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.
-
A fund set up to help the victims of the mass shooting in Las Vegas isn't getting the same kind of donations other funds in devastating tragedies have gotten. -
Usama Canon is the founding director of the Ta'leef Collective, a "third place" for Muslims between mosque and home. After an ALS disagnosis, he's reflecting on his work. -
Hundreds of families in Southern California who have lost their homes to the Thomas Fire are trying to find a way to celebrate Christmas. -
Families in southern California are having to rebuild their Christmas plans after wildfires burned up their homes and everything they owned — including their children's presents.
-
Wildfires have scorched hundreds of thousands of acres of Southern California. Residents who resisted calls to evacuate talk about living through the fires, and what "the new normal" looks like.
-
Those numbers are growing: About half of the youth who dealt with homelessness, experienced it for the first time, according to the study. Schools are often at the front line of this issue. -
There were some cancellations after the massacre, but tourism officials are welcoming visitors while asking that they be respectful of the tragedy. -
The Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department says the number of those injured increased and the gunman may have fired at aviation fuel tanks near the concert. But questions remain about the timeline.
-
Facebook pages have been set up to reunite people with the strangers who helped them. One victim's father says he'd like to "give that feeling that you really mattered to somebody. To us." -
A revised timeline of the Las Vegas shooting is raising questions about if and when the Mandalay Bay hotel alerted police that a security guard had been shot before the assailant opened fire on the concert crowd. A sheriff's department official said they are still studying the sequence of events, and offers other details of the investigation in interviews with NPR/KNPR.
