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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The latest uprising in Iran is about much more than mandatory hijab. We've complied a list of books that offer insight into the lives of Iranian women and what is happening in their country. -
Angela Merkel is still the chancellor of Germany and could stay in that job until 2021 — although you could be forgiven for thinking otherwise, given the speculation over who is to be her successor.
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Merkel had told her party she won't run for re-election as its chairwoman. Her decision comes after the CDU suffered heavy losses in regional elections. She's held the chancellor post for 18 years.
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EU leaders are gathering in Brussels on what is supposed to be the deadline for a deal to ease the U.K. out of the bloc next March. Plans to unveil a draft declaration have been scrapped.
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Bavarian voters dealt German Chancellor Angela Merkel a tough blow Sunday. Her conservative allies there are projected to receive their second-worst result in regional elections since 1946.
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Far-right and anti-immigrant activists rallied in the German town of Chemnitz on Saturday to protest the murder of a local, allegedly at the hands of migrants. -
Under the deal, migrants registered in other European Union countries will be held in transit centers as Germany negotiates their return, ending a threat to Angela Merkel's ruling coalition.
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The government of Germany is in danger of collapsing because of a disagreement between the prime minister and the interior minister over the issue of migration.
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The new U.S. ambassador to Germany upset his hosts, and Democratic senators back home, with his announced support for right-wing populists in Europe. -
Prime Minister Viktor Orban is expected to win in his country's elections this month. But critics say his success comes from his having adopted similar policies to the far right.
