Merrit Kennedy
Merrit Kennedy is a reporter for NPR's News Desk. She covers a broad range of issues, from the latest developments out of the Middle East to science research news.
Kennedy joined NPR in Washington, D.C., in December 2015, after seven years living and working in Egypt. She started her journalism career at the beginning of the Egyptian uprising in 2011 and chronicled the ousting of two presidents, eight rounds of elections, and numerous major outbreaks of violence for NPR and other news outlets. She has also worked as a reporter and television producer in Cairo for The Associated Press, covering Egypt, Yemen, Libya, and Sudan.
She grew up in Los Angeles, the Middle East, and places in between, and holds a bachelor's degree in international relations from Stanford University and a master's degree in international human rights law from The American University in Cairo.
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More than 200 years ago, a scroll damaged by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius was unrolled and pasted onto cardboard, even though it had writing on the back. New imagery shows some of what's hidden.
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Shortages affecting hospitals and clinics are a perilous example of an economic crisis that has worsened since the U.S. imposed economic and financial penalties on the country.
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Guards said they saw a woman acting nervous as she neared the exit Saturday. They discovered she was a man, a drug trafficker facing decades in prison. Now authorities say he took his own life.
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The show is centered on the suicide of a teenage girl, and the first season's finale shows her taking her own life. Several organizations raised concerns that it could romanticize suicide.
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There's a type of spider that can slowly stretch its web taut and then release it, causing the web to catapult forward and entangle unsuspecting prey in its strands.
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The building burned for hours on Monday, with smoke billowing into the sky. The cause of the cathedral's blaze was not immediately known, but the initial investigation points to an accident.
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The country has been hobbled by a blackout since Thursday. People wait in long lines for gas and water and increasingly are having difficulty communicating by phone or Internet.
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The U.K. expelled the residents of the Indian Ocean islands and allowed the U.S. to build a military base. The U.N. Court says it must cede control of the islands "as rapidly as possibly."
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Officials blame "challenges." In Africa's most populous country, President Muhammadu Buhari is trying to hold on to his position, and opposition leader Atiku Abubakar is his fiercest challenger.
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The transfer is part of a deal between Australia and the U.S., under the Obama administration, in which the U.S. agreed to accept some 1,250 refugees. President Trump has called it a "dumb deal."