
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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Germany and comedy have not been synonymous, to say the least, since World War II. But, now, German comedy is making a comeback.
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President Trump will visit Poland on Wednesday. Although Trump is unpopular in much of Europe, he can expect a warm welcome in Warsaw. The White House says Poland is a potential energy partner.
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The German parliament has voted to impose fines of up to $57 million on social media companies that fail to remove "obviously illegal" hate speech within 24 hours of it being posted.
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What appears to be the deadliest terror attack in Britain since 2005, took place Monday night. An attacker set off a bomb at a concert — leaving more than 20 people dead and more than 50 injured.
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Two German soldiers with far-right views, accused of plotting the assassination of public figures, sparked a probe of that country's military to see whether it's been infiltrated by the far right.
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Hungary is sending all people seeking asylum to a camp on its border with Serbia to temporarily live in converted shipping containers. Hungary's government says it's to keep out terrorists.
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Hungary is closing all of its refugee camps across the country, and sending asylum seekers to a camp on the border with Serbia where they will live in converted shipping containers while their cases are processed.
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Voting in the controversial Turkish referendum that led to the nasty spat between President Erdogan and Western European leaders starts in Germany. It's home to the largest ex-pat European community outside Turkey. It goes on for several weeks.
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Martin Schulz, a former bookseller with no high school diploma, could become the next chancellor of Germany, thanks in part to an anti-Trump sentiment.
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A new World War II museum just opened in the Polish city of Gdansk. But the populist Polish government wants to take over the museum and reshape its exhibits to fit a narrower, more flattering view.