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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Brexit has encouraged pro-exit movements across Europe. In Austria, only 51 percent of the people tell pollsters they want to stay in the European Union, and a new party has formed with a single goal: get out.
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At least nine people were killed Friday after a shooting near a shopping center in Munich, Germany. Police say they are searching for as many as three shooters.
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Lawmakers approved tougher laws Thursday, closing loopholes that had created a "second, bitter humiliation for victims" when perpetrators weren't punished, said Germany's justice minister. -
Chancellor Angela Merkel hosted her French and Italian counterparts Monday, to plot the European Union's moves after Brexit. Germany, though the key player, is wary of coming across too strong.
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The Berlin government has imposed a ban on short-term rentals using sites like Airbnb. They say rentals are causing a housing shortage and high rents — but renters say they are being scapegoated.
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An armed man is reportedly dead after a SWAT team was sent into a cinema in a small town near Mannheim.
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Providing care to asylum seekers has been a challenge, not least due to language barriers. Two entrepreneurs have turned shipping containers into mobile clinics, with 24-hour access to translators. -
In Poland and Romania, some are happy to have new U.S. bases in light of recent Russian moves. But others say the most likely result will be heightened tensions with Moscow. -
One Afghan family fled to Germany through the Mediterranean to save one child from the clutches of an Afghan strongman. But it cost the life of another one of their children, or so they thought.
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New U.S. bases are located on Cold War relics — areas that once belonged to Warsaw Pact forces. The U.S. is trying to reassure the Russians that the defense systems are not a threat.
