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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Air traffic controllers are finding it increasingly difficult to keep doing their jobs without getting a paycheck during the government shutdown. Some are starting to speak out.
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Hurricane Melissa makes landfall in eastern Cuba, Israel orders strikes on Gaza weeks into the ceasefire, Air traffic controllers face mounting pressure as they work without pay during the shutdown.
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NPR's Leila Fadel speaks with Sudanese-American poet Emi Mahmoud about the fall of Al-Fashir to the Rapid Support Forces in Sudan.
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Hurricane Melissa, one of the strongest Atlantic storms on record, made landfall for the second time in 14 hours, striking Cuba Wednesday after unleashing powerful winds and flooding across Jamaica.
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School leaders hope lockdown drills will help protect their students in the event of a mass shooting. But what does it do to students' mental health?
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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered air strikes in Gaza. He accuses Hamas of firing on Israeli troops, Hamas denies this. The move threatens Trump's fragile ceasefire.
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With students back in class, school shootings are on the rise. NPR's Leila Fadel visits a school in Minnesota to see how it's preparing students for the worst while trying to minimize trauma.
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In their fourth feature film collaboration, Yorgos Lanthimos directs actress Emma Stone in Bugonia. The central question at the heart of the film: is she or is she not an alien? -
ICEBlock, an app that could track ICE operations, has been pulled from Apple's App Store. Its creator Joshua Aaron tells NPR's Leila Fadel that government pressure led to the decision.
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The government shutdown's economic impact has been limited so far, but experts warn the costs -- and its burden on Americans -- could grow with time.
