Laurel Wamsley
Laurel Wamsley is a reporter for NPR's News Desk. She reports breaking news for NPR's digital coverage, newscasts, and news magazines, as well as occasional features. She was also the lead reporter for NPR's coverage of the 2019 Women's World Cup in France.
Wamsley got her start at NPR as an intern for Weekend Edition Saturday in January 2007 and stayed on as a production assistant for NPR's flagship news programs, before joining the Washington Desk for the 2008 election.
She then left NPR, doing freelance writing and editing in Austin, Texas, and then working in various marketing roles for technology companies in Austin and Chicago.
In November 2015, Wamsley returned to NPR as an associate producer for the National Desk, where she covered stories including Hurricane Matthew in coastal Georgia. She became a Newsdesk reporter in March 2017, and has since covered subjects including climate change, possibilities for social networks beyond Facebook, the sex lives of Neanderthals, and joke theft.
In 2010, Wamsley was a Journalism and Women Symposium Fellow and participated in the German-American Fulbright Commission's Berlin Capital Program, and was a 2016 Voqal Foundation Fellow. She will spend two months reporting from Germany as a 2019 Arthur F. Burns Fellow, a program of the International Center for Journalists.
Wamsley earned a B.A. with highest honors from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where she was a Morehead-Cain Scholar. Wamsley holds a master's degree from Ohio University, where she was a Public Media Fellow and worked at NPR Member station WOUB. A native of Athens, Ohio, she now lives and bikes in Washington, DC.
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It is not yet clear what type of masks will be distributed. Standard masks do not always fit small faces well. -
While you're sky-gazing, look to the western horizon. Jupiter will be setting there as evening twilight ends. And that bright star? That's Regulus, part of the Leo constellation. -
The elementary school shooting left 20 students and six adults dead. The settlement is thought to be first of its kind, awarding major damages against a U.S. gun manufacturer based on a mass shooting. -
A flight attendant reportedly used a coffeepot to subdue the man, while passengers restrained him. The American Airlines flight from Los Angeles made a quick turn to land in Kansas City, Mo. -
More than a dozen historically Black colleges received bomb threats on Tuesday, the first day of Black History Month, following a number of bomb threats at HBCUs on Monday. Several went on lockdown.
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The deadly fire in a Bronx high-rise earlier this month has cast attention on fire safety requirements for apartment buildings. Seventeen residents died from smoke inhalation.
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After the deadly fire in a Bronx apartment building, hundreds of people are living in hotel rooms. But finding housing in another affordable building like Twin Parks may not be easy.
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"His contribution allows communities in Cambodia to live, work, and play; without fear of losing life or limb," the nonprofit APOPO said after the death of Magawa, an African giant pouched rat. -
Fast-rising home prices are creating opportunities for some longtime Black homeowners. Those high valuations can also raise big questions about the best way to tap into that wealth. -
European nations have implemented a wave of new restrictions as case numbers rise. And Israel has added the U.S. and Canada to its "red list" of countries that citizens are barred from traveling to.
