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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Hospitalizations are up, as are signs of COVID in waste water. New fall boosters may help, but it's unclear how effective they'll be against the latest variant.
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"Shark Week" is back for a 35th year. The show has been criticized for becoming more sensational and for presenting graphic animal violence. So what's the truth behind shark attacks?
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Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand says lawmakers and executive branch officials can have the upper hand when it comes to stock trading and access to undisclosed information.
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NPR's Leila Fadel talks with Dr. Jill Hollenbach, a professor of neurology and epidemiology at UC San Francisco who organized a study of genes linked to asymptomatic COVID-19.
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Canadian wildfire smoke is causing poor air quality in the U.S. while hot temperatures are spreading in the South.
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A Ukrainian general talks about Russia and the counteroffensive. Smoke and heat create unhealthy air in many U.S. areas. Protests in France after police killed a teen during a traffic stop.
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Record-breaking heat hits Texas. Five non-travel related cases of malaria have been reported in Texas and Florida. Over $200 billion in pandemic business loans appear to be fraudulent, watchdog says.
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A boat carrying migrants capsized off the coast of Greece. Another round of smoke from Canadian wildfires is drifting south. A dangerous horse tranquilizer is being laced into U.S. street drugs.
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An expert panel advising the Food and Drug Administration has recommended approval of a Pfizer vaccine that would be the first to protect babies against RSV.
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The United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit in New Orleans will hear arguments Wednesday over access to a commonly used abortion pill.