Kathy Lohr
Whether covering the manhunt and eventual capture of Eric Robert Rudolph in the mountains of North Carolina, the remnants of the Oklahoma City federal building with its twisted metal frame and shattered glass, flood-ravaged Midwestern communities, or the terrorist bombings across the country, including the blast that exploded in Centennial Olympic Park in downtown Atlanta, correspondent Kathy Lohr has been at the heart of stories all across the nation.
Lohr was NPR's first reporter based in the Midwest. She opened NPR's St. Louis office in 1990 and the Atlanta bureau in 1996. Lohr covers the abortion issue on an ongoing basis for NPR, including political and legal aspects. She has often been sent into disasters as they are happening, to provide listeners with the intimate details about how these incidents affect people and their lives.
Lohr filed her first report for NPR while working for member station KCUR in Kansas City, Missouri. She graduated from the University of Missouri-Columbia, and began her journalism career in commercial television and radio as a reporter/anchor. Lohr also became involved in video production for national corporations and taught courses in television reporting and radio production at universities in Kansas and Missouri. She has filed reports for the NPR documentary program Horizons, the BBC, the CBC, Marketplace, and she was published in the Saturday Evening Post.
Lohr won the prestigious Missouri Medal of Honor for Excellence in Journalism in 2002. She received a fellowship from Vanderbilt University for work on the issue of domestic violence. Lohr has filed reports from 27 states and the District of Columbia. She has received other national awards for her coverage of the 1996 Summer Olympic Games, the Oklahoma City bombing, the Midwestern floods of 1993, and for her reporting on ice storms in the Mississippi Delta. She has also received numerous awards for radio pieces on the local level prior to joining NPR's national team. Lohr was born and raised in Omaha, Nebraska. She now lives in her adopted hometown of Atlanta, covering stories across the southeastern part of the country.
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Bothinaa Mohammed is one of 4 million Iraqis who have fled their homes since 2003. She and her children arrived in the U.S. in August from Jordan, and she recently found work as a hotel housekeeper. What did she buy with her first paycheck? A Christmas tree. -
Ministries raise millions of dollars with little oversight. One Senate lawmaker wonders whether the lavish lifestyles of the ministers violate the churches' tax-exempt status. Six megachurches have been asked to respond by Dec. 6 to questions about their spending. -
FEMA tells workers to stay out of thousands of its stored travel trailers, amid concerns about exposure to hazardous fumes. A spokeswoman says formaldehyde emission levels rise when the trailers are closed in heat and humidity without ventilation.
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The National Football League evicts Michael Vick, the Atlanta Falcons' star quarterback, from training camp. He appears in court this week for allegedly masterminding a dog-fighting operation. Vick's team was going to suspend him for four games, but the NFL urged it to wait until it completes an investigation.
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Opening statements are heard in the case of James Ford Seale, who has pleaded not guilty to federal kidnapping and conspiracy charges in connection with the 1964 murders of two black teenagers who were hitchhiking in rural Mississippi. The trial is expected to take two weeks.
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Jury selection begins this week in Jackson, Miss., in the trial of a man charged with killing two young black men more than 40 years ago. James Ford Seale, 71, was initially arrested in 1964 for allegedly abducting and killing Charles Moore and Henry Dee. -
After 22 years in prison, Willie "Pete" Williams was recently exonerated by DNA evidence. As he adjusts to his newfound freedom, he's taking advice from Calvin Johnson, the first man in Georgia to be exonerated by DNA evidence. -
Residents along the Gulf Coast whose property sustained damage in Hurricane Katrina are suing insurance companies for denying their claims. Insurers are citing the language of the policies, but attorneys for homeowners argue many of these claims were improperly denied. -
On Sept. 22, 1906, thousands of whites in Atlanta joined together downtown and began attacking and killing the city's blacks. Dozens were murdered in violence that continued for four days. But the riot hasn't been commemorated or taught in schools — until now.
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Atlanta area donors didn't want to see the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s papers go up for auction, so they raised enough money to bring the collection to the city's library for historically black colleges and universities. Many say King's papers will be at home in the city of his youth.
