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Investopedia

Coca-Cola Stock Slips As Volumes Drop Offsets Better-Than-Expected Results

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Gistlegit

Muslim Clerics Condemn VDM's Miracle Water Test On Faithful: Calls For Immediate Apology

VDM is facing severe criticism for his recent actions involving Prophet Jeremiah Fufeyin's miracle water, which he administered to Muslim beggars. This act has been met with significant outrage within the Muslim community, particularly in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), where it is viewed as a provocative and insensitive gesture that disrespects the religious diversity in Nigeria.

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Worldnews

Syria Merges Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces Into State Institutions

SDF controls much of northeastern Syria, and has held out against control from Damascus for years. Syria says that it has reached an agreement with the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces to integrate the latter with state institutions. The Syrian presidency made the announcement on Monday and released images of a signing ceremony featuring the Syrian interim President Ahmed al-Sharaa and the head of the SDF, Mazloum Abdi. The agreement emphasised the unity of Syria, and stipulated that “all civil and military institutions in northeastern Syria” be merged “into the administration of the Syrian state, including border crossings, the airport, and oil and gas fields”. The United States-backed SDF has controlled a semi-autonomous region in northeastern Syria since 2015. The agreement, if implemented, would bring that territory under the full control of the Syrian central government. Al Jazeera’s Resul Serdar, reporting from the Syrian capital Damascus, said that the deal is one of the most major developments since the fall of longtime President Bashar al-Assad at the hands of Syrian opposition forces led by al-Sharaa in December. “Whether [Syria] was going to remain as one territory or be partitioned was always a sticking point,” said Serdar. The agreement includes a ceasefire in all of Syria, and SDF support in combatting pro-Assad fighters. It also includes an affirmation that the Kurdish people are integral to Syria and have a right to citizenship and guaranteed constitutional rights. Al Jazeera’s Serdar said it was unclear what the exact constitutional status of the territory controlled by the SDF would be, and whether it would retain some autonomy. He also noted that, in a multiethnic and religiously diverse country such as Syria, there may now be demands to give special status to other groups. “For Damascus, once you have given special status to a certain ethnicity, or a certain sect, then the question is [for] other sects like Alawites or Druze, are they also going to have special status?… That is not clear for now,” Serdar said. Discussions over the integration of the SDF into the Syrian state had been ongoing since the fall of al-Assad, but were hampered by divides fostered over years of war. The SDF had a more ambiguous position towards al-Assad than other opposition forces, and was accused of being allied with the regime. Meanwhile, the SDF – whose leadership is secular and tied to the Kurdish nationalist Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) – repeatedly clashed with Turkish-backed Syrian fighters, and faced attacks from Turkiye itself. The PKK has fought an insurgency against the Turkish state since 1984. Turkiye, along with the European Union and the US, considers the group a “terrorist” organisation. However, that has not stopped the US from supporting the SDF, largely because of its usefulness in confronting ISIL (ISIS) forces who previously controlled parts of northeastern Syria before being finally defeated in 2019 by a US-led coalition that included the SDF. The SDF has faced tumultuous regional and international changes, which may explain the timing of the agreement with the Syrian central government. Under the new US President Donald Trump, Washington has reportedly made plans to withdraw from Syria. “Syria is its own mess. They got enough messes over there. They don’t need us involved in every one,” Trump said earlier this year. An announcement on February 27 by the imprisoned head of the PKK, Abdullah Ocalan, calling for the group to lay down its arms and dissolve itself, has also added pressure on the SDF. Follow Al Jazeera English:...

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Worldnews

A Dangerous Moment

Rights groups denounce the arrest of student activist Mahmoud Khalil Civil liberties organisations and academics have raised alarm at the detention of Mahmoud Khalil, a Palestinian student activist at Columbia University, calling it a serious breach of free-speech rights under the administration of President Donald Trump. "Ostensibly, the moral justification is to combat anti-Semitism, always a noble goal," Nader Hashemi, a professor of Middle East and Islamic politics at Georgetown University, told Al Jazeera. But, Hashemi warned, this justification is being used as a smoke screen to tamp down on pro-Palestinian views in the United States. "Objectively, what is really happening is an effort to silence all public expression of support for Palestinian human rights to placate right-wing supporters of Israel within the Republican Party," he said. "That is how this topic should be framed and understood." Agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) arrested Khalil on Saturday evening at his university housing, after he and his pregnant wife, an American citizen, returned from an iftar dinner. His lawyer Amy Greer said he is a lawful permanent resident of the US. Experts have underscored that it is rare for green card holders to be threatened with deportation, except in cases of serious crimes. Khalil, however, was a prominent figure in protests against Israel’s war in Gaza at the Ivy League university, and Trump has repeatedly voiced his desire to expel such protesters from the country. "Many are not students, they are paid agitators," Trump wrote in a social media post on Monday, without offering evidence. He also accused student protesters of participating in "pro-terrorist, anti-Semitic, anti-American activity" — again, without proof. Still, he warned Khalil’s detention would be "the first of many to come". "We will find, apprehend, and deport these terrorist sympathizers from our country — never to return again." Free speech groups point out that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) accused Khalil of leading "activities aligned with Hamas, a designated terrorist organization". But analysts note that the department’s allegation falls short of more tangible claims. US law, for instance, prohibits anyone in the country’s jurisdiction from providing "material support" to terrorist organisations. The rationale provided for Khalil’s arrest, experts argue, was overly broad and could be wielded against any voices critical of Israel and US foreign policy. "It’s a loophole so big that you could drive a truck through it," Will Creeley, the legal director of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), a free speech group, told Al Jazeera. "I think what’s perhaps most dangerous about this moment is that, given the rhetoric coming out of the administration today, folks across the country are going to think twice before they criticise the government, whether it’s the US government or Israeli government, and that chill is a real problem," he added. The effort to connect criticism of Israel with support for terrorism also appears to mirror Project 2025, a controversial series of policy proposals for Trump's second term compiled by the Heritage Foundation, a right-wing think tank. The document drew alarm for its expansive interpretations of executive power, as well as its views on issues like the pro-Palestinian protest movement. One Project 2025 proposal states that pro-Palestine protests are part of a "highly organized, global Hamas Support Network (HSN) and therefore effectively a terrorist support network". Greer has told media outlets that, when she spoke with ICE agents over the phone, they appeared to have incorrect information about Khalil’s immigration status, informing her they were going to revoke his student visa. Khalil, a graduate student at Columbia until December, was previously in the US on a student visa but has since obtained a green card, making him a lawful permanent resident of the country. Greer said that, when she informed ICE agents that he was a permanent resident, they said his green card would be revoked instead. Nithya Nathan-Pineau, a policy lawyer with the Immigrant Legal Resource Center, told Al Jazeera that green card status can be revoked under some circumstances, such as the discovery of fraudulent information in an immigration application or certain criminal activity. "I haven’t seen any information about criminal convictions or arrests," she said. "It sounds like the ICE agents just unilaterally decided that whatever immigration status he had, it didn’t matter." Greer said that she and Khalil’s wife were told he was being held in an immigration detention facility in New Jersey, but when they arrived, he was not there. Khalil has reportedly been moved to a detention centre in Louisiana. "This is a tactic that ICE loves to use, transferring someone to a facility that is further away from their legal assistance, community and loved ones," said Nathan-Pineau. "It increases the psychological strain of detention." Greer has challenged Khalil’s detention, and a federal court is scheduled to hear the case on March 12. But Palestinian rights advocates see Khalil’s arrest as part of a wider trend. They say pro-Israel groups have long used allegations of anti-Semitism as a cudgel against pro-Palestine political expression, making little distinction between hateful prejudice and criticism of Israeli government policies. "This arrest is an escalation, but it’s certainly not new," said Yousef Munayyer, a senior fellow at the Arab Center Washington DC. "This is part of a pattern going back years, where pro-Israel groups have tried to find ways to penalise advocacy against Israeli policies through a combination of legal and extra-legal means." He says those efforts include bills to ban participation in boycotts against Israel or adopt definitions of anti-Semitism that would include criticisms of Israel as evidence of prejudice. Munayyer also pointed to the network of pro-Israel groups that target pro-Palestine academics, journalists, politicians and activists with public accusations of anti-Semitism. In the aftermath of Khalil’s arrest, the pro-Israel group Canary Mission posted the names of five "suspected foreign nationals" with links to "campus extremism". The Israeli government itself has been a firm supporter of those efforts and has sought to portray a variety of nonviolent protest methods as dangerous and anti-Semitic. In 2022, for instance, Israeli President Isaac Herzog described a decision by the ice cream producer Ben and Jerry’s to end sales in Palestinian territories under Israeli military occupation as a "new form of terrorism". Activists say that such efforts expanded during the most recent war in Gaza, with Democratic and Republican lawmakers calling for greater restrictions on pro-Palestine protests, which they say created an unsafe environment for Jews on school campuses. Cases of harassment, abuse and violence against pro-Palestine protesters have received relatively scant attention by comparison. "We need to remember what Mahmoud was harassed by Zionists and then arrested by DHS for. It was for protesting Israel's genocide of his own people, of the Palestinian people," said Miriam Osman, a 28-year-old organiser with the Palestinian Youth Movement, one of several groups that took part in a protest against Khalil’s arrest on Monday. "And clearly, the Trump administration wants to criminalise any dissent of Israel's genocide, any dissent of the US’s role in it, and they're willing to roll back all of our rights to do that." Others also worry that Trump’s crackdown on protesters will not remain limited to supporters of Palestine. He previously stated he would look to impose serious punishments on all "illegal protests", without defining what that entails. "It’s important to note that Palestinians, Arabs and Muslims who are active in the fight for Palestinian rights are canaries in the coal mine," said Sahar Aziz, a professor at Rutgers Law School and author of the book The Racial Muslim. "Americans should view how they are treated as an indicator of what’s in store for anyone who has views that dissent from the government." With additional reporting from Joseph Stepansky Follow Al Jazeera English:...