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☆ Thailand’s Hostage Crisis in Gaza Takes a Shocking Turn: ‘I’m Not Dead Yet!’
▼ + stars: | 2023-11-29 | by ( Joe Parkinson | Drew Hinshaw | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

NA PHO, Thailand—Four days after Hamas militants tore through southern Israel, a mournful procession of local officials here in Thailand’s bucolic east came to tell the family of Wichai Kalapat that the 28-year-old fruit farmer was among those killed. His girlfriend, Kittiya Thuengsaeng, hung a picture of him outside her front door. On Saturday, Wichai appeared, Lazarus-like, in footage from a prisoner exchange. Shortly before midnight, his bewildered siblings happened to glimpse him, smiling from the back of a white Red Cross landcruiser, in a picture on Facebook , reluctant to believe it was him until his face appeared on a video call hours later.

Persons: Kittiya Thuengsaeng, Wichai, Lazarus Organizations: Facebook Locations: PHO, Thailand, Israel

Israel’s military released footage with blurred faces that it says shows Hamas militants taking hostages into Al-Shifa Hospital on Oct. 7. WSJ spoke to friends and colleagues of captured Nepali student Bipin Joshi, whom they believe to be one of the men in the video. Photo: Scene from a video released by Israel Defense Forces/circle illustration by WSJThe footage held little more than a grainy flicker of a young man being bundled through the hallways of Gaza’s Al-Shifa hospital by armed militants, but to friends and colleagues his identity seemed clear: It was Bipin. Nepali student Bipin Joshi, 23 years old, had last been seen on the morning of Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack, dragged away by militants who had killed 10 of his countrymen in the southern Israeli kibbutz where they harvested oranges and lemons. Since then, a small number of Nepali diplomats, local volunteers and Bipin’s friends had been piecing together fragments of evidence to answer a basic question: Did he survive?

Persons: Bipin Joshi Organizations: Shifa, Israel Defense Forces Locations: Al, Gaza’s

Bipin Joshi watched the two grenades skid across the cement floor of the windowless room where he was hiding, shoulder-to-shoulder with 16 other student farmers from Nepal. Outside, the Hamas gunmen marauding through the orchards and dairy barn of Kibbutz Alumim were killing anyone they could find. The Nepalis had arrived in Israel just three weeks earlier, on a college program to tend orange and lemon groves. They were two days short of their first paycheck. Now, somehow, they were huddled against a wall, bracing for impact.

Persons: Bipin Joshi, Alumim, Nepalis Locations: Nepal, Israel

This copy is for your personal, non-commercial use only. Distribution and use of this material are governed by our Subscriber Agreement and by copyright law. For non-personal use or to order multiple copies, please contact Dow Jones Reprints at 1-800-843-0008 or visit www.djreprints.com. https://www.wsj.com/world/russia/prigozhin-wagner-jets-evade-tracking-61ba91e7

Persons: Dow Jones, wagner Locations: russia

Persons: Dow Jones, wagner Locations: russia

Persons: Dow Jones Locations: russia, africa

☆ Inside the Secretive Russian Security Force That Targets Americans
▼ + stars: | 2023-07-08 | by ( Joe Parkinson | Drew Hinshaw | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

This copy is for your personal, non-commercial use only. Distribution and use of this material are governed by our Subscriber Agreement and by copyright law. For non-personal use or to order multiple copies, please contact Dow Jones Reprints at 1-800-843-0008 or visit www.djreprints.com. https://www.wsj.com/articles/fsb-evan-gershkovich-russia-security-force-dkro-e9cf9a49

Persons: Dow Jones Locations: gershkovich, russia

☆ Ukraine Nears Nuclear Deal With Bulgaria in Fresh Blow for Russian Influence
▼ + stars: | 2023-07-06 | by ( Georgi Kantchev | Joe Parkinson | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

This copy is for your personal, non-commercial use only. Distribution and use of this material are governed by our Subscriber Agreement and by copyright law. For non-personal use or to order multiple copies, please contact Dow Jones Reprints at 1-800-843-0008 or visit www.djreprints.com. https://www.wsj.com/articles/ukraine-nears-nuclear-deal-with-bulgaria-in-fresh-blow-for-russian-influence-e9c083ab

Persons: Dow Jones, e9c083ab Locations: ukraine, bulgaria

This copy is for your personal, non-commercial use only. Distribution and use of this material are governed by our Subscriber Agreement and by copyright law. For non-personal use or to order multiple copies, please contact Dow Jones Reprints at 1-800-843-0008 or visit www.djreprints.com. https://www.wsj.com/articles/putin-moves-to-seize-control-of-wagners-global-empire-26d49286

Persons: Dow Jones

This copy is for your personal, non-commercial use only. Distribution and use of this material are governed by our Subscriber Agreement and by copyright law. For non-personal use or to order multiple copies, please contact Dow Jones Reprints at 1-800-843-0008 or visit www.djreprints.com. https://www.wsj.com/articles/wagner-prigozhin-putin-mutiny-moscow-march-7072d6ea

Persons: Dow Jones, wagner, prigozhin Locations: moscow

This copy is for your personal, non-commercial use only. Distribution and use of this material are governed by our Subscriber Agreement and by copyright law. For non-personal use or to order multiple copies, please contact Dow Jones Reprints at 1-800-843-0008 or visit www.djreprints.com. https://www.wsj.com/articles/fresh-leads-point-to-poland-as-hub-for-nord-stream-sabotage-bf35ee3e

Persons: Dow Jones Locations: poland

This copy is for your personal, non-commercial use only. Distribution and use of this material are governed by our Subscriber Agreement and by copyright law. For non-personal use or to order multiple copies, please contact Dow Jones Reprints at 1-800-843-0008 or visit www.djreprints.com. https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-warned-ukraine-not-to-attack-nord-stream-7777939b

Persons: Dow Jones Locations: ukraine

This copy is for your personal, non-commercial use only. Distribution and use of this material are governed by our Subscriber Agreement and by copyright law. For non-personal use or to order multiple copies, please contact Dow Jones Reprints at 1-800-843-0008 or visit www.djreprints.com. https://www.wsj.com/articles/nord-stream-sabotage-probe-turns-to-clues-inside-poland-4ed20422

Persons: Dow Jones, 4ed20422 Locations: poland

ANTAKYA, Turkey—The Hatay international airport was meant to be a gleaming model for what the government called “the New Turkey,” kicking off one of the biggest building booms of the 21st century. Danger signs were flashing from the start.

At Lefortovo prison, the interrogations start with the clanging of metal. Guards patrolling hundreds of cells at the sprawling facility on the outskirts of Moscow bang their keys together to signal that an inmate is being escorted from their cells to an interrogation room, according to former prisoners, their families and their lawyers. Others snap their fingers in the hallways, where fluorescent lights buzz day and night, a warning there should be no other prisoners in sight and as few personnel as possible.

ZURICH—The chairman of Switzerland’s largest bank received an urgent call last week. UBS Group AG needed to rescue its failing rival, Credit Suisse Group AG. For Switzerland, the stakes verged on existential. Its economic model and national identity, cultivated over centuries, were built on safeguarding the world’s wealth. Switzerland itself needed rescuing.

☆ Four Weeks After Turkey’s Earthquake, Rescued Babies Wait for Their Families to Claim Them
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-09 | by ( Drew Hinshaw | Joe Parkinson | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

ADANA, Turkey—An ambulance raced to the doors of the Adana City Training and Research Hospital carrying a baby boy in footed pajamas. A rescue crew had found the baby under a heap of rubble by tracing his cries. He was alone and miraculously alive two days after twin earthquakes killed more than 51,000 people. No one knew his name.

☆ Russia’s Wagner Deepens Influence in Africa, Helping Putin Project Power
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-13 | by ( Benoit Faucon | Joe Parkinson | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

As Wagner fighters play a central role in Russia’s war in Ukraine, the Russian mercenary group is quietly expanding its alliances in Africa, say European officials, penetrating new mineral-rich areas, exploiting the exit of Western powers and creating alliances with local fighters. Wagner fighters and instructors are working with the government of the Central African Republic in a bid to seize areas rich with precious minerals that could be exported through Sudan, say Western security officials. Wagner is also looking to expand its influence in Burkina Faso and Ivory Coast, while consolidating its relationship with the military junta in Mali.

☆ Turkey’s Erdogan Era Began After a Massive Earthquake. Another Is Testing His Leadership.
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-08 | by ( Jared Malsin | Joe Parkinson | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

ANTAKYA, Turkey—When a 1999 earthquake around Istanbul killed more than 17,000 people, the Turkish government’s stuttering and shambolic response opened the way for Recep Tayyip Erdogan , then the city’s young mayor, to rise to the prime minister’s office. Now, 23 years later, Mr. Erdogan, the country’s long-serving leader, is challenged by another massive and deadly seismic disaster—this one just months before national elections in which he is seeking to stay in office.

BELEN, Turkey—As the sun went down Tuesday over Girne Street, dozens of people, their hands and arms limned with ghostly gray dust, silently combed the wreckage of flattened apartment blocks. Ismail Parlak and his wife dug through the rubble looking for Mr. Parlak’s mother, entombed, they said, somewhere under six stories of collapsed concrete and contorted metal.

WARSAW—In a sprawling factory complex surrounded by derelict buildings, hundreds of technicians are working around the clock on one of the biggest challenges of Ukraine’s war: repairing artillery and heavy armor and returning it to the front line. Mechanics buzz around the football-field-sized workshop housing three AHS Krab guns, the air thick with the smell of metal dust and automotive grease. Two of the Krabs, which look like tanks but are self-propelled 155-caliber howitzer guns, are missing parts of their caterpillar tracks and are riddled with bullet holes and contorted metal.

The head of the United Nations atomic agency plans to visit Ukraine next week to deploy international inspectors at all of the war-torn country’s nuclear plants, significantly expanding the regulator’s presence after months of attacks on power stations and amid the threat of a renewed Russian offensive. The agency’s Director-General Rafael Grossi plans to station two or three inspectors at the South Ukraine, Rivne and Khmelnytskyi power plants, according to Ukrainian officials and Western diplomats. Power lines to the latter two plants were damaged in a Nov. 15 barrage of missile strikes that plunged both into crisis. Inspectors will also deploy to Chernobyl, the site of the world’s largest nuclear disaster in 1986, which was occupied for 36 days at the start of the war and where dangerous radioactive materials are still stored, the officials said.

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