A year ago today, Evan was thrown into a Russian jail.

Putin had taken our colleague hostage, but as a newsroom we made a determination: to investigate the opaque structures and individuals responsible, who now hold his fate in their hands.

This is some of what we found: We took readers inside Lefortovo prison, the FSB jail where Evan is held, mapping its cells, interrogation rooms and the basement where Stalin’s henchmen once blasted music to drown the screams of detainees

wsj.com/articles/evan-…

This is the story of a man you’ve never heard of, who has done a job no-one has ever done before.

In time he may be credited with saving Europe from nuclear disaster.

His name is Ihor Murashov, director of Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant

wsj.com/articles/russi… 📷@rena_effendi For 8 months, Ihor ran ZNPP and dealt with rolling crises as Russia’s occupation became more brutal.

Several times, shelling destroyed power lines, taking the plant offline and and raising fear of “Fukushima scenarios.”

wsj.com/articles/russi…

Abubakar Shekau, the fundamentalist warlord who turned Boko Haram from an obscure sect into a jihadist army that killed 1000s across 4 nations is dead, according to officials, mediators & calls intercepted by a spy agency seen by @drewhinshaw & I.

THREAD
wsj.com/articles/boko-… Shekau's death-if confirmed-removes one the world’s most brutal, effective and little-understood terrorist leaders: a contemporary of Bin Laden, Baghdadi and Zarqawi, who outlived them all.

The insurgency's cackling face for 12 yrs, his death has big consequences for the region.

On today's @WSJ front page, our in-depth look at COVID's next challenge: the "great divergence" in growth paths of the world's rich and poor economies.

The dynamic has far-reaching consequences for the global economy and geopolitics. (THREAD)

wsj.com/articles/covid… First the landscape: The U.S economy is growing like the “roaring 20s”; China grew 18.3% in Q1; U.K. expanding faster than at any time since WWII.

In the developing world, largely unvaccinated & unable to afford sustained stimulus measures, economies are falling further behind.

In 2017, @drewhinshaw & I entered a Nigerian cabinet minister’s office to ask why Boko Haram was ascendent. “Because we gave them millions of euros for the Chibok girls!” he said with a nervous chuckle

It was a slip of a tongue that set us on a journey

amazon.co.uk/Bring-Back-Our… Since then we've tried to understand why it took three years to free the schoolgirls briefly championed by millions: @Pontifex, @KimKardashian, @TheRock all tweeted #BringBackOurGirls. Maybe you did, too?...

Twitter quickly moved on... But the real story had only just begun.

It's almost impossible to believe, but 6 years after the kidnap of 276 schoolgirls ignited the #BringBackOurGirls campaign, Nigeria is again reeling from a mass school abduction by Boko Haram, this time of what appears to be more than 300 boys. A thread: wsj.com/articles/boko-… The students were seized from an all-boys boarding school in Katsina, northwest Nigeria and marched deep into a nearby forest. Details of the attack, in a remote region with patchy cell phone reception, remain murky, including the true tally of the missing.

Outside #Nigeria’s ‘Green Zone,’ Jihadists Rule the Road—a story about the rising violence on the three main highways leading out of Maiduguri, which may now be the world's most dangerous roads. THREAD. wsj.com/articles/outsi… In the past six months alone—while people have been watching COVID and #EndSARS —more than 200 Nigerians have been murdered or kidnapped on just three of the main roads leading out of the city.

Nigeria’s president was one of the first African leaders to congratulate Biden but privately, some of his key advisors were hoping for a Trump victory and are worried. The reasons are quite simple and are linked — human rights, the #EndSARS protests, and weapon sales. THREAD

https://twitter.com/MBuhari/status/1325174546496811009

This photo was taken in Washington in 2015 when Buhari was toast of the town—the old General’s “new broom” would sweep away corruption and (far more important to US) beat back Boko Haram. It was Biden who actually greeted Buhari at the White House that day before he met Obama...

Tonight Nigerian security forces stormed the most prominent site of the #EndSARS protests in Lagos, firing live rounds & killing several people as the government sought to end two weeks of marches against police brutality. Here's our report - and a thread: wsj.com/articles/niger… Three eyewitnesses who were gathered at the Lekki toll gate, a protest hub situated on one of Lagos’ busiest intersections, said that shortly after 7pm soldiers arrived in pickup trucks and fired tear gas then bullets into the crowd.

The youth-led protests in Nigeria are still growing - and today the #EndSARS demonstrators managed to essentially shut down Africa's largest city. I'm in Lagos -- here's a link to our latest story and a short thread on why you need to pay attention.

wsj.com/articles/niger… In case you haven't been following: the protests began with demands to ban a notorious police unit, SARS, organized under the hashtag #EndSARS, which has won the backing of many in Nigerian diaspora + celebrities and business leaders around the world, including @Kanye and @Jack.

At first, the Coronavirus appeared to spare the global south. Now it is spreading fast and the prognosis is grim.
Some stats to show the scale of the challenge: 1) Italy’s overwhelmed healthcare system has 41 doctors per 10000 people. The average in Africa is 2.

https://twitter.com/wsj/status/1243070210300620803

2) In South Sudan, devastated by a five-year civil war, the ministry of health says it has just 24 isolation beds for a country of 13 million. The whole country... Malawi’s health ministry says there are about 25 isolation beds in public hospitals serving 17 million.

As Nigeria commiserates the 10 year anniversary since the eruption of the Boko Haram insurgency, the Presidency & Military are still repeating the line that the militants have been "technically defeated." Here is a story that shows the reality behind those soundbites. (THREAD) This is the Maimalari barracks, the main military base in Maiduguri. At its northern end is a field of churned soil that conceals a hidden tomb. Nigerian soldiers are buried there in unmarked graves.

President Trump says Islamic State is defeated, but in northern #Nigeria, a group calling itself Islamic State West Africa Province is on a tear; overrunning the most fortified military bases, building nascent state structures & winning the propaganda war. (Thread) In the past six months, ISWAP has launched a blitzkrieg across Northeastern Nigeria, attacking the army some 40 times, capturing more than a dozen of the most heavily defended bases and looting what the UN calls a “massive” trove of heavy weaponry.

Cameroon’s president has clocked up more than 4.5 YEARS on private trips since he took power in 1982. He and his wife spend so much time in one Geneva hotel the staff have codenames: Him and Her. wsj.com/amp/articles/w… At the Geneva Intercontinental, the Biya’s always take the entire 16th floor, including its two corner suites: one for him and one for her. Hotel staff say they always pay in cash, they bring their own kitchen staff and she brings her personal hairdresser.

Our latest reporting on the #DapchiGirls kidnap revealed a lot about the civil war tearing at Boko Haram. Here's a thread: wsj.com/articles/niger… 1) An Islamic State-backed faction led by Abu Musab al-Barnawi--& not Boko Haram leader Abubakr Shekau - was responsible for the Dapchi kidnap.