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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The delayed Tokyo Summer Olympics officially kicked off with a subdued Opening Ceremony. Devoid of fans and many athletes, the ceremony still managed to be a somewhat celebratory affair.
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The fanfare and celebration unfolded in a virtually empty stadium, as Japanese protesters gathered nearby to register their discontent over the world's largest sports event. -
In Tokyo there is reduced excitement about the Summer Olympics which have been marred by rising coronavirus infections. Many athletes feel muted and isolated as the Games get underway. -
Dr. Barbara Ferrer, LA County's public health director, describes a recent spike in COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations among Black residents and also county efforts to improve vaccination rates. -
Allyn Kilsheimer, one of the structural engineers working at the Champlain Towers South, says there are "thousands" of issues they're looking at. Recovery and police efforts have slowed things so far. -
Dmitri Alperovitch says the scale of the attack, on software from U.S. firm Kaseya, is unprecedented. He wants President Biden to threaten sanctions on Russia for allowing cybercriminals to operate. -
NPR's Leila Fadel talks to Dr. Anthony Fauci about the CDC declaring the Delta variant of COVID-19 a concern, and how vaccines and booster shots fit into the discussion of combating variants. -
The painting is expected to sell for thousands of dollars. The unnamed seller, who found the painting at a donation center in Canada, paid $4.09. -
Voters of color should not be treated as "get-out-the-vote targets," says the head of one of the groups that issued the report. Instead, outreach needs to start one to two years before an election. -
Keith Ellison, who led the prosecution of former officer Derek Chauvin for the murder of George Floyd, wasn't sure they were going to win. "Accountability just doesn't happen very much," he says.
