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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NPR's Steve Inskeep and Leila Fadel talk about the parallels in the domestic policies of Hungary and the U.S.
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The ACLU's National Security Project director worries President Trump is 'writing himself a blank check' to use the military on civilians in other U.S. cities. -
Israeli forces boarded a boat of activists trying to land in Gaza and took them to Israel. They hoped to draw attention to Israel's ongoing war in Gaza that has put the population at risk of famine.
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NPR gives the rundown of who won big and who was snubbed at the 2025 Tony Awards on Sunday night.
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NPR speaks with a British orthopedic surgeon who just returned from his fourth medical mission to Gaza. He says many people he operated on were civilians and were shot while trying to reach food aid. -
Trump issues travel ban on 12 countries and partial restrictions on 7 others, Senate begins work on budget bill to enact Trump agenda, the latest on U.S. talks with Iran over their nuclear program.
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In their memoir "Our Dear Friends In Moscow," Russian journalists Andrei Soldatov and Irina Borogan explain how their friendships with others ruptured as Russia grew isolated from the West.
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A group running food distribution sites in Gaza says it has put its operations on hold Wednesday. That's after a shooting that killed 27 people, according to hospitals and health officials in Gaza.
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Tariffs on imported metals double to 50% on Wednesday, Trump asks Congress to cancel funding already approved for foreign aid and public media, the latest updates on aid distribution in Gaza.
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Anxiety and panic attacks crippled Simone Dinnerstein {sih-MOAN-uh DIN-er-steen} for years, despite her stellar career as a concert pianist. She tells NPR's Leila Fadel how she overcame her stage fright.
