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.
-
The virus pandemic comes at a vulnerable time for the Britain's overburdened public health care system.
-
Britain is ending its more than 40-year membership in the European Union. Here are some of the ways Brexit is expected to play out.
-
The British government is giving the Chinese telecom company Huawei a "limited role" in Britain's 5G network, despite pressure from the U.S. not to do so.
-
The treatment of Meghan Markle by the British tabloids is said to be one of the main reasons why she and her husband Prince Harry have chosen to distance themselves from the royal family.
-
The Duke and Duchess of Sussex, Prince Harry and Meghan, have announced that they want to step aside from their positions within the British Royal Family, and try to become financially independent.
-
Same-sex couples in Northern Ireland will be able to marry in 2020, six years after the rest of the U.K.
-
British voters have delivered a decisive victory to Prime Minister Boris Johnson and his Conservative Party, which all but ensures Brexit.
-
British citizens vote Thursday in parliamentary elections that will help determine when and how the United Kingdom leaves the European Union.
-
It will be the third general election since 2015. The stakes are high, voters are weary and the two main candidates for prime minister are polarizing.
-
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson hopes his Conservative Party can break through the opposition Labour Party's historic grip on England's working class. The election will be held on Thursday.
-
President Trump called Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau "two-faced" on Wednesday after a video surfaced seeming to show Trudeau complaining about Trump to other leaders.
-
At a Tuesday press conference in London, President Trump and French President Macron went after each other on the role of Turkey in NATO, the fight against ISIS and the nature of the EU.