Frank Langfitt
Frank Langfitt is NPR's London correspondent. He covers the UK and Ireland, as well as stories elsewhere in Europe.
Langfitt arrived in London in June 2016. A week later, the UK voted for Brexit. He's been busy ever since, covering the most tumultuous period in British politics in decades. Langfitt has reported on everything from Brexit's economic impact, Chinese influence campaigns and terror attacks to the renewed push for Scottish independence, political tensions in Northern Ireland and Megxit. Langfitt has contributed to NPR podcasts, including Consider This, The Indicator from Planet Money, Code Switch and Pop Culture Happy Hour. He also appears on the BBC and PBS Newshour.
Previously, Langfitt spent five years as an NPR correspondent covering China. Based in Shanghai, he drove a free taxi around the city for a series on a changing China as seen through the eyes of ordinary people. As part of the series, Langfitt drove passengers back to the countryside for Chinese New Year and served as a wedding chauffeur. He expanded his reporting into a book, The Shanghai Free Taxi: Journeys with the Hustlers and Rebels of the New China (Public Affairs, Hachette).
While in China, Langfitt also reported on the government's infamous "black jails" — secret detention centers — as well as his own travails taking China's driver's test, which he failed three times.
Before moving to Shanghai, Langfitt was NPR's East Africa correspondent based in Nairobi. He reported from Sudan, covered the civil war in Somalia, and interviewed imprisoned Somali pirates, who insisted they were just misunderstood fishermen. During the Arab Spring, Langfitt covered the uprising and crushing of the democracy movement in Bahrain.
Prior to Africa, Langfitt was NPR's labor correspondent based in Washington, DC. He covered coal mine disasters in West Virginia, the 2008 financial crisis and the bankruptcy of General Motors. His story with producer Brian Reed of how GM failed to learn from a joint-venture factory with Toyota was featured on This American Life and has been taught in business schools at Yale, Penn and NYU.
In 2008, Langfitt covered the Beijing Olympics as a member of NPR's team, which won an Edward R. Murrow Award for sports reporting. Langfitt's print and visual journalism have also been honored by the Overseas Press Association and the White House News Photographers Association.
Before coming to NPR, Langfitt spent five years as a correspondent in Beijing for The Baltimore Sun, covering a swath of Asia from East Timor to the Khyber Pass.
Langfitt spent his early years in journalism stringing for the Philadelphia Inquirer and living in Hazard, Kentucky, where he covered the state's Appalachian coalfields for the Lexington Herald-Leader. Prior to becoming a reporter, Langfitt dug latrines in Mexico and drove a taxi in his hometown of Philadelphia. Langfitt is a graduate of Princeton and was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard.
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Migrants from Hong Kong are looking to escape Beijing's grip for the safety of Great Britain, which ruled Hong Kong until the handover to China in 1997. The U.K. has set up a generous visa program.
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The Metropolitan Police described the attack against Conservative lawmaker David Amess as terrorism and said the early investigation "has revealed a potential motivation linked to Islamist extremism."
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A member of parliament from Britain's ruling Conservative Party has died after being stabbed multiple times while he was meeting with local voters in his constituency.
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A British member of Parliament from Prime Minister Boris Johnson's party was stabbed to death on Friday while meeting with constituents.
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Daniel Craig's tenure as James Bond is coming to an end with the release of No Time To Die. But with Amazon acquiring MGM, where does the 007 franchise go from here?
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The 2021 Nobel Peace Prize has been awarded to journalists Maria Ressa of the Philippines and Dmitry Muratov of Russia.
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Journalists Maria Ressa and Dmitry Muratov have won the Nobel Peace Prize for their fight for freedom of expression in the Philippines and Russia.
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Gas stations across Great Britain are running dry due to a post-Brexit shortage of truck drivers. The government announced a plan to issue 5,000 temporary visas for truckers.
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A submarine deal between the U.S., U.K. and Australia counters China but has infuriated France, which had its own deal to sell subs canceled and is wary of U.S. aims.
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The comedy about a relentlessly optimistic American football coach running a London soccer team has attracted British viewers with its comic look at the transatlantic culture clash.
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Volunteers have painted more than 150,000 red hearts on a wall along the River Thames and people stop to write messages and names of lost loved ones inside the hearts.
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The annual march in which loyalists celebrate their ties to the United Kingdom comes as Brexit has created a new border in the Irish Sea — and the future of the U.K. is tenuous.