Today
@HarperCollins
publishes the book
@JoeWSJ
& I spent much of the past decade reporting: a full investigation on why it took 3 years to free 103 Chibok students. It's a story of social media, spycraft & teenage heroism & we hope you'll read. Thank you.
My dad, who died last month, was a freelance camera man. He shot interviews with many celebrities—the Dalai Lama, Monica Lewinsky, Gorbachev, Ludacris, Jane Goodall, many more. Exactly one took the time to learn his name, strike up a yearslong relationship. Deeply appreciate this
Here's our reconstruction of the Lekki Toll Gate incident, based on seven witnesses, videos, and images verified by the Journal and Storyful, our social-media verification company. By
@JoeWSJ
and I.
For weeks, the world’s atomic energy regulators have been trying to understand what is happening to the 200 nuclear workers held hostage in Chernobyl.
@JoeWSJ
& I managed to reach them. This is their story.
There are reporters and then there are reporters who spend 5 days camping by a raging forest fire in Siberia, because “I just wanna get the story right.” Our profile of a colleague whose drive to understand Russia represents the very best of my profession.
Two scoops: Czech Republic has been quietly giving tanks to Ukraine, an intensification of NATO's weapon shipments.
Secondly, some Central European governments are considering letting Ukraine bring equipment in and out of their territory for repairs.
Three weeks later their exhaustion is mutating into rebellion. Some are threatening to walk home.
Every morning, ‘Ukraine Has Not Yet Perished,’ blares through the loudspeaker. The Ukrainian workers stand, palms pressed to chests, then return to work.
I don't think people reading from home fully grasp what is happening at the EU's borders.
In all of 2015–the refugee 'crisis'–1.3 million people entered Europe. At this rate, we will surpass that with a week or two.
Polio wasn’t cleared from Europe until 2002. Smallpox, humanity’s only eradication triumph, doesn’t hide in mink or mice. A coronavirus from the 1890s is still with us.
What comes after the COVID pandemic? The COVID endemic, our only plausible future.
To mark the coup in Gabon, here is a story I've never forgotten, about an incredible collision of American popular culture and Central African politics.
It concerns the Bongo family, which ruled Gabon until today – and the Godfather of Soul, James Brown.
Washington, caught without key personnel in its Africa posts, failed to anticipate what is now the region's seventh coup since 2020.
A new story, by me & the team, on how the U.S. struggled to keep up as a coup escalated into threats of a regional war.
…
The night shift at Chernobyl clocked in at 9 p.m. on Feb. 23, anxious about the Russian build up just across the Belarus border.
Three weeks later they are still there, nearing 500 hours on the job. Their diet has dwindled to porridge and canned food.
When the USSR broke up, Poland was nearly as poor as Ukraine.
But then one country veered west, joined the EU, and is now nearly 5 times wealthier. Our story on how Ukraine’s envy for Poland—and Poland’s backing for Ukraine—led Europe to where it is now.
Poland is planning to honor a Lagos man – one "Ali" Agbola O'Browne – a jazz drummer from Nigeria who put his sticks down to fight the Nazi occupation of his wife's hometown in Warsaw's doomed but courageous 1944 uprising.
Warsaw has fast become the epicenter of a staggering refugee crisis.
–Two Ukrainians enter Poland every three seconds.
–If the 200,000 who've come to Warsaw stay, as the most are expected to, one of every nine residents would be a newly arrived Ukrainian.
Chernobyl shut down in 2000 yet still needs staff to keep water circulating over thousands of spent fuel rods.
On Feb. 24, technicians watched in horror as tanks drove up. They debated whether to fight or flee–but chose to stay on, monitoring the rods.
Russian soldiers have taken their phones allow them only short calls to family. They have talked of extreme fatigue, dizziness, nausea and terrible headaches.
Each morning, they get one call to their management, over a landline. A glimpse into Chernobyl.
In a twist of irony, Nigeria's military fired on unarmed protestors hours after three of the U.S. State Department’s top officials arrived in Abuja for a fact-finding trip to learn more about the drivers of instability in Nigeria.
Hungary’s Viktor Orban, using new wartime emergency powers and ruling by decree, will make banks and multinational companies cede their excess profits to the state “to protect families. In addition, the army must be strengthened.”
The Central Intelligence Agency warned the Ukrainian government not to attack Nord Stream last summer after it obtained detailed information on a Ukrainian plot to destroy the gas pipelines. With
@bopanc
,
@JoeWSJ
, and
@wstrobel
.
For the past week, a team of WSJ reporters have been trying to sort out the details of what appears to be the largest weapons transfer since 1947: the guns-blazing race to arm Ukraine.
What we have found is a bottleneck that could soon affect the war.
Just over a year ago, in the dead of the night, a pair of prison vans left Beijing’s Detention Center No. 1, taking two blindfolded Canadians to an airport
It was among the biggest prisoner swaps since the Cold War—the details held in secrecy, until now…
Unrelated to the news, South Africa, which has been spat on in every way imaginable, is about to become more vaccinated than Bulgaria, which got a free all-you-can-jab vaccine buffet from the EU, but can’t be bothered.
Nothing to see here but two of the world's most ancient civilizations fighting over the longest river, on an evermore dry and thirsty planet. by
@MatinaStevis
@paulg
@elnathan_john
But who decides which words are complicated? Our country of 320 million or theirs of 212 million?
In Nigeria, the British English phrase "I will alight at the next stop" sounds more straightforward than the Americanism, "lemme hop off at the next stop." In America, the reverse.
In today's Wall Street Journal: Peggy Noonan asks
@JDVance1
and
@TuckerCarlson
to speak out against Russia's arrest of Evan Gershkovich. "You care about the free press, and have flourished within it. Protest what has happened here, sharply and repeatedly."
Thread on thread: Joe and I reviewed ISIS’s West Africa comms as a part of our reporting on the Chibok kidnapping and last month’s copycat kidnapping at a school in Dapchi. The comms themselves reveal a significant strategic change in Nigeria’s ongoing war.
2) We reviewed encrypted comms showing Barnawi's faction in regular contact with Islamic State emirs in Syria, Iraq and Libya. They have their own slickly-produced news channel (al-Hakik - or "credible") distributed on Telegram.
After 9/11, an airline pilot left the US to go home and become the mayor of Kabul. He’s still there, now governing a bankrupt city under Taliban rule. “I don’t expect to be here for too long.” By
@yarotrof
I’ve been at the Ukraine border since Thursday. There is a lot of wrong information on what’s happening here.
—Poland is letting in people of all nationalities. No visa or air ticket needed.
—Ukraine is a chaotic emergency: no food, language barriers, days long waits.
Want to see the difference vaccines make?
Poland is 54 % vaccinated, Spain 80%. Similar size populations. Neither hugely locked down.
Spain is recording an almost identical number of cases. (26,136 a day). But nearly 700 Poles died yesterday. In Spain? 58.
#Poland
recorded 24,266 new confirmed
#coronavirus
cases and 669 deaths over the past 24 hours to Wednesday morning, a record high number this autumn, against 17,460 cases reported on Tuesday, data released by the Health Ministry shows.
When I first wanted to enter this profession, I would buy a National Geographic then retype the articles just to see how they were structured. Such great writers. The world is worse off without them.
My new National Geographic just arrived, which includes my latest feature—my 16th, and my last as a senior writer.
NatGeo is laying off all of its staff writers.
I’ve been so lucky. I got to work w/incredible journalists and tell important, global stories. It’s been an honor.
Very humbled to learn that ‘BRING BACK OUR GIRLS,’ by
@JoeWSJ
and I…
…has won the Overseas Press Club of America’s Cornelius Ryan Award for the best nonfiction book on international affairs. Thank you to the many people who made this work of reporting possible.
Here is a story we have been reporting since the day Evan Gershkovich went missing, on the secret negotiations to free him.
It features starring and walk-on roles from billionaires you didn't know were involved, spies, rule-bending diplomats, and his mom.
The single biggest predictor of how a country did was whether they isolated international travelers on arrival, a step that the WHO and its International Health Regulations discouraged, and which got only cursory treatment in the UN’s independent pandemic review panel.
One big global story of Covid response is the Asian Pacific countries vs Everyone Else. It’s so striking that across a variety of languages, cultures, development levels and forms of government that part of the world has been so successful in battling and containing the pandemic.
Journalist Ivan Safronov, serving 22 years in a Russian penal colony, writes:
"I've already been through it all: the methods used by investigators, by prosecutors, the partiality of the court. All I can say: If you allow yourself to despair you will crumble. But..." [1/2]
“Reporting on Russia is now also a regular practice of watching people you know get locked away for years.”
Our profile of a colleague whose desire to understand this country is being rewarded with imprisonment.
- 120 people at a Norwegian Christmas party
- All vaccinated
- All rapid tested negative the day before
- More than half now have Covid in what appears to be the world’s biggest omicron outbreak
- So far: Symptoms all mild.
My third audio report from the Ukrainian border, this one on the ordinary Ukrainian emigrants crossing the European Union's🇪🇺borders to go home and fight.
Listen 🎧: Many Ukrainians who had been living in other parts of the world are heeding the call from President Zelensky, and returning home to fight.
@drewhinshaw
joins
@annmariefertoli
with their stories.
Indeed, I am reminded of this essay from the excellent
@HeidiVogt
of what it was like waking up before dawn to carefully cover bomb blasts for a wire service whose readers in America didn't really care. The fault dear Brutus...
In 1998, the FSB created a spy unit to track foreigners visiting Russia, especially Americans: "DKRO."
Its existence was so secret that until
@JoeWSJ
& I published a piece on it this month, this 25-year-old institution had virtually no google results – or even a Wikipedia page.⬇️
🎧 In today’s episode of The Journal podcast,
@JoeWSJ
and
@drewhinshaw
report on the secretive spy unit that U.S. officials believe is responsible for the surveillance and harassment of Americans in Russia, including WSJ reporter Evan Gershkovich
This article, by a 27-year-old reporter murdered mid-assignment, is being read, word for word on Slovak radio this morning:
Slovakia's prime minister hired an ex-topless model and Miss Universe contestant with mafia ties to be his chief government aid.
Final victims of a 20 year war: children of a US interpreter, killed gathering around their uncle’s car. Tells the WSJ “I no longer care” about the visa.
Marcus Aurelius was a great emperor but he screwed up his succession by passing the baton to his feckless son Commodus (He, from the Gladiator).
Whose disastrous rule started Rome's decline.
It's important to manage one's ride into the sunset.
Got this in the mail and found myself reading it all weekend. Couldn’t put it down: Page after page of elegantly told histories of people whose lives would be entertaining at book length. Nice one,
@DoubleEph
.
After years of ever hardening borders, Slovakia, Romania, Hungary (!), Poland, all open.
And yet hundreds of thousands of absolutely exhausted people are trekking in rain to wait for days at border checkpoints in Ukraine, manned by stressed soldiers watching their homeland burn.
A French speaker is badly needed at these border points. Congolese, Senegalese and Ivorians coming across with no idea where to go or who to ask. Even more English speakers would help.
The song, if you'd like to hear it, is here.
Ali Bongo was toppled today in a coup that ended 56 years of his family's rule. It's the latest in a wave of revolts against French-backed, civilian (but not very democratic) leaders in West & Central Africa.
We are talking about people walking 40 km to stand in line for three days. Thick crowds, no air to breathe. No shelter, no food.
A tiny staff to manage this crush that may soon be millions. You must understand what is happening in this context. It is bedlam.
Border point in Medyka - In theory there is everything: transport, medical aid, volunteers serving warm meals. In practice this place is a pure chaos: No information points and no proper coordination of transport. Especially African refugees feel lost. With
@drewhinshaw
Czechia gave Ukraine attack helicopters, and has taken in dozens of armored vehicles for repairs so they can be sent back to combat
“It's the start of what's probably going to be a bigger effort," in which the NATO member would also repair Ukraine's tanks
A difference between say Macron and Orban is that the former merely pays African dictators to chase migrants into the desert, where thousands have died of thirst, then downplays it as a distant, technocratic adjustment, while Orban up-plays a fence as a civilizational victory.
New variant proposal: We name them via corporate sponsorship.
But, like in reverse.
If Coca-Cola supplies enough vaccines to cover South Africa, the government will rename b.1.351 "the Pepsi variant."
FTX was handling about $500 million in trading volume a month in Africa, before it went bust.
Overwhelmingly, that was Nigerians, who were trying to invest or transfer small sums they’d managed to save, someplace safe from the naira.
More in the piece, but bottom line: Even NATO's arsenal has political and logistical limits. “For 20 years, most Western countries were not investing enough in their own militaries, and now we pay the price,” said Latvian Defense Minister Artis
@Pabriks
.
@asemota
Met up with someone for an absolute stellar sushi lunch years ago, on VI — a fortune of course. The owner comes out and tells me he flies to Paris 2x weekly to fill a suitcase with raw fish. I think about it all the time. As if Paris borders the sea and Lagos doesn’t.
Just met a 71-year-old grandmother who has only now arrived in Poland after five days waiting to cross the Polish border. Traffic the entire way. “We don’t deserve this.” For some reason, found it hard to finish the interview.
The above comes from one of the best–in my humble opinion–music biographies, ever: "The One: The Life and Music of James Brown," by RJ Smith.
Among other things, it convinced me that James Brown was probably the most important musician of the 1960s.
So Brown sent songwriter Charles Bobbit ("Make it Funky") to ask Bongo for a few hundred thousand more.
Bobbit–tired of Brown's antics–kept the cash and stayed in Libreville as Bongo's chief advisor. He produced a record with Bongo's son Ali, Gabon's future president–until today
Very grateful to learn that
@JoeWSJ
,
@aviswanatha
, and I are finalists for the deadline club’s feature reporting category, for our investigation into the prisoner swap for an arrested Huawei executive for two Canadians detained in China.
Also in the Newspaper or Digital Feature Reporting category,
@drewhinshaw
,
@JoeWSJ
and
@aviswanatha
are finalists for their story, "Inside the Secret Prisoner Swap That Splintered the U.S. and China."
Here's what I have to say about the two best reporters covering Ukraine,
@yarotrof
&
@marson_jr
, finalists for the Pulitzer Prize in International Reporting: The competition needed to fly in literally *dozens* of reporters to beat them on this one.
The EU's new €18 billion for Ukraine does several things for Brussels:
–Signals EU's commitment to Ukraine isn't dwindling, as Putin hopes.
–Marginalizes Viktor Orban
–Breaks new ground in centralizing finances
–Helps Kyiv pay the bills
w/
@laurnorman
A new one, by me & the team.
Yevgeny Prigozhin spent his last days in meetings in Central African Republic, where Sudanese rebels presented him with gold bars, before flying to Mali, reassuring his clients that his business empire would survive.