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.
-
He Jiankui announced in November 2018 that he had created the world's first gene-edited babies. Scientists are concerned about unintended side effects that could be passed down to future generations.
-
A spokesman says all U.S. troops are accounted for with no injuries. U.S. officials say they oppose Turkey's military incursion into northern Syria.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
Scientists have found that turtle embryos can play a role in determining their own sex, which could help their species guard against climate change.
-
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.
-
"In business and in life, Ross was a man of integrity and action," his family said in a statement. Perot, who had battled leukemia, died Tuesday at his home in Dallas.
-
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.
-
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.