
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 political battles over just how the United Kingdom will leave the European Union. Langfitt also frequently appears on the BBC, where he tries to explain American politics, which is not easy.
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 has expanded his reporting into a book, The Shanghai Free Taxi: Journeys with the Hustlers and Rebels of the New China (Public Affairs, Hachette), which is out in June 2019.
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 reform movement in Bahrain.
Prior to Africa, Langfitt was NPR's labor correspondent based in Washington, DC. He covered the 2008 financial crisis, the bankruptcy of General Motors and Chrysler, and coal mine disasters in West Virginia.
In 2008, Langfitt also 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 spread of new coronavirus variants is postponing the recovery of leisure travel. Now the global airline industry says any solution must include digital vaccine passports.
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The British broadcast regulator has canceled the broadcast license for CGTN, the Chinese government's international English language news channel.
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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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Captain Sir Tom Moore, a World War II veteran who raised more than $40 million to help Britain's health service fight the coronavirus, has died from COVID-19 at 100 years old.
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The Biden administration has a lot of work ahead to repair alliances, particularly in Europe. NPR takes a look at what the U.K. and European Union expect from an incoming administration.
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Britain's National Health Service is said to be at breaking point, with twice as many COVID-19 patients in hospitals than there were during the worst weeks of the pandemic last April.
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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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New Year's Day marks the start of the new relationship between the United Kingdom and the European Union, which will make the borders harder to cross.
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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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After years of political tumult, the United Kingdom has finalized its divorce from the European Union. The end of Brexit will bring changes to politics, the economy and regular people's lives.
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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".
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The details of the long-awaited Brexit deal between Great Britain and the European Union are coming into focus.