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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Thousands of opponents of Muslim immigration to Germany staged a mass rally in the German city of Leipzig on Wednesday night, but the turnout was lower than expected thanks to counter-demonstrations and a massive police presence.
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With refugees streaming in, Germany is running short of places for them. One city has proposed housing refugees in a barracks on the grounds of the notorious Buchenwald camp. -
Supporters of a German movement that seeks to limit Muslim immigration marched through the streets of Dresden on Monday, despite appeals for them to lesson inter-communal tensions.
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The country has suffered from graft and poverty since the fall of communism 25 years ago. Can a new president and an anti-corruption crusader make a difference? -
Andrei Kemenici, who was a colonel then, says he still thinks about the 4 days he held Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu and his wife in custody before their execution 25 years ago on Christmas Day.
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Nicolae Ceausescu ruled with an iron fist for 25 years until he was overthrown and executed on Christmas Day in 1989. A quarter-century after his ouster, the country is still dealing with his legacy. -
Manfred Karg's 19-year-old son, a convert to Islam, is one of at least 60 Germans killed fighting alongside ISIS militants. Karg says efforts to stop the flow to Syria and Iraq are taking too long. -
In a country that strives to protect work-life balance, there are calls to ban employers from sending work email after business hours. Some big companies are already doing that. -
German Chancellor Angela Merkel has attacked Russian actions in Ukraine, telling the German parliament that it will take long-term sanctions and perseverance to end the crisis there.
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Iran and Israel are sworn enemies, but Germany is neutral ground where people from those countries can collaborate musically. Sistanagila, an Israeli-Iranian ensemble, is doing just that.
