Tag: africa

WHAT A COINCIDENCE: While Serving in Congress, Keith Ellison Sponsored Legislation That Made it Easier to Transfer Funds to Somalia

Before becoming the attorney general of Minnesota, Keith Ellison served in the House of Representatives, for the state’s 5th District, which includes the city of Minneapolis.

During his time in congress, Ellison only sponsored one bill, the Money Remittances Improvement Act of 2014. This bill made it easier to transfer funds to places overseas, like Somalia. Isn’t that fascinating?

You could not make this up.

Couple this with the fact that Ellison was caught on tape basically promising favors to fraudsters, and things are not looking good for him.

Hot Air has more on this:

It turns out that this bill was the Money Remittances Improvement Act, which created the conditions through which those hundreds of millions or likely billions of dollars were fraudulently acquired and sent off to fund the Somali civil war and to enrich members of Somali clans associated with those who settled here in Minnesota.

Any financial bill is complicated, but the most relevant portion of the bill in this case is to transfer the authority to monitor money transfers to foreign countries to the states, which are in turn supposed to ensure that federal regulations are strictly adhered to…

It’s almost as if the system were intentionally designed not to aid in the small remittances of people working in menial jobs as refugees to send money to their families back home, but rather to enable the shipment of hundreds of millions or billions of ill-gotten gains abroad.

Naah. Couldn’t be.

Such corruption is impossible in America, right? A no man with the patriotism and integrity that would vault him to the exalted heights of Congressman, Deputy Chair of the Democratic National Committee, and then Attorney General would ever participate in a scheme to defraud the state and federal governments, right?

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2.6 million-year-old jaw from extinct ‘Nutcracker Man’ is found where we didn’t expect it

Fragments of a 2.6 million-year-old fossil jaw discovered in northeastern Ethiopia are transforming the picture of early human evolution in Africa. The jaw, from a bipedal hominin — an extinct relative of humans — shows that its kind journeyed far north, to a region where other hominins were already living.

The ancient jaw belongs to the genus Paranthropus and was found more than 620 miles (1,000 kilometers) farther north than any other fossil of its kind.

“Until now, not a single fossil of Paranthropus had been identified” in the Afar region of Ethiopia, researchers wrote in a study published Wednesday (Jan. 21) in the journal Nature. “Hundreds of fossils representing over a dozen species” of hominins had been found in the Afar, study lead author Zeresenay Alemseged, a paleoanthropologist at the University of Chicago, said in a statement, “so the apparent absence of Paranthropus was conspicuous and puzzling to paleoanthropologists, many of whom had concluded the genus simply never ventured that far north.”

The genus Paranthropus contains three species distantly related to humans: P. robustus, P. boisei and P. aethiopicus, collectively known as the “robusts.” These species walked upright beginning around 2.7 million years ago, but they are unique in having massive teeth and jaws, which earned one fossil skull the nickname “Nutcracker Man.” Paranthropus fossils were previously found in locations from southern Ethiopia to southern Africa and have been dated to between 2.8 million and 1.4 million years ago.

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Nigerian professor pleads guilty to stealing $1.4 million from Grand Rapids preschool nonprofit

A highly acclaimed Nigerian professor at Aquinas College is facing two decades in prison after she admitted to swindling more than $1 million from taxpayers and poor minority children in West Michigan.

Nkechy Ezeh, founder and CEO of the Early Learning Neighborhood Collaborative, pleaded guilty last week to wire fraud and tax evasion in a scheme that forced the nonprofit to shut down after a dozen years preparing about 8,000 preschoolers for kindergarten in Kent County, Battle Creek and Kalamazoo, WOOD reports.

Ezeh worked with ELNC bookkeeper Sharon Killebrew to create nearly $500,000 in fake invoices, as well as created fake daycare businesses to siphon off hundreds of thousands of dollars more, which Ezeh used for personal travel to Hawaii, Nigeria and Liberia, according to court documents cited by the news site.

The case comes amid sprawling investigations into fraud in government funded child care programs in Minnesota, Ohio and other states.

The investigations are motivated in part by a viral YouTube video last month that featured what appeared to be a largely vacant “Quality Learing [sic] Center” in Minneapolis that collected $4 million in recent years to provide child care services to the Somali community, Fox News reports.

The learning center is part of a broader scandal involving alleged social services fraud largely tied to the Somali community in the Twin Cities that U.S. Attorney Joseph Thompson said last month could exceed $1 billion once investigations into Minnesota’s Child Care Assistance Program are complete. Officials have followed some of the funds to the Somali terror group Al-Shabab, according to Fox.

Ezeh’s attorney, Mary Chartier, told MLive her client “is committed to taking full responsibility and accountability for her actions.

“She is deeply remorseful to anyone who has been negatively impacted,” Chartier said.

ELNC President Amy DeLeeuw offered a decidedly different perspective following Ezeh’s plea hearing in U.S. District Court on Jan. 14, noting in a statement the former CEO’s “failure to meaningfully articulate the nature and scope of her criminal misconduct.”

“Her theft of million of dollars intended for the most vulnerable of children was brazen, all encompassing and unconscionable,” DeLeeuw said.

“To date, Nkechy has made no effort to repay any of the millions of dollars she stole from ELNC,” the statement read. “I trust Nkechy’s demeanor at today’s hearing did not go unnoticed by Chief Judge Hala Jarbou. I and the board will have more to say in our victim impact statement and look forward to her sentencing hearing on May 13.”

Killebrew pleaded guilty earlier this year to engaging in conspiracy to defraud a federally funded program of $1,170,935 and tax evasion, and was sentenced to four years, six months in prison.

Ezeh agreed to pay $1.4 million in restitution to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Service’s Early Head Start Programs and other organizations as part of her plea agreement, which also detailed $390,000 in back taxes, according to media reports.

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US Ends Aid to Somalia After Locals Torch and Loot Warehouse Filled with 76 Tons of US-Donated Food

Such a grateful country!
They really appreciate all of the US taxpayer donated food sent their way.

The United States ended taxpayer-funded food aid to Somalia after local officials torched and looted the stockpiles of food stored in a local warehouse.

There is even video of the mass looting!

The US State Department released a statement after the warehouse was destroyed.

This is the same country that is shipped suitcases of US dollars each week.

It appears the Somalians in Africa are not very appreciated for the US assistance.

It’s about time the US focused their foreign aid in a different direction.

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State Department expected to end aid to Somalia: report

The U.S. State Department has announced a decision to cut off government-to-government assistance to Somalia following a dispute over the fate of American-donated food supplies, according to diplomatic communications cited in a news report.

Earlier this month, Somali authorities at the Mogadishu port demolished a key World Food Programme (WFP) warehouse—a facility built with international support to store emergency food aid. U.S. officials say the action, ordered by Somalia’s president and carried out without notifying donor nations, likely destroyed roughly 76 metric tons of U.S. food aid meant for vulnerable people. Additional shipments totaling over 1,600 metric tons were also affected and had to be relocated.

In response, Washington paused all current U.S. assistance programs that directly benefited the Somali federal government. 

The State Department has tied the reopening of aid commitments to Somalia’s acceptance of responsibility and compensation for the missing food supplies. 

The State Department said Jan. 7 that it had suspended all U.S. assistance programs that support Somalia’s federal government, warning that funding would not resume unless Somali officials accept responsibility for what Washington called unacceptable conduct. An administration official, who spoke on background with The Daily Wire, said the pause is expected to become permanent, with all remaining aid formally terminated by May.

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What’s Behind the Killing of Christians in Nigeria

“You can be less than a hundred meters away from a military checkpoint and still be killed by Islamists because the army does not protect you,” said Paul, a local journalist in Nigeria. He repeated, “The army does not protect you because it is systematically controlled. Orders are given, and that is the end of it.”

Paul is a Christian living close to communities being attacked by Islamic extremists and is deeply concerned about getting the word out to the international community that Nigerian Christians desperately need help. He asked that his full name not be used because, as he said, “People get threatened. They get picked up and disappear.”

The population of Nigeria is fairly evenly split between Christians and Muslims, with the bulk of Muslims living in the north. Paul’s region, which has been the center of Islamist attacks on Christians, is in the Middle Belt, where Christians are on the front lines, standing between the Muslim north and the Christian south.

The current violence has its roots in centuries of conflict. Islam spread into northern Nigeria primarily through the jihad led by Usman dan Fodio beginning in 1804. Dan Fodio, a Fulani Islamic scholar, launched a holy war against the Hausa rulers who mixed traditional practices with Islam. By 1808, his forces had conquered the major Hausa kingdoms including Gobir, Kano, and Katsina, establishing the Sokoto Caliphate with emirates governed under Islamic law. The jihad attempted to expand into the Middle Belt region but met resistance from indigenous tribes in areas including Plateau and Benue States, which halted the southward advance.

When the British colonized Nigeria and amalgamated diverse regions into a single country in 1914, they preserved the emirate system in the north through indirect rule. The Sultan of Sokoto, residing in the caliphate’s capital, retained authority over Muslims in northern Nigeria. This colonial arrangement created tensions by joining together previously independent kingdoms and ethnic groups, many with histories of conflict, into one nation-state under structures that favored the Islamic north’s existing power hierarchy.

In Paul’s estimation, there is a connection between the northern Muslim power structure and the violence against Christians that enables these attacks to continue. “Based on what people on the ground tell us, including those with privileged information, the situation appears clear to them,” he said. “They report that key positions of command are held by individuals who don’t act to protect Christian communities. Even when soldiers are deployed, victims say they are often told there are orders not to engage while villages are being burned and people are being killed.”

Community members in states like Taraba and Benue have made similar allegations to journalists, claiming soldiers cite lack of fuel or arrive too late to intervene. These accusations of military complicity or deliberate inaction are widespread among Christian leaders and victims in the Middle Belt, though the Nigerian government denies these claims and attributes security failures to resource constraints and the challenges of combating multiple insurgent groups across a vast territory.

Paul, however, does not believe the attacks are random or spontaneous; they are clearly targeted against Christians. Furthermore, the scale is massive. “They are highly coordinated and sophisticated. You are always overwhelmed.” Generally, attacks happen at night, with a large number of terrorists arriving in trucks and motorcycles. They park far enough away that villagers will not hear the engines. “But sometimes they drive right into the middle of the village,” Paul said.

He said the organized nature of the attacks suggests the attackers have military support. “They come in large numbers, and the logistics involved are extensive.”

“There are those who come in first with guns. If you manage to escape the gunfire, those behind them come with machetes.”

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Nigeria Massacre of Christians: Eyewitness Accounts as the Left Claims This Is Not Happening

In Vwang village in Vom District, Nigeria, the local Christian community is still reeling from a New Year’s Eve attack that left nine people dead when Fulani Islamist extremist gunmen opened fire on a Christian vigil. Pastor Gyang Ezekiel, the Alliance pastor and senior spiritual leader of the nearby Local Church Council of Danda, said the attack struck the very center of the community under his care.

Pastor Gyang said Danda has been a Christian community since its founding and was established explicitly on a Christian foundation. “This place has been a Christian-dominated area for some decades now,” he said. “This community was formed on a Christian platform, where Christianity has been and is still moving. There has never been any religion apart from Christianity here.”

He said the community’s faith remains firmly rooted in Jesus Christ and expressed confidence that their spiritual commitment has not been shaken despite the violence. Addressing the aftermath, Pastor Gyang said the suffering has been profound and that the church is struggling to respond to the scale of loss. While the church lacks the resources to replace what was destroyed, he said its focus remains on providing spiritual support to those affected.

The congregation has been praying together, comforting those who mourn, and urging members not to lose faith. Pastor Gyang said the church is focused on keeping Christ at the center of the community’s response to the violence. “We are trying to make sure that the people never lose hope in Christ,” he said, explaining that believers are being encouraged to deepen their faith rather than abandon it.

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Somali Suitcase Stash: Feds say $130 million moved from Ohio airport to Minnesota on way overseas

ederal agents investigating a Somali immigrant operation that moved massive amounts of cash in suitcases from the Minneapolis airport to overseas have uncovered a new leg of the courier journey: the Columbus, Ohio airport.

Homeland Security Department officials told Just the News that Transportation Security Administration officers tracked and flagged about $136 million in bulk cash in outbound luggage at the passenger checkpoints at John Glenn Columbus International Airport since November 2023.

The cash movements were made by U.S. citizens of Somali origin who flew out of the Columbus airport en route to either the airports in Minneapolis or Atlanta, and the couriers always declared the cash as legally required on documents, officials said.

“Typically, when they go to Minneapolis, they drop off the cash and then a subsequent courier travels abroad from Minneapolis to Dubai through Amsterdam,” one official familiar with the investigation told Just the News on Tuesday, speaking only on condition of anonymity.

Multiple Somali communities involved

The officials said they appear to have uncovered a massive cash movement operation that gathered money from multiple Somali immigrant communities in the West, Midwest and South that eventually brought luggage filled with currency to Minneapolis for flights overseas.

Just the News reported exclusively last week that TSA detected nearly $700 million in cash in luggage leaving the Minneapolis airport in 2024 and 2025, frequently headed on a route to Amsterdam and then Dubai where U.S. officials lost the tracking. The TSA agents routinely alerted investigators during the Biden years, but there was little interest in probing the money movements further until President Donald Trump took office last year.

The cash movements out of Minnesota’s largest airports by the Somali immigrant couriers were 90 to 99 times larger than the total amounts moved out of major international airports like John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York City or Seattle and Atlanta, officials said.

As investigators began tracking the money backwards throughout its journey, they discovered the operation in Columbus, officials said Tuesday.

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773,000-Year-Old Fossils Discovered in Morocco Shed Light on the Last Common Ancestor of Humans and Neanderthals

An international team of researchers has identified an African hominin population that existed very early in the Homo sapiens lineage, providing new insight into the shared ancestry of Homo sapiens, Neanderthals, and Denisovans.

The discovery was made at the Thomas Quarry I site in Casablanca, Morocco, where researchers identified 773,000-year-old hominin fossils dated to Earth’s last magnetic polarity reversal. A recent paper published in Nature reported the discovery of this ancient human ancestor.

Grotte à Hominidés

The Moroccan-French collaboration “Préhistoire de Casablanca” has been conducting excavations, geoarchaeological analyses, and stratigraphic studies in the region for more than three decades. Careful work has revealed not only hominin remains, but also important information about their geological context.

“Thomas Quarry I lies within the raised coastal formations of the Rabat–Casablanca littoral, a region internationally renowned for its exceptional succession of Plio-Pleistocene palaeoshorelines, coastal dunes and cave systems,” said co-author Jean-Paul Raynal, co-director of the program. “These geological formations, resulting from repeated sea-level oscillations, aeolian phases, and rapid early cementation of coastal sands, offer ideal conditions for fossil and archaeological preservation.”

Casablanca is home to some of the most important Pleistocene paleontological and archaeological sites in Africa, illuminating the region’s evolving hominin occupation. Thomas Quarry I has already produced significant finds dating back 1.3 million years and is in close proximity to other important Pleistocene sites, such as Sidi Abderrahmane.

Together, these sites form the “Grotte à Hominidés,” a cave system formed by a marine highstand and later filled with sediment, providing a combination of high-grade preservation and stratigraphic context for the finds.

Dating the Remote Past

That stratigraphic context makes the sites unique globally, as Early and Middle Pleistocene fossils are typically difficult to accurately date. In the Grotte à Hominidés, the infill and continuous deposition create a clear magnetic signal, enhancing the reliability of dating techniques.

Roughly 773,000 years ago, the most recent of Earth’s past magnetic field reversals, the Matuyama-Bruhes transition, occurred, creating a powerful magnetic marker for modern scientists to date ancient materials against.

“Seeing the Matuyama–Brunhes transition recorded with such resolution in the ThI-GH deposits allows us to anchor the presence of these hominins within an exceptionally precise chronological framework for the African Pleistocene,” said co-author Serena Perini.

The stratigraphic sequence at Grotte à Hominidés begins during the Matuyama Chron reverse-polarity interval, continues into the transition, and then extends into the Brunhes Chron normal-polarity interval.

With an unprecedented 180 magnetostratigraphic samples, the team identified the exact stratigraphic position of the switch. The team was able to establish sediment dating to a precise enough resolution to capture even the relatively brief 8,000 to 11,000-year transition period. Faunal evidence supported the team’s conclusions, confirming what they say is the highest-resolution stratigraphic dating ever produced at a Pleistocene site.

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“More to Come” – HHS Deputy Secretary Hints Something Big Is Coming as Questions Swirl Around Somali UN Ambassador’s Ties to Ohio Health Agency Convicted of Medicaid Fraud

The Trump administration’s Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is signaling that major revelations are imminent involving Somalia’s sitting ambassador to the United Nations, a man who now presides over the UN Security Council while allegedly tied to an Ohio healthcare company convicted of Medicaid fraud.

The Gateway Pundit previously reported on troubling new evidence showing that Abukar Dahir Osman, Somalia’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations, once worked deep inside Ohio’s Medicaid bureaucracy and later ran — or was formally associated with — an Ohio home healthcare company now appearing on a federal fraud exclusion list.

Osman, often referred to by the nickname “Baale,” has served as Somalia’s UN ambassador since 2017. As of this month, he holds one of the most powerful rotating posts in global diplomacy: President of the UN Security Council.

In that role, Osman:

  • Oversees Security Council meetings
  • Sets the Council’s agenda
  • Manages resolutions and presidential statements
  • Speaks for the A3+ bloc (African nations plus Caribbean representation) on major global conflicts, including Afghanistan and Yemen

But long before wielding global authority in New York, Osman built his career inside Ohio’s taxpayer-funded welfare and Medicaid system.

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