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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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.
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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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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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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. -
In local German elections, voters delivered a harsh blow to Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democrats over her refugee policy that saw more than a million migrants apply for asylum last year.
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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.
