
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.
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An NPR investigation finds gaps in the systems to report misbehavior by federal judges and a widespread culture of fear about reporting abuse.
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NPR asks international affairs expert Nina Khrushcheva of the New School about how Russian President Vladimir Putin views the tension between President Trump and Ukraine's Zelenskyy.
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Israel and Hamas at loggerheads over next phase of the six-week-old Gaza ceasefireIsrael and Hamas are at loggerheads over the next phase of the six-week-old ceasefire. Israel stopped the delivery of aid to Gaza until Hamas accepts a U.S. ceasefire extension proposal.
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Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy received a warm welcome in London from Britain's prime minster and other European leaders who pledged to work together to stop Russia's war in Ukraine.
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NPR's Leila Fadel speaks with Andrew Natsios, former head of USAID under President George W. Bush, about the dismantling of the international aid agency.
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President Trump is threatening to put more tariffs on China. But the U.S. rival is in a better position to ride out American economic retaliation, says former U.S. Ambassador to China Winston Lord.
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Republican Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri talks about his mission to hold tech companies accountable even as they try to align themselves with President Donald Trump.
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NPR speaks with a rare earth minerals expert Gracelin Baskaran of the Center for Strategic and International Studies about U.S.-Ukraine negotiations on Ukraine's resources.
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House Republicans pass budget framework advancing Trump agenda, the conflicting messaging over who's in charge of some government decision-making, egg farmers say they're losing the bird flu battle.
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NPR's Leila Fadel speaks with Republican Rep. Tim Burchett of Tennessee about the budget framework that passed in the House and how it may impact Americans across the country.