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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People in Scotland are voting in regional parliamentary elections. Victory for nationalist candidates will lead to calls for a referendum on Scottish independence and a possible split from the U.K.
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Sheikh Nuru Mohammed began to fight disinformation during Friday sermons — and turned his mosque into a vaccination center. It was the first of its kind in Britain and paved the way for dozens more.
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The European Commission president says she expects all 27 EU member states will accept visitors who've received COVID-19 vaccines, but the CDC is still warning against travel to much of Europe.
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Youths from the loyalist community in Northern Ireland continue violent protests against the UK government's Brexit policy, which they fear will lead to unity with the Irish Republic
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"To have published it any time in the last 20 years would have been seen as a whitewash," one commentator wrote. Now, he said, it's "almost criminally negligent."
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Scotland's signature whisky business continues to struggle. That because of the coronavirus pandemic, and U.S. tariffs that are part of a long-running, unrelated trade dispute over airplanes.
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The brand, which evolved into a symbol of rebellious youth culture and is worn by celebrities, has thrived during the pandemic. Dr. Martens sells over 11 million pairs a year in 60-plus countries.
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Julian Assange is charged in the U.S. with violating the Espionage Act and hacking government computers.
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Britain is now well and truly out of the European Union, and the border between the U.K. and its former partners in the EU will be very different,
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The model train company Hornby has seen a big increase of sales because families are spending more time at home. Prior to the pandemic, it was described as a "company in chaos".