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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The Arab Spring started 10 years ago this month and led to trouble - civil wars or even more repression. But some are holding onto the ideals of free speech and change.
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The U.N.'s World Food Program reports that half of Syria's population has trouble getting food. Syrians say hours-long bread lines sometimes end up yielding nothing.
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A symbol of Lebanon's resilience through its long, turbulent history, the country's towering cedars now face increasing threats from wildfire and parasites, both fueled by global warming. -
After a year away, an NPR reporter returns to Lebanon to find a country racked by inflation, degraded services and the pandemic and still picking up the pieces from August's explosion in Beirut.
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Fighters In Syria Say Turkey Pays Them To Go To Wars In Other CountriesSome of the fighters in Syria's civil war — desperate for jobs and money — are becoming "guns for hire" in foreign wars. Turkey and Russia recruited Syrians for their military ambitions abroad.
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ISIS fell more than a year and a half ago, but tens of thousands of women and children still languish in detention camps in Syria. Kurdish officials said they will start releasing thousands of them.
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In Lebanon, volunteers have stepped in to do the aid work still needed after the blast that ripped through Beirut a month ago. Many blame the government for inaction.
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Syria reports about 3,100 coronavirus infections and 130 deaths. But health workers say the situation is worse and that the regime has been telling people not to discuss it.
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As Lebanon reels from multiple tragedies, conservationists are pointing to one bright spot. They say a record number of endangered green sea turtles have come to nest on the country's shores. -
The effort was launched after a sniffer dog named Flash signaled to his Chilean search and rescue team that someone might be alive under a pile of concrete and debris.
