Lauren Frayer
Lauren Frayer covers India for NPR News. In June 2018, she opened a new NPR bureau in India's biggest city, its financial center, and the heart of Bollywood鈥擬umbai.
Before moving to India, Lauren was a regular freelance contributor to NPR for seven years, based in Madrid. During that time, she substituted for NPR bureau chiefs in Seoul, London, Istanbul, Islamabad, and Jerusalem. She also served as a guest host of Weekend Edition Sunday.
In Europe, Lauren chronicled the economic crisis in Spain & Portugal, where youth unemployment spiked above 50%. She profiled a , and a 90-year-old survivor of the Spanish Civil War, from a 1930s-era mass grave. From Paris, Lauren reported live on NPR's Morning Edition, as French police moved in on the Charlie Hebdo terror suspects. In the fall of 2015, Lauren spent nearly two months covering the flow of migrants & refugees across Hungary & the Balkans 鈥� and among them. She interviewed a , and managed to get a rare interview with the 鈥� by sticking her microphone between his bodyguards in the Hague.
Farther afield, she introduced NPR listeners to a , a , and in South Korea's presidential election.
Lauren has also contributed to The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and the BBC.
Her international career began in the Middle East, where she was an editor on the Associated Press' Middle East regional desk in Cairo, and covered the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah war in Syria and southern Lebanon. In 2007, she spent a year embedded with U.S. troops in Iraq, an assignment for which the AP nominated her and her colleagues for a Pulitzer Prize.
On a break from journalism, Lauren drove a Land Rover across Africa for a year, from Cairo to Cape Town, sleeping in a tent on the car's roof. She once made the front page of a Pakistani newspaper, simply for being a woman commuting to work in Islamabad on a bicycle.
Born and raised in a suburb of New York City, Lauren holds a bachelor's degree in philosophy from The College of William & Mary in Virginia. She speaks Spanish, Portuguese, rusty French and Arabic, and is now learning Hindi.
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The birth of a baby is a joyous occasion, and an increasingly rare one in Portugal, where the birthrate has dropped 14 percent since the economic crisis began. The poorest state in Western Europe faces a demographic time bomb as its population ages, the workforce shrinks and youth are unemployed or going abroad. -
The Hospital de Bonecas in downtown Lisbon has been fixing dolls since the early 19th century. At a time of unemployment and rising poverty, repairing an old doll offers a frugal alternative to new toys for Christmas.
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Having trouble wrapping your head around southern Europe's staggering unemployment problem? This week, Ikea advertised for 400 jobs in a new megastore on Spain's Mediterranean coast. It got more than 20,000 online applicants in 48 hours, before the retailer's computer servers crashed. -
Spain's dictator Francisco Franco set the country's clocks an hour ahead in World War II in order to be aligned with Hitler's Germany. Memo to Spain: the war is over, the Nazis lost and it's OK to turn back the clocks now. -
The drowning of more than 300 African migrants off Italy's Lampedusa island earlier this month jolted the world into awareness of a long-running crisis. Tens of thousands of refugees from Syria, Somalia and beyond risk their lives each year, traveling by boat to Europe in search of a better life. Scores die en route.
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For the first time on record, bicycles have outsold cars in Spain. Higher taxes on fuel and on new cars have prompted cash-strapped Spaniards to opt for two wheels instead of four. -
The cashier found the winning $6.3 million ticket last year and turned it in. He could claim the jackpot if authorities don't find the person who purchased it. -
Here Comes the Troika is a satirical card game where players can stash away savings in Swiss bank accounts or fund useless airports or high-speed trains to nowhere. The winner is the one who can hide the most money in offshore accounts, win elections 鈥� and avoid the dreaded troika card. -
Saturday in Argentina, the International Olympic Committee will announce the host of the 2020 Summer Games. The committee is choosing from among Istanbul, Madrid and Tokyo. The contenders all have strong selling points, but each also has serious issues clouding its bid.
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Cochinillo asado has appeared in literature throughout history, from Cervantes to Hemingway. The prized piglets featured in the dish are slaughtered after about a month, when they still weigh less than 10 pounds.
