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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U.S. tanks have returned to Europe to help defend Poland and Baltic states from possible Russian aggression. The Kremlin sees it as a threat. -
The U.S. is sending tanks and soldiers to Poland and the Baltic states to counter a perceived threat from Russia. It's part of the biggest U.S. military deployment in Europe in decades.
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German police say at least nine people are dead and many more injured after a truck was driven into a crowded Christmas market in Berlin. They say they are investigating the incident as a possible terrorist attack
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German authorities are using online hunters who sift through websites and videos to find Muslim extremists and monitor their recruitment efforts.
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The 34 Afghan asylum seekers departed Frankfurt Airport for Kabul on a chartered flight. The deportations have been criticized for potentially putting the migrants back into harm's way. -
Austrian officials want to make sure "nothing would happen there ... that could support Nazi ideology in any way," says a government spokesman. But there's disagreement on how best to proceed.
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A play based on the experiences of one of the few journalists to have reported from behind ISIS lines is causing controversy. Critics are wary of how students will receive the sensitive themes. -
German Chancellor Angela Merkel, the most important voice for liberal democracy in Europe, announced on Sunday that she will run for another term in 2017.
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France says the unofficial migrant camp on the north coast of the country will be demolished "within days." That means up to 10,000 asylum-seekers are being resettled at centers across France.
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Leaders met in Berlin on Wednesday in an effort to revive a peace agreement for Eastern Ukraine. The Minsk peace accords were signed last year, but have done little to stop the fighting.
