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.
-
NPR's Leila Fadel speaks with Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., ahead of a possible partial government shutdown Friday.
-
Democrats are demanding changes to a bill to fund the Department of Homeland Security. The fight over spending could cause a partial government shutdown at the end of the week.
-
Two members of Congress were attacked in recent days, and U.S. Capitol Police say threats against lawmakers have increased. NPR's Leila Fadel speaks to former Capitol Police Chief Thomas Manger.
-
President Trump has been pressing the Federal Reserve to cut interest rates more aggressively, but the central bank voted to hold rates steady for now, as it tries to bring down inflation.
-
Jodie Foster has spoken French since she was a child. But it's only now that she's taken on a lead role scripted almost entirely in the language of Molière, for A Private Life. -
The week of competition at the U.S. Figure Skating National Championships wrapped up Sunday, and the skaters that will represent Team USA in the Milan-Cortina Olympics in February have been named.
-
NPR's Leila Fadel speaks with David Wessel of the Brookings Institution about what the subpoena of Fed Chair Jerome Powell means for the central bank's independence and the U.S. economy.
-
Timothée Chalamet, Teyana Taylor and Noah Wyle each took home acting awards at the Golden Globes Sunday night. Here's a look at the night's other big winners.
-
The White House says "all options" are on the table when it comes to the U.S. potentially acquiring Greenland, including diplomacy. Several European leaders have fervently pushed back.
-
Senators are expected to vote Thursday on another resolution to limit the Trump administration's military intervention in Venezuela. NPR speaks with one of its sponsors, Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va.
