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.

Chris Lehman graduated from Temple University with a journalism degree in 1997. He landed his first job less than a month later, producing arts stories for Red River Public Radio in Shreveport, Louisiana. Three years later he headed north to DeKalb, Illinois, where he worked as a reporter and announcer for NPR–affiliate WNIJ–FM. In 2006 he headed west to become the Salem Correspondent for the Northwest News Network.

Chris is a native of rural Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. He was born in the upstairs bedroom of his grandmother's house, and grew up in a 230 year old log cabin in the woods. Chris traces his interest in journalism to his childhood, when his parents threatened to take away his newspaper if he didn’t do his chores.

In addition to working full time in public radio for the past decade, Chris has also reported from overseas on a free–lance basis. He's filed stories from Iraq, Burkina Faso, El Salvador, Northern Ireland, Zimbabwe and Uganda. He lives in Salem with his wife and child.

Read Chris's blog, "Capitol Currents: Dispatches From Salem."

Music
3:06 pm
Wed September 19, 2012

Adrian Sherwood: Dub Without Borders

Credit Courtesy of the artist
Adrian Sherwood's latest album, Survival and Resistance, was released on Sherwood's own On-U Sound label in August.

Originally published on Wed September 19, 2012 6:09 pm

Around the Nation
3:06 pm
Wed September 19, 2012

FAMU Adjusts To Games Without Marching Band

Originally published on Thu September 20, 2012 5:56 am

Florida A&M University played its first home game of the season Saturday — without its famous Marching 100 band for the first time in decades. The band was suspended for the year after drum major Robert Champion died as a result of a band hazing incident. The incident took place after the last football game of the 2011 season.

This year's suspension has left a void at Rattler football games. Just about everyone in Bragg Memorial Stadium for the first home game was talking about it.

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U.S.
3:06 pm
Wed September 19, 2012

Why Does China Want A Mural In Oregon Destroyed?

Originally published on Wed September 19, 2012 6:09 pm

The mural in downtown Corvallis, Ore., is big: 10 feet high and 100 feet long. One side shows a peaceful countryside setting in rural Taiwan. The other shows police beating protesters in Tibet and a Buddhist monk setting himself ablaze in protest.

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Asia
3:06 pm
Wed September 19, 2012

China Offers Glimpse Of A New Stealth Fighter

Credit Larry Downing / Getty Images
U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has lunch with engineering cadets at the Chinese military academy in Beijing on Wednesday. Just before Panetta's arrival for talks with top leaders, China released photos of a new stealth fighter under development.

Originally published on Thu September 20, 2012 6:27 am

Ahead of high-profile talks in China by U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, there was a high-impact leak. Photos emerged of a second Chinese stealth fighter jet — one that had been rumored but never seen before.

The J31, as analysts call it, shows how fast China is moving.

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Science
3:06 pm
Wed September 19, 2012

Hungry Snakes Trap Guam In Spidery Web

Originally published on Wed September 19, 2012 6:09 pm

The Pacific Island of Guam is experiencing a population explosion — of spiders.

There are more spiders there now than anyone can remember. To get a sense of how weird the situation is, I started out in Maryland. On my front porch, overlooking the Severn River.

At 6:30 in the morning on a cool fall day, I find two spider webs in a matter of five minutes. But if I were on the island of Guam, I might find 70 or 80 spider webs in five minutes.

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Sugar's Picks
2:55 pm
Wed September 19, 2012

Sugar's Picks September 17, 2012

Meshell Ndegeocello / A dedication To Nina Simone / Naive

A personal representation of the broad spectrum of the music of the political & iconic vocalist, Ndegecello is joined by Sinead O'Connor, Toshi Reagon & Lizz Wright among others,  to pay tribute.

Maceo Parker / Soul Classics / Razor & Tie

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The Two-Way
2:33 pm
Wed September 19, 2012

Google, Amazon, eBay, Facebook Among Those Forming New Lobbying Group

Originally published on Wed September 19, 2012 2:55 pm

The big names on the Internet are forming a new lobbying group they hope will influence lawmakers when it comes to privacy and piracy.

The Washington Post reports that Google, Amazon, eBay, Facebook and 10 other Web companies formed the Internet Association to counter any efforts to issue new rules for their industry.

The Post adds:

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Shots - Health Blog
2:12 pm
Wed September 19, 2012

Tiny Bubbles: Injectable Oxygen Foam Tested For Emergency Care

Credit iStockphoto.com
Bubbles of oxygen injected as a foam might someday help patients live long enough to get treatment for oxygen deprivation.

A lot of medicine's direst emergencies come down to one problem: lack of oxygen.

Cardiologist John Kheir started thinking about that when a little girl in his care, drowning from lung hemorrhages, died before she could be hooked up to a heart-lung machine that would have kept her blood oxygenated while the damage was repaired.

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