Sylvia Poggioli
Sylvia Poggioli is senior European correspondent for NPR's International Desk covering political, economic, and cultural news in Italy, the Vatican, Western Europe, and the Balkans. Poggioli's on-air reporting and analysis have encompassed the fall of communism in Eastern Europe, the turbulent civil war in the former Yugoslavia, and how immigration has transformed European societies.
Since joining NPR's foreign desk in 1982, Poggioli has traveled extensively for reporting assignments. These include going to Norway to cover the aftermath of the brutal attacks by a right-wing extremist; to Greece, Spain, and Portugal reporting on the eurozone crisis; and the Balkans where the last wanted war criminals have been arrested.
In addition, Poggioli has traveled to France, Germany, United Kingdom, The Netherlands, Belgium, Austria, Sweden, and Denmark to produce in-depth reports on immigration, racism, Islam, and the rise of the right in Europe.
She has also travelled with Pope Francis on several of his foreign trips, including visits to Cuba, the United States, Congo, Uganda, Central African Republic, Myanmar, and Bangladesh.
Throughout her career Poggioli has been recognized for her work with distinctions including the WBUR Foreign Correspondent Award, the Welles Hangen Award for Distinguished Journalism, a George Foster Peabody, National Women's Political Caucus/Radcliffe College Exceptional Merit Media Awards, the Edward Weintal Journalism Prize, and the Silver Angel Excellence in the Media Award. Poggioli was part of the NPR team that won the 2000 Overseas Press Club Award for coverage of the war in Kosovo. In 2009, she received the Maria Grazia Cutulli Award for foreign reporting.
In 2000, Poggioli received an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters from Brandeis University. In 2006, she received an honorary degree from the University of Massachusetts Boston together with Barack Obama.
Prior to this honor, Poggioli was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences "for her distinctive, cultivated and authoritative reports on 'ethnic cleansing' in Bosnia." In 1990, Poggioli spent an academic year at Harvard University as a research fellow at Harvard University's Center for Press, Politics, and Public Policy at the Kennedy School of Government.
From 1971 to 1986, Poggioli served as an editor on the English-language desk for the Ansa News Agency in Italy. She worked at the Festival of Two Worlds in Spoleto, Italy. She was actively involved with women's film and theater groups.
The daughter of Italian anti-fascists who were forced to flee Italy under Mussolini, Poggioli was born in Providence, Rhode Island, and grew up in Cambridge, Massachusetts. She graduated from Harvard College with a bachelor's degree in romance languages and literature. She later studied in Italy under a Fulbright Scholarship.
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Ceremonies mark the 10th anniversary of Europe's worst massacre since World War II. About 50,000 family members, foreign dignitaries and guests -- including Serbian President Boris Tadic -- attended the commemoration at the Potocari Memorial Centre in Srebrenica. -
Monday marks the 10th anniversary of the massacre at Srebrenica, Bosnia, where thousands of Muslim men and boys were executed by Serbian forces. Since then, families of the victims have demanded to know the fate of the men while the international community has struggled to bring those responsible to trial.
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Serbian TV recently broadcast a video showing killings in the 1995 massacre of Bosnian Muslims in Srebrenica. But a large number of Serbs continue to believe either that the video is a fake or that all sides committed atrocities and are equally guilty. Even so, Serbian President Boris Tadic plans to attend 10-year anniversary memorial of the massacre. -
In Rome, it's the height of the tourist season and, in addition to Roman ruins, baroque palaces and the Vatican, there's something new for visitors to see. After decades of neglect, the banks of the river Tiber are springing back to life.
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European Union leaders are gathering in Brussels for a two-day summit that will address problems with the organization's budget. The meeting is occurring two weeks after France and the Netherlands rejected a proposed E.U. constitution
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The ceremonies surrounding the death of Pope John Paul II, his funeral and the election of his successor Benedict XVI have played out according to a script written centuries ago. But the new pontiff strayed from the script Saturday, speaking to reporters before his inaugural mass tomorrow.
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Recognizing the global impact of the media, Pope Benedict XVI becomes the first pontiff to hold a news conference. In a 15-minute gathering, he thanked the press for coverage of Pope John Paul II's death and the conclave which elected Benedict as John Paul's successor.
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Black smoke rose again Tuesday morning from the Sistine Chapel chimney, indicating that cardinals of the Roman Catholic Church have not yet elected a successor to Pope John Paul II.
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The 115 members of the College of Cardinals -- from six continents -- are sequestering themselves in the Sistine Chapel and begin voting Monday to elect a new pope. The process will mix medieval pageantry with ultramodern technology.
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Monday, 115 cardinals of the Catholic Church will withdraw into a conclave in the Vatican's Sistine Chapel to elect a new pope. The session, the first in 27 years, will be a blend of Old-World pageantry and state-of-the-art technology.
