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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Recent polls show more than 8 in 10 Jewish Israelis support the military operation, even as the death tolls climb. And Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's ratings are soaring.
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Both the government and the people of Israel have been determined to continue the country's ground invasion in Gaza, despite a growing wave of international criticism. Israelis have been shaken by claims that Hamas has a heavily fortified network of tunnels leading from the Gaza Strip into Israel.
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The holy month of Ramadan comes to an end early next week with a celebratory feast, and Secretary of State John Kerry is hoping for a holiday cease-fire in Gaza. He proposed a seven-day truce.
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The West Bank and Gaza are less than 40 miles apart, and many Palestinians have ties to both places. Yet the current fighting has made it even harder than usual to stay in touch, let alone visit. -
U.S.-German relations were further strained Wednesday over reports that prosecutors in Germany are investigating a German soldier accused of spying for the U.S. It's the second such case in a week.
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East German communism collapsed 25 years ago. But the city of Schwerin still has a Lenin statue, believed to be the last one in Germany. The mayor says it should stay because you can't erase history. -
Europeans throw away about 90 million tons of food each year. A new German website aims to ratchet that number down a bit by connecting people with leftovers to spare with people who could use them. -
As the U.S. and German soccer teams faced off under heavy rain in Recife, Brazil, German fans were glued to their TVs in Berlin. NPR's Soraya Sarhaddi Nelson offers their reactions to the German win.
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Hungary's far-right Jobbik party is expected to win a quarter of the country's seats in upcoming EU elections. The country is also experiencing growing anti-Semitism that has Jewish leaders worried.
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Separatists in the eastern Ukraine regions of Donetsk and Luhansk asked voters to take part in an unauthorized referendum Sunday on whether to make their region independent.
