HELSINKI, Finland (AP) — Police in Finland said Thursday they had detained five suspects in connection with deadly violence in southeastern Nigeria and were seeking a court extension of the detentions.
The police did not identify the suspects, only saying that a dual Finnish-Nigerian citizen, born in the 1980s, was under criminal investigation.
However, Simon Ekpa, a Nigerian linked to the Biafran separatist movement, lives in Lahti, where the Päijät-Häme District Court will consider a request from the Finnish National Bureau of Investigation to keep the suspects in custody.
Ekpa is one of the leaders of the Indigenous People of Biafra separatist group that is demanding the creation of an independent Biafra state from the troubled southeast region of Nigeria.
“The police suspect that the man (under investigation) has furthered his efforts from Finland in such a way that has resulted in violence against civilians and public authorities and in other crimes in South-East Nigeria,” Detective Chief Inspector Otto Hiltunen said in a statement.
The suspect “carried out this activity by campaigning, for example, on his social media channels,” Hiltunen said.
The secessionist campaign in southeastern Nigeria dates back to the 1960s when the short-lived Republic of Biafra fought and lost a civil war from 1967 to 1970 to become independent from the West African country. An estimated 1 million people died in the conflict, many from starvation.
Nigerian authorities have accused Ekpa of using social media to instigate violence by his followers in Nigeria, many of them young people.
Police in Finland said the investigation involves international cooperation.
Nigerian authorities did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
For many years Nigeria, Africa's most populous nation, with at least 210 million people, has been wracked by violence related to the activities of armed extremist groups. Most recently, social protests were held over a worsening cost-of-living crisis and alleged bad governance.
FILE - People walk across a normally packed highway during a separatists imposed lockdown in Enugu, Nigeria, Feb. 14, 2022. (AP Photo/Jerome Delay, File)
NEW YORK (AP) — U.S. stock indexes are drifting up and down Thursday after market superstar Nvidia and another round of companies said they’re making fatter profits than expected.
The S&P 500 was 0.2% lower, as of 10:45 a.m. Eastern time, after flipping between modest gains and losses. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 126 points, or 0.3%, and the Nasdaq composite fell 1%. The moves were part of a busy day for financial markets worldwide, as bitcoin briefly broke above $98,000 and crude oil prices continued to rise.
Nvidia was a big reason for the stock market's meandering after yet again topping analysts’ estimates for profit and revenue. It also gave a forecast for revenue in the current quarter that topped most analysts’ expectations thanks to voracious demand for its chips used in artificial-intelligence technology.
Its stock initially sank in afterhours trading late on Wednesday after Nvidia released its results, which some investors said might be because the market was looking for its revenue forecast to top expectations by even more. But its stock then recovered in premarket trading Thursday, and Wedbush analyst Dan Ives said it was another “flawless” profit report provided by Nvidia and CEO Jensen Huang, whom Ives calls “the Godfather of AI.”
How Nvidia’s stock performs has tremendous impact on indexes because it’s quickly grown into Wall Street’s most valuable company at nearly $3.6 trillion. That means a 1% move for it packs more weight on the S&P 500 than the same move for any other stock.
Nvidia's stock on Thursday quickly went from an early jump of 4.8% on Thursday to a loss of 1.6%, making it one of the heaviest weights on the S&P 500.
The frenzy around AI is sweeping up other stocks, and Snowflake jumped 29.7% after reporting stronger results for the latest quarter than analysts expected. The company, whose platform helps customers get a better view of all their silos of data and use AI, also reported stronger revenue growth than expected.
BJ’S Wholesale Club rose 7.2% after likewise delivering a bigger profit than expected. That may help calm worries about how resilient U.S. shoppers can remain, given high prices across the economy and still-high interest rates. A day earlier, Target tumbled after reporting sluggish sales in the latest quarter and giving a dour forecast for the holiday shopping season. It followed Walmart, which gave a much more encouraging outlook.
Helping to drag on Wall Street was Google’s parent company, Alphabet. It fell 6.6% after U.S. regulators asked a judge to break up the tech giant by forcing it to sell its industry-leading Chrome web browser. In a 23-page document filed late Wednesday, the U.S. Department of Justice called for sweeping punishments that would include restrictions preventing Android from favoring its own search engine.
Regulators stopped short of demanding Google sell Android but left the door open to it if the company’s oversight committee continues to see evidence of misconduct.
Drops for other Big Tech stocks also weighed on the market, including slides of 0.9% for Apple, 2% for Amazon and 2.7% for Meta Platforms.
In stock markets abroad, shares of India’s Adani Enterprises plunged 22.6% Thursday after the U.S. charged founder Gautam Adani, 62, in a federal indictment with securities fraud and conspiracy to commit securities and wire fraud. The businessman and one of the world’s richest people is accused of duping investors by concealing that his company’s huge solar energy project on the subcontinent was being facilitated by an alleged bribery scheme.
Indexes elsewhere in Asia and Europe were mixed.
In the crypto market, bitcoin is trading around $96,000 after eclipsing $98,000 for the first time. It’s more than doubled so far this year, and its climb has accelerated since Election Day. President-elect Donald Trump has pledged to make the country “the crypto capital of the planet” and create a “strategic reserve” of bitcoin.
Bitcoin and related investments, of course, have a notorious history of big swings in price in both directions. MicroStrategy, a company that's been raising cash expressly to buy bitcoin, saw an early gain of 14.6% for its stock on Thursday quickly disappear. It was most recently down 5%.
In the oil market, a barrel of benchmark U.S. crude rose 1.7% to bring its gain up to 4.3% for the week. Brent crude, the international standard, climbed 1.4%. Oil has been rising amid escalations in the Russia-Ukraine war.
In the bond market, Treasury yields were easing a bit following some mixed reports on the U.S. economy. The yield on the 10-year Treasury edged down to 4.39% from 4.41% late Wednesday.
One report said fewer U.S. workers applied for unemployment benefits last week in the latest signal that the job market remains solid. Another report, though, said manufacturing in the mid-Atlantic region unexpectedly shrank. Sales of previously occupied homes, meanwhile, strengthened last month by more than expected.
AP Business Writers Matt Ott and Yuri Kageyama contributed.
FILE - People walk under a sidewalk shed near the New York Stock Exchange on Oct. 30, 2024. (AP Photo/Peter Morgan, File)
The facade of the New York Stock Exchange is illuminated on Tuesday, Nov. 19, 2024. (AP Photo/Peter Morgan)
People walk by monitors showing Japan's Nikkei 225 index and Japan's foreign exchange rate against the U.S. dollar at a securities firm in Tokyo, Thursday, Nov. 21, 2024. (AP Photo/Hiro Komae)
Travelers walk by monitors showing Japan's Nikkei 225 index at a securities firm in Tokyo, Thursday, Nov. 21, 2024. (AP Photo/Hiro Komae)
A woman covering herself from the rain walks by monitors showing Japan's Nikkei 225 index at a securities firm in Tokyo, Thursday, Nov. 21, 2024. (AP Photo/Hiro Komae)
People walk by monitors showing Japan's Nikkei 225 index at a securities firm in Tokyo, Thursday, Nov. 21, 2024. (AP Photo/Hiro Komae)
A woman walks by a monitor showing Japan's foreign exchange rate against the U.S. dollar at a securities firm in Tokyo, Thursday, Nov. 21, 2024. (AP Photo/Hiro Komae)
