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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In recent midterms, 4 in 10 eligible voters cast ballots. Nonvoters talk of apathy, disgust, barriers and other reasons. But those who don't vote, and their interests, can be ignored by candidates. -
Deb Haaland could be the first Native American woman to head to Congress. She's one of a record number of Native American candidates running for office this year. -
It's happening more: minorities are deemed suspicious by a white person who then calls police. Experts say that echoes a past that excluded blacks from public spaces but now it's done with police.
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The surprise success of the Golden Knights hockey team is showing that Las Vegas is more than just the Strip and slot machines. The first expansion team to make the Stanley Cup finals in its first year has a wildly loyal fan base, and bakeries are even selling edible pucks.
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Rami Nashashibi of the Inner City Muslim Action Network sees social work as a solution to the apathy that leads people away from religion.
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A new generation of American Muslims has moved from defending itself, as Muslim communities did in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, to defining itself. -
Brands are praised for their bold choices when they chose a woman in hijab or transgender person to represent them. But is it real diversity if they don't want the opinions that inevitably follow? -
A man named as a second person of interest in affidavits from the early days of the police investigation into the Las Vegas shooting in October says the gunman bought ammunition from him and left. -
Nevadans react to President Trump's first State of the Union message, at a time the state is leaning more Democratic and a key U.S. Senate seat is in play.
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Organizers of the women's marches planned for this weekend, including a big expected one in Las Vegas on Sunday, discuss what's changed since last year and their hopes for this year.
