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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Astronauts hammered collection tubes into the lunar surface on the last Apollo mission to the moon. Now a sample is being carefully pierced open — to be analyzed by today's latest tech. -
The seven-night cruise ended in Miami on Saturday after making three stops in the Caribbean. More than 6,000 people were on the ship, which required testing and those 12 and over to be vaccinated.
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The Amazon founder became the second billionaire this month to reach the edge of space — following Richard Branson, who rocketed there aboard a vessel made by his company Virgin Galactic.
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Richard Branson started Virgin Galactic 17 years ago to make space travel possible for his generation. This weekend he'll be on its first fully crewed test flight to space, beating Jeff Bezos by days.
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Law enforcement in Surfside, Fla., is using DNA samples from family members to help identify the victims recovered from the rubble. "It's very emotional," police official Alfredo Ramirez III says.
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"The concrete deterioration is accelerating," the Champlain Towers South's condo board president wrote as she asked for a $15 million special assessment for major structural repairs.
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Magawa is credited with saving lives. The African giant pouched rat has found 71 land mines and 38 items of unexploded ordnance. Now, he has reached retirement age after five years of service.
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The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says that fully vaccinated adults can safely resume activities indoors or outdoors without masks or distancing, in gatherings large or small. The announcement marks a major milestone in the effort to emerge from the coronavirus pandemic in the United States.
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DeSantis said he will issue emergency rules this week to prevent businesses from requiring proof of vaccination, and will work with Florida's Legislature on a permanent ban.
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Research published this week finds that home sales volume and prices have declined in coastal census tracts vulnerable to sea level rise, relative to coastal areas less threatened by climate change.
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Although daily COVID-19 deaths have fallen somewhat in recent days, the number of infections has continued to rise in many places with no end in sight.
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The protest marks the final day of an event known as "BreonnaCon," which called for justice for Breonna Taylor. Most protesters were charged with obstruction and disorderly conduct.
