pro-Muslim Brotherhood protesters in Cairo in 2013 when police shot into crowds of people to clear them and killed between 1,000 and 2,000 people. She told us the tales of a coup in Egypt and what it is like for a country to go through a military overthrow of an elected government. She covered the fall of Mosul to ISIS in 2014 and documented the harrowing tales of the Yazidi women who were kidnapped and enslaved by the group. Her coverage also included stories of human smugglers in Egypt and the Syrian families desperate and willing to pay to risk their lives and cross a turbulent ocean for Europe.
She was awarded the Lowell Thomas Award from the Overseas Press Club for her coverage of the 2013 coup in Egypt and the toll it took on the country and Egyptian families. In 2017 she earned a Gracie award for the story of a single mother in Tunisia whose two eldest daughters were brainwashed and joined ISIS. The mother was fighting to make sure it didn't happen to her younger girls.
Before joining NPR, she covered the Middle East for The Washington Post as the Cairo Bureau Chief. Prior to her position as Cairo Bureau Chief for the Post, she covered the Iraq war for nearly five years with Knight Ridder, McClatchy Newspapers, and later the Washington Post. Her foreign coverage of the devastating human toll of the Iraq war earned her the George. R. Polk award in 2007. In 2016 she was the Council on Foreign Relations Edward R. Murrow fellow.
Leila Fadel is a Lebanese-American journalist who speaks conversational Arabic and was raised in Saudi Arabia and Lebanon.
-
Discussions about U.S. aid to Ukraine and Israel are being delayed by House Republicans who are negotiating a U.S. border policy that is further to the right than most Democrats are willing to vote.
-
Israel hits targets in Gaza as truce with Hamas collapses. Why U.S. aid to Ukraine and Israel is held up in the House. GOP Florida Gov. DeSantis and Democratic California Gov. Newsom held a debate.
-
It was billed as a Red State-Blue State debate between men with different governing ideologies: Fla. Gov. Ron DeSantis, running for the GOP presidential nod, and Calif. Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom.
-
Israel's warplanes began pounding targets in Gaza, shortly after it announced the collapse of a twice-renewed truce that had allowed the release of more than 100 hostages seized by Hamas militants.
-
Secretary of State Blinken is in Israel. New York Rep. George Santos may be expelled from Congress. U.S. charges Indian national in alleged assassination plot of Sikh separatist in New York City.
-
The conference, known as COP28, opened in Dubai on Thursday. Questions focus on whether real action will be taken to slow global warming, and on the host country as a major oil producer.
-
President Biden will be in Pueblo Wednesday to tout his administration's investments in clean energy jobs. He's also expected to take some swipes at right-wing Republicans.
-
The hostage-for-prisoner exchange is expected to continue on Wednesday. The humanitarian crisis in Gaza is dire and the military situation volatile.
-
Secretary of State Blinken will head to the Middle East again. President Biden to tout clean energy jobs in Colorado. How the U.S. will be impacted if global warming goes beyond 1.5 degrees Celsius.
-
The families of three men of Palestinian descent who were shot in Vermont say it was a hate crime. But investigators aren't sure, and tracking anti-Arab hate crimes is uniquely complicated.