Kat Lonsdorf
Kat Lonsdorf is reporter for NPR, often covering national security and international stories. She is based in Washington, D.C.
Originally from Wisconsin, Lonsdorf attended Occidental College in Los Angeles where she majored in Diplomacy and World Affairs. She joined NPR in 2016 after earning her Masters in Journalism from Medill at Northwestern University.
Lonsdorf has produced and reported for NPR around the world, including in Zimbabwe, South Africa, Japan, Kenya, Ukraine, Georgia, Jordan, Israel and the Palestinian territories. In 2020, she was NPR's Above the Fray Fellow, reporting out a series of stories looking at clean up and recovery efforts in Fukushima, Japan after the nuclear disaster in 2011. That series made her a finalist for the Livingston Award for international reporting. She's won a Gracie, an Edward R Murrow award and a duPont-Columbia award for her work.
Before she came to NPR, she was a full-time bartender in downtown Los Angeles, and also hosted and produced an education travel video series for kids called Project Explorer, filming in 14 countries across five continents. Lonsdorf has lived in both Japan and Jordan, and speaks Japanese and conversational Arabic.
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More than a year into a declared ceasefire in Gaza — and three years into the war — Israel still hasn't allowed foreign media independent access to Gaza.
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On the three-year mark since the Hamas-led deadly attack, Israelis are grappling with reports that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was repeatedly warned by regional allies ahead of time. -
The ongoing investigation has found the attacker intended to crash the plane into Israel's Ben Gurion International Airport, a person familiar with the matter but not authorized to speak publicly told NPR. -
One pilot stabbed another pilot on a FlyDubai flight headed to Tel Aviv on Wednesday and may have tried to crash the plane before passengers and crew members subdued him, Israel's prime minister says.
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Officials in the UAE, which is leading the inquiry, say they're still trying to learn what motivated the attack. Israeli officials also have called it a terrorist attack. -
Middle East crises draw major focus as the U.N. General Assembly hears from Israel, the Palestinian Authority and Yemen. -
Fears are growing that President Trump may deploy the U.S. military to polling places in the upcoming elections, despite strict state and federal laws against such a move. -
As President Trump's deployment of the National Guard to Washington, D.C., enters its second year, three guard members who served many months on the mission share their reactions with NPR. -
The deployment is expected to cost in the billions after it was quietly extended until Inauguration Day of 2029. -
Military veteran and D.C. resident Anna King has filed a $3 million lawsuit against the Idaho National Guard, saying three guard members assaulted her while detaining her in front of her home.
