Soraya Sarhaddi Nelson
Special correspondent Soraya Sarhaddi Nelson is based in Berlin. Her reports can be heard on NPR's award-winning programs, including Morning Edition and All Things Considered, and read at NPR.org. From 2012 until 2018 Nelson was NPR's bureau chief in Berlin. She won the ICFJ 2017 Excellence in International Reporting Award for her work in Central and Eastern Europe, North Africa, the Middle East and Afghanistan.
Nelson was also based in Cairo for NPR and covered the Arab World from the Middle East to North Africa during the Arab Spring. In 2006, Nelson opened NPR's first bureau in Kabul, from where she provided listeners in an in-depth sense of life inside Afghanistan, from the increase in suicide among women in a country that treats them as second class citizens to the growing interference of Iran and Pakistan in Afghan affairs. For her coverage of Afghanistan, she won a Peabody Award, Overseas Press Club Award, and the Gracie in 2010. She received the Elijah Parish Lovejoy Award from Colby College in 2011 for her coverage in the Middle East and Afghanistan.
Nelson spent 20 years as newspaper reporter, including as Knight Ridder's Middle East Bureau Chief. While at the Los Angeles Times, she was sent on extended assignment to Iran and Afghanistan following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. She spent three years an editor and reporter for Newsday and was part of the team that won the 1997 Pulitzer Prize for covering the crash of TWA Flight 800.
A graduate of the University of Maryland, Nelson speaks Farsi, Dari and German.
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As the French government is pressured to prevent another attack, the prosecutor's office says the organizer of the attacks is dead. Tension from the attacks has spread to other European countries.
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Paris is still tense after Wednesday's raid on a Paris suburb. That tension has spread across Europe. Authorities in Germany have stepped up security measures after Friday's attacks in Paris.
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The investigation continues into the deadly attacks in Paris on Friday, and in Germany, a major soccer match was canceled Tuesday after a bomb threat.
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Russian finally acknowledged a terrorist plot brought down a Russian jetliner over Egypt last month. In Paris, the Muslim community worries there will be a backlash against them after the attacks.
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For the second night in a row, European Union leaders approved plans aimed at controlling the influx of migrants after previously being deeply divided over a solution.
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European Union interior and justice ministers met in Brussels Tuesday to discuss a proposed plan to relocate 120,000 refugees across member states. The meeting, on the eve of an EU summit, is likely to prove contentious, since several eastern European governments have already rejected the idea.
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The secretary of state has announced that the U.S. will increase the number of refugees it could admit annually to 100,000 in 2017.
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European ministers meet on Monday to discuss the migrant crisis. France and Germany want a quota system to distribute refugees across the EU, but there's opposition from Eastern European states.
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Prime Minister Viktor Orban has adopted staunchly anti-migrant positions to try and win back supporters from the far right, which is making significant gains. -
More Americans are studying for graduate degrees in Germany, where many programs are taught in English and tuition is usually free. (This piece first aired on June 28, 2015 on Weekend Edition Sunday).
