Soraya Sarhaddi Nelson
Special correspondent Soraya Sarhaddi Nelson is based in Berlin. Her reports can be heard on NPR's award-winning programs, including Morning Edition and All Things Considered, and read at NPR.org. From 2012 until 2018 Nelson was NPR's bureau chief in Berlin. She won the ICFJ 2017 Excellence in International Reporting Award for her work in Central and Eastern Europe, North Africa, the Middle East and Afghanistan.
Nelson was also based in Cairo for NPR and covered the Arab World from the Middle East to North Africa during the Arab Spring. In 2006, Nelson opened NPR's first bureau in Kabul, from where she provided listeners in an in-depth sense of life inside Afghanistan, from the increase in suicide among women in a country that treats them as second class citizens to the growing interference of Iran and Pakistan in Afghan affairs. For her coverage of Afghanistan, she won a Peabody Award, Overseas Press Club Award, and the Gracie in 2010. She received the Elijah Parish Lovejoy Award from Colby College in 2011 for her coverage in the Middle East and Afghanistan.
Nelson spent 20 years as newspaper reporter, including as Knight Ridder's Middle East Bureau Chief. While at the Los Angeles Times, she was sent on extended assignment to Iran and Afghanistan following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. She spent three years an editor and reporter for Newsday and was part of the team that won the 1997 Pulitzer Prize for covering the crash of TWA Flight 800.
A graduate of the University of Maryland, Nelson speaks Farsi, Dari and German.
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International monitors say most cease-fire violations in eastern Ukraine occur in five hot spots. People on both sides are living a marginal existence, punctuated by artillery fire and mine blasts.
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The arrests in April of two army officers accused of plotting assassinations have raised serious questions about the extent to which far-right and neo-Nazi sympathizers are present in the military. -
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban's government is trying to shut down nongovernmental organizations by turning Hungarian public opinion against them. It's the latest in a series of actions in recent months aimed at creating what Orban calls an "illiberal state."
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The people of Manchester, England, have been remembering the victims of Monday's suicide bombing at the end of an Ariana Grande concert. The bombing killed 22 people and injured 59 more, police say.
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What appears to be the deadliest terror attack in Britain since 2005, took place Monday night. An attacker set off a bomb at a concert — leaving more than 20 people dead and more than 50 injured.
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Two German soldiers with far-right views, accused of plotting the assassination of public figures, sparked a probe of that country's military to see whether it's been infiltrated by the far right.
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Teachers and students at an American university in Budapest founded by investor George Soros are bracing for the worst after the adoption of a new Hungarian law that could close the institution.
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Democrats mocked House Republicans after Republicans passed their health care measure, suggesting the GOP could lose in 2018. And Barack Obama has endorsed French candidate Emmanuel Macron.
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Allegations that far-right extremists are active inside the German armed forces have sparked a rift between Germany's defense minister and her generals.
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For a group of residents on the outskirts of the Ukrainian breakaway city of Donetsk, a Soviet-era war shelter has become their home for the past three years.
