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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Dublin's Guinness Storehouse is a cross between a museum and a marketing campaign, and an homage to the history and taste of the world's best-known stout. -
Trump canceled a trip to open the new U.S. Embassy and complained that it was in an undesirable location. The revitalized area of south London includes multimillion-dollar waterfront apartments. -
Long considered among Europe's most socially conservative countries, Ireland is holding a referendum next year to legalize abortion. The vote follows another that legalized same-sex marriage.
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Every new year the British monarch recognizes people who have made a contribution to public life in the U.K. While the "New Year's Honors List" usually includes members of the political, social and economic elite, the majority of those honored are ordinary people who have helped others in their daily lives.
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President Trump criticized NATO once again in his National Security Strategy speech, but NATO ambassadors say the U.S. continues to be very supportive where it counts: on the ground.
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One curious character in the Russia investigation is a mysterious London-based professor, who is said to have told a Trump campaign advisor that Russians had thousands of Hillary Clinton's emails.
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European Union leaders have agreed to discuss the process by which the U.K. will leave the EU. The talks focus on the trade relationship Britain will have with the EU in the future. Guest host Ray Suarez speaks with NPR's Frank Langfitt about whether Brexit has entered a point of no return.
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European Union Leaders will meet in Brussels on Friday to decide if Britain has made sufficient progress in its attempts to leave the EU. If Britain has mad enough progress, the two sides can start talking about their future relationship.
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Researchers and analysts in the United Kingdom say Russia used thousands of Twitter accounts to try to divide British society before and after the vote on whether the U.K. should leave the European Union. They say Russian accounts sent out tens of thousands of tweets both for and against the U.K. staying in the E.U.
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The major political parties in Britain have agreed to measures they hope will curtail sexual harassment in the U.K. Parliament. This action comes amid a wave of new allegations of abuse within the government institution.
