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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Mounting Romanian distrust of Russia following its actions in neighboring Ukraine and Moldova has driven Bucharest to take dramatic steps to modernize its military and host some of the first U.S. bases in a former Iron Curtain country.
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A change of command ceremony at the U.S. European Command in Stuttgart, Germany, became a platform for the Pentagon chief and his top generals to lash out at Russian aggression.
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Critics say Belgian forensics teams are taking too long to identify victims, leaving some families in the dark about their loved ones. -
Aerospace engineer Claudia Kessler is searching for Germany's first female astronaut. The country's previous 11 astronauts were all men, which she says highlights German sexism in the sciences. -
Germany is determined to dissuade more asylum seekers from coming there, but a new law its parliament passed last month targets an especially vulnerable group: children.
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The rise in hostile rhetoric against migrants in Germany is being linked to the country's new populist political party. The Alternative for Germany is expected to win pivotal elections on Sunday.
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Turkey's prime minister surprised European Union leaders at a summit in Brussels by linking progress in Turkey's application to join the EU to assisting Europe with the migrant crisis.
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Bernie Sanders compared Internet speeds in America to Romania — in a bad way. Romanians responded.
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In Germany, the American presidential primaries are generating more interest than usual — especially in Trump, a candidate who has German roots, and whose rise has many Germans feeling alarmed.
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Germany is straining to cope with the large number of asylum-seekers and is encouraging some of them to return home. Germany's Parliament has also passed new laws making deportation easier.
