Ruth Sherlock
Ruth Sherlock is an International Correspondent with National Public Radio. She's based in Beirut and reports on Syria and other countries around the Middle East. She was previously the United States Editor for the Daily Telegraph, covering the 2016 US election. Before moving to the US in the spring of 2015, she was the Telegraph's Middle East correspondent.
Sherlock reported from almost every revolution and war of the Arab Spring. She lived in Libya for the duration of the conflict, reporting from opposition front lines. In late 2011 she travelled to Syria, going undercover in regime held areas to document the arrest and torture of antigovernment demonstrators. As the war began in earnest, she hired smugglers to cross into rebel held parts of Syria from Turkey and Lebanon. She also developed contacts on the regime side of the conflict, and was given rare access in government held areas.
Her Libya coverage won her the Young Journalist of the Year prize at British Press Awards. In 2014, she was shortlisted at the British Journalism Awards for her investigation into the Syrian regime's continued use of chemical weapons. She has twice been a finalist for the Gaby Rado Award with Amnesty International for reporting with a focus on human rights. With NPR, in 2020, her reporting for the Embedded podcast was shortlisted for the prestigious Livingston Award.
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A U.N. tribunal has found a member of the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah guilty of killing a former prime minister but says it has no evidence of the group's leadership involved.
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Last week's explosion has prompted new hopes for political change. But enormous challenges remain. Here's what's at stake and how things may play out. -
"May God protect Lebanon," Lebanon's Prime Minister Hassan Diab said as he announced his resignation days after a disastrous explosion rocked Beirut.
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Tuesday's blast came against a backdrop of ongoing, unaddressed government dysfunction. Some of the country's chronic problems may help explain how 2,750 tons of explosives were neglected at the port.
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In Beirut, city residents continue to search for survivors after a devastating explosion Tuesday. Many residents believe government dysfunction contributed to the disaster.
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In Lebanon's devastated capital, at least 137 people are dead and some 5,000 injured. A question looms over the stockpile of 2,750 tons of ammonium nitrate believed to have exploded: Why was it there?
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With its health care system already in dire condition, conflict-ridden Yemen faces what Doctors Without Borders is calling a potential "catastrophe" as COVID-19 spreads.
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The Middle Eastern country had relatively few cases and had relaxed its shutdown. Residents will be asked to avoid outings except for emergencies.
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"Hydroxychloroquine is included in the [Syrian] national case management guidelines for COVID-19," though there's no evidence that it's effective, a World Health Organization representative tells NPR.
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Even with stringent lockdowns, the coronavirus has spread through migrant communities in some Middle Eastern countries where foreign workers live in cramped quarters.
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An Austrian woman struggles to get her daughter out of Syria, where she went as a confused teen with her husband to live under ISIS.
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An oasis town in the country of Oman is famous for its tales of spirits and jinns — possibly a result of its history as a fortress town surrounded by dangerous desert.
