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 2021 Nobel Peace Prize has been awarded to journalists Maria Ressa of the Philippines and Dmitry Muratov of Russia.
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Volunteers have painted more than 150,000 red hearts on a wall along the River Thames and people stop to write messages and names of lost loved ones inside the hearts.
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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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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.
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President Biden and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson signed a 21st century Atlantic Charter, an update of a document that tied the countries together during World War II.
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A former close aid to British prime minister Boris Johnson has told parliament that Johnson's inept response to the pandemic led to the unnecessary deaths of tens of thousands of people.
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England, Scotland and Northern Ireland on Monday recorded no new COVID-19 deaths, and Wales reported four. Health experts said the milestone represents an encouraging sign.
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Israel and the United Kingdom are among the top five most vaccinated countries. But to get there, they had combat rumors about the vaccines circulating in faith and minority communities.
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Millions of people in the U.K. who were hesitant or against taking the COVID-19 vaccine have changed their minds. NPR visited a mosque-turned-vaccination center at the cutting edge of that battle.