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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Olympic organizers are under intense pressure to end a ban on protests on the podium at the Tokyo Games. U.S. shot-putter Raven Saunders became the first to defy the ban after winning a silver medal. -
Saunders said she's been open about her mental health struggles so others don't feel alone. It's also why she wears her identities so proudly as a gay Black woman. -
For athletes in Tokyo, the games aren't just defined by competing but by COVID-19 — and avoiding it long enough to participate. Already 20 athletes have had their Olympic dreams dashed by the virus.
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Olympic officials say they want "sport appeal, not sex appeal." That's why the head of broadcasting at the Tokyo Games will stop close-ups on female athletes' bodies.
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How did a kid from Corsicana, Texas end up playing under the Japanese flag at the Olympics. It was an athlete's journey to a chosen home. -
Texan Ira Brown always dreamed of wealth and a place that felt safe. He found it in Japan. Brown got Japanese citizenship in 2018 and is now representing Japan at the Olympics in basketball.
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Two of the winners are 13; the other is 16. It "could very well be the youngest Olympic podium ever," the official Olympics news outlet says. -
Scores of mothers competing in the Olympics and Paralympics are speaking out about the challenges they face as working mothers in sports. Some are using their platform to make a change. -
Dutch rower Finn Florijn had already raced and was scheduled to compete again on Saturday when his positive test came back. "Now it's over in an instant," he said. -
The youngest Olympian at the Tokyo games was knocked out during the women's table tennis singles preliminary round. But Syrian player Hend Zaza said she will train, get better and try again.
