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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NATO wrapped up its summit in Madrid with a clear, unified message, but there were unsettling reminders of the brutal road ahead in Ukraine and political turmoil back in the U.S.
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NATO leades say Turkey has dropped its objection to Finland and Sweden being invited into the alliance — one of the most significant reactions by the West so far to Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
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Johnson was booed during the queen's Platinum Jubilee — the latest sign of intense public anger over his flouting of his own government's COVID-19 rules.
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Poland and the United States have had a see-saw relationship over the years. But the war in Ukraine has drawn them closer and turned Poland into an indispensable ally.
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Queen Elizabeth II is marking 70 years on the throne, but recent years have been bumpy for the British monarchy. Public support for the institution has fallen, even as the queen remains popular.
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Col. Roman Kostenko, a Ukrainian lawmaker, has built a reconnaissance and sabotage team to target Russian forces. His ultimate goal: free his family village from Russian control.
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Finland changed its policy toward the military alliance after troops invaded Ukraine. Sweden has avoided all military alliances, but like Finland, has also grown closer and closer to NATO over time.
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"It is a war zone, but it is shocking that it happened close to us," Saviano Abreu, a spokesman for the U.N.'s humanitarian office, was quoted as saying. The attack killed one person: a journalist.
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Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said the U.S. wants to see the Russian military weakened on the battlefield. Meanwhile, Russian missiles struck railway infrastructure in central and western Ukraine.
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One of Europe's poorest countries, Moldova has a separatist region that hosts 1,500 Russian troops. Since the Ukraine war, Moldova has applied to join the EU, even as it keeps a policy of neutrality.