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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Protesters are demanding new elections and arrests for the murders of investigative journalist Ján Kuciak, who had been reporting on political corruption, and his fiancée Martina Kusnírová. -
The government has resigned after weeks of political turmoil in the country. The move follows the slaying of a journalist who was investigating alleged corruption involving foreign businessmen.
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While some EU leaders seek unity over budgets and refugee policies, member states Poland and Hungary are building a unified front to thwart the bloc's plans. -
A high court in Germany says a city suffering from excessive air pollution can ban older diesel vehicles from its streets, if officials cannot find other ways to reduce nitrogen oxide emissions to E.U.-mandated levels.
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Hungary's government has proposed a series of bills it says will curb illegal immigration. Critics say the motivation is to cripple NGOs linked to U.S. financier George Soros. -
Two German political parties have reached a deal to form a government. If approved the deal would mean the country would avoid new elections.
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Hungary has secretly reduced the number of asylum-seekers it will allow into the country to two per day, one at each transit zone. Hungary is the main access to Europe from the Balkan route. -
Trips down memory lane — to a highly regimented place that no longer exists — are the hallmark of this Dresden home for the elderly. -
It's a vital step to ending a nearly four-month long political crisis in Germany after last September's elections failed to give any party a majority. -
The parties from the last coalition will start negotiations on forming a government. It's only a partial victory for Chancellor Angela Merkel, and concerns remain over the role of a far-right party.
