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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The annual march celebrating loyalists' tie to the United Kingdom comes as Brexit has created a new border in the Irish Sea and the U.K.'s future is tenuous.
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The quintessential British institutions have changed over time and now face threats to their very existence.
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British Prime Minister Boris Johnson says the United Kingdom will alleviate most restrictions associated with the pandemic by July 19, despite a recent increase in infections.
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British Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced he will lift nearly all COVID-19 restrictions by mid-July and that England must learn to live with the virus.
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At Kensington Palace last week, Princes William and Harry unveiled a statue of their mother on what would have been her 60th birthday. How the public views the role of the brothers varies widely.
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Joe Biden wrapped up his first international trip as president with a meeting with Russian President Putin. Biden's trip included a meeting of the G-7 member nations, a NATO summit and an E.U. summit.
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The United States and European Union have reached a truce on a long-running and costly trade dispute involving Boeing and Airbus. They say they are doing so to focus on a common competitor: China.
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President Biden attends the NATO summit in Brussels on Monday, meeting with key allies before he squares off with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Geneva on Wednesday.
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On the final day of the G-7 summit in England, world leaders released a joint statement on the coronavirus, the environment and human rights.
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While leaders of the world's seven largest economies gathered in Cornwall, England, activists for a wide range of causes staged protests in the nearby town of Falmouth.
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Members of the G-7 began their first summit-level meeting in two years in Cornwall, England, on Friday. They spent the afternoon discussing how to build back a fairer post-pandemic economy.
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Made of circuit boards and smartphones, a giant sculpture of the leaders of the world's wealthiest nations is greeting them at a summit in England. The creators want to raise awareness about e-waste.