Welcome back to TLDR's Daily Briefing for Tuesday 11th March 2025. In today's episode, we cover the arrest of the former Philippine president, Tesla's stock crash, Greenland's election, and more. But first, major political developments in Syria. Ahmed al-Sharah, Syria's transitional president, has said that the Syrian Democratic Forces, a Kurdish militia that runs three provinces in the country's northeast, had agreed to a ceasefire and to merge with state institutions.
bringing most of the fragmented nation under the control of the new central government. Since the Islamist rebel coalition headed by al-Sharath toppled the regime of Bashar al-Assad in December, the new government has sought to unify the complex web of armed groups operating across Syria.
with Kurdish-led forces being the most powerful outside the government. If implemented, the deal would bring border crossings, airports and oil fields in the region under the Syrian government's control, while Syrian Kurds would be granted broader constitutional rights. and hundreds of thousands of Kurds who were displaced during Syria's civil war would be allowed to return home. The agreement brings relief to both Kurds and Arabs in the northeast.
For the Kurds, it alleviates the unsettling prospect of being at odds with a regime openly backed by Turkey, which has been in conflict with Kurdish insurgent forces for a few decades. At the same time, for the Arabs, it alleviates concerns that the Kurdish-led region could encounter threats not only from Turkey, but also from the central government.
The agreement also marks a major victory for the government in Damascus in its quest to unify the country after ordering all armed groups in recent weeks to dissolve. Al-Shirah has also faced challenges in establishing governmental authority throughout the country. and in negotiating political settlements with various minority communities, particularly the Druze in southern Syria.
The deal follows the horrific violence that erupted over the weekend in Syria's coastal regions. Last Thursday, Alawite loyalists of Assad ambushed a police patrol, triggering widespread clashes throughout the region, a predominantly Alawite area. For context, Alawites are a minority sect of Shia Muslims, for which the Assad family originated. According to estimates by human rights organizations, some 1,000 people were killed, which included hundreds of Alawite civilians.
You're listening to TLDR's Daily Briefing. If you want more explainers on what's happening in the world, then you should check out TLDR's other channels. Today, we released a video updating you on battlefield developments in Ukraine. You can find those videos linked in the description or show notes for this episode, or by searching for TLDR on YouTube or Nebula.
The former president of the Philippines, Rodrigo Duterte, has been detained in Manila after the International Criminal Court issued a warrant for his arrest in connection to his so-called war on drugs. ICC prosecutors accused Duterte, who was president from 2016 to 2022, of crimes against humanity during his bloody anti-drugs crackdown that killed as many as 30,000 people and involved alleged extrajudicial
killings and cover-ups. Duterte remains influential in Philippine politics, and his daughter Sara is the current vice-president. It remains to be seen whether President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. is willing to hand the elder Duterte over to the ICC for trial. Previously, Marcos has said that he would not cooperate with the ICC, but the alliance between the Marcos and Duterte families has since collapsed, and Marcos' government later said it would cooperate.
In other news, yesterday was a particularly bad day for the world's richest man, Elon Musk. His social media site X suffered major outages, which Musk said was a result of a massive cyber attack. and Tesla's share price continued to decline, suffering a more than 15% decline on Monday alone. It was Tesla's worst percentage loss since September 2020, and means the electric vehicle company has wiped out the gains it made following Donald Trump's election win last year.
Tesla's share price has plummeted 55% from its post-election mid-December record high, and is down more than 40% year to date. Losses extended across the stock market as concern among investors over the economic effects of Trump's trade wars rises. Tesla's share price is often seen as intrinsically linked to Elon Musk's personal status, and Trump himself weighed in and blamed quote radical left lunatics boycotting Tesla aiming to attack and do harm to Musk.
Greenland is voting in its parliamentary election today, amid its ongoing push for independence from Denmark and Donald Trump's repeated interest in acquiring Greenland for the US. Independence from Denmark is often talked about as a question of when, not if. Five of the six parties on the ballot favour independence, but vary on the timeline to achieve it, given the potential impact on services and living standards, with Denmark contributing a significant chunk to Greenland's budget.
40,000 Greenlanders are eligible to vote, with polls closing at 8pm local time. However, ballot counting could take weeks. A US federal judge has temporarily blocked the Trump administration's attempt to deport Mahmoud Khalil, a Palestinian activist who was arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement or ICE late on Saturday. Khalil, who holds permanent US residency, led pro-Palestine protest at New York's Columbia University, where he was a graduate student.
Following his arrest, which Donald Trump described as the first of many to come, Khalil was transported from New York to a processing center in Louisiana. The Department of Homeland Security allege that Khalil's activism was aligned to Hamas, the designated terrorist organization, and that the arrest was in line with executive orders signed by Trump on, quote, prohibiting anti-Semitism.
No charges have been filed against Khalil and he holds permanent US residency by way of a green card. The American Civil Liberties Union condemned the arrest as unprecedented, illegal and un-American. adding that the government is, quote, claiming the authority to deport people with deep ties to the US and revoke their green cards for advocating positions that the government opposes.
Judge Jesse M Furman temporarily blocked the deportation and scheduled a hearing for Wednesday. That's all for today, we'll be back with you tomorrow, so make sure you're subscribed wherever you listen. In the meantime, you can check out my exclusive interview with the UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer on the TLDR News UK channel. We've linked it in the podcast description or show notes for this episode.
This was a TLDR News production hosted by Ben Blissett, written by Nadja Levadinov and Rory Taylor, and produced by Scarlet Watchorn. Thanks for listening, we'll be back again tomorrow.