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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Trump's "big, beautiful bill" faces continued resistance, South Africa's president heads to the White House, DOGE tries to embed beyond the executive branch.
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A federal judge blocked the Trump administration's takeover of the United States Institute of Peace. NPR's Leila Fadel speaks with lawyer George Foote about the future of the institute.
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NPR's Leila Fadel speaks with Fiona Hill, senior fellow with the Brookings Institution, about Russia's military buildup along its borders with NATO members.
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Trump and Putin talk about negotiating ceasefire in Ukraine, Israel faces unprecedented pressure from allies over the war in Gaza, a look at links between climate change and tornadoes in the U.S.
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A woman in Georgia has been declared brain dead, but she's being kept on life support because she's pregnant. The case is raising complicated legal questions about restrictive abortion laws.
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Sen. Peter Welch, D-Vt., wants pressure from the Trump administration on Israel to end its nearly three-month long blockade of food, medicine and other supplies into Gaza. -
Former President Biden's cancer diagnosis comes just days ahead of the release of an expose about his presidency, detailing questions about his mental fitness.
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Former President Biden diagnosed with prostate cancer, Israel launches new ground offensive in Gaza, more than two dozen dead after tornadoes hit the South and Midwest.
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Jose Manuel Romualdez, the Philippines' ambassador to the U.S., details how Manila handles the power struggle between Beijing and Washington. -
More than two dozen are dead across Kentucky, Missouri and Virginia after severe storms brought tornadoes through those states. NPR hears about the devastation in the small city of London in Kentucky.
