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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It's been over five months since Abu Akleh was killed on the job, most likely by Israeli forces. Her niece tells Morning Edition about her aunt's legacy and her family's campaign for accountability.
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It's a new school year and Jake Miller is not setting up his classroom in Pennsylvania. He's not getting to know a new group of eighth-graders. After 15 years of teaching, he quit.
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"We'll just bleep this interview to death," says Morning Edition host Leila Fadel ahead of her conversation with Demi Lovato about a harder-edged new album, HOLY F***.
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The PACT Act provides new access to services for American veterans struggling with the health effects of exposure to burn pits. But in Iraq, civilians who were exposed are still on their own.
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Kentucky's abortion ban went into effect immediately when the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade on Friday morning. Opponents and supporters of the ban are now grappling with new realities.
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The Supreme Court ruling yesterday triggered immediate abortion bans in Kentucky, Louisiana and South Dakota. But EMW Women's Surgical Center, a Louisville abortion clinic, is fighting to stay open.
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In an interview with Morning Edition's Leila Fadel, the fast-rising artist talks about a life path as winding and varied as his music.
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More than a thousand soldiers were evacuated from the Azovstal steel plant, and Russia is consolidating control of Mariupol. It is making plans to annex the southwestern parts of the country.
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The pop star has spent a life on the go, so the pandemic offered him a rare chance for reflection, to separate the person from the pop star. Also, of course, to record a new album.
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The widow asked the Russian soldier what he felt when he killed her husband. "Fear," he said. "I understand you probably won't be able to forgive me. But I ask for your forgiveness."