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ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP) — One of the oldest Catholic churches in St. Paul had to close down because of a dwindling congregation, but it's been given new life as an Islamic community center. The Church of St. John parish, built in 1886, closed in 2013. It reopened Friday as the Darul-Uloom Islamic Center, the St. Paul Pioneer Press reported (http://bit.ly/1z0o5In ). "There are a lot of East Africans in the area, and we want to give them a place to worship, a place to be educated, a community space," center spokesman Feisal M. Elmi said. The former church held...

Absentee voting started Friday, six weeks ahead of primary elections. Already there are strong allegations of voter fraud. The attorney for Phyllis Kahn says he got word Thursday night; there might be hundreds of people who are registering and voting using an address that's not their home. Absentee voting kicked-off Friday morning in a hotly contested democratic primary race for the state house between incumbent Phyllis Kahn and Mohamud Noor. Brian Rice, attorney for the Phyllis Kahn Volunteer Committee, claims there's voter fraud. "I think there is a coordinated effort to use this address to bring voters into the DFL...

School health services in the small Swedish city of Norrköping have found 60 cases of female genital mutilation (FGM) among schoolgirls since March, with evidence of mutilation found in all 30 girls in one class, 28 of the most severe form. In Sweden, where the EU’s Institute for Gender Equality (EIGE) says that FGM “is considered to be a serious problem,” the law enables genital examination of children to be carried out without parents’ consent. ... FGM became widespread in Sweden in the early and mid-1990s with the influx of Somali migrants

A teenager who survived a flight to Hawaii as a stowaway in the plane's wheel well said he hopped on the closest flight that was going west in an effort to find his birth mom and can't believe he survived the journey. Yahya Abdi, 15, spoke over Google Chat to KPIX-5 in his first public comments since his improbable survival during the 5 1/2-hour flight from San Jose to Maui in April. The interview was reported on Tuesday night. Yahya, a Somali immigrant, ran away from his Santa Clara home and hopped a fence at Mineta San Jose International Airport....

The failed prosecution of an alleged Somali pirate — and the fact that that failure could leave him living freely, and permanently, inside U.S. borders — is highlighting anew the risks of trying terror suspects in American courts. Just a few weeks ago, Ali Mohamed Ali was facing the possibility of a mandatory life sentence in a 2008 shipjacking off the coast of Yemen — an incident much like the one dramatized in the film “Captain Phillips.” Now, the Somali native is in immigration detention in Virginia and seeking permanent asylum in the United States.

The FBI says more Somali travelers have left Minnesota, possibly to fight for al-Shabaab in Syria. Investigators believe Somalis who left to fight against the regime of President Bashar Assad in Syria were motivated by radical ideology, not nationalism. The FBI asking the Somali community in the Twin Cities for more information on anyone who may have left to fight overseas. If you know anyone who is planning to and/or has traveled to a foreign country for armed combat or who is being recruited for such activities, please contact www.fbi.gov/fttips or call (763) 569-8020. All information will be kept completely...

A teenage stowaway who survived a five-hour flight to Hawaii in the landing gear of an airplane won’t face federal charges, officials said Monday. He apparently didn’t even know where the flight was going. “This was not something he planned out,” said Special Agent Tom Simon, an FBI spokesman in Honolulu. “My impression is that he ran for the first flight he saw.” The 16-year-old was running away from his home in Santa Clara, Calif., and scaled a perimeter fence at San Jose International Airport early Sunday before entering a wheel well of a Hawaiian Airlines Boeing 767, authorities said....

Minneapolis Mayor Betsy Hodges .. hours after she lost the Southwest light-rail vote, she visited a Somali mall on E. 24th Street in a blue hijab, accompanied by her Somali liaison, Abdirahman Muse. Hodges’ office said she is fulfilling many of the promises she put forth in a 100-day plan for the Somali community, including asking the city attorney for a review of small business regulations. In an upstairs room, Somali shopkeepers praised her for showing up, and poured out their concerns through translators, telling her they needed more space to park, more opportunities for idle youth, and more Somali...

A 17-year-old boy has been arrested over the disappearance of a terror suspect, who absconded after changing into a burka at a London mosque. Mohammed Ahmed Mohamed, who is still missing, escaped from government minders in November while subject to an order restricting his movements. Mr Mohamed had been linked to Somali militant group al-Shabab. The 17-year-old was arrested on on suspicion of conspiring with another to breach a so-called TPim order. Scotland Yard said he had been taken to a south London police station where he remained in custody.

Maine’s Somali Muslim settler problem is growing worse with gang violence and welfare abuse threatening the state. Governor LePage’s efforts to make Maine’s generous benefits system less attractive to Somali Muslim migrants who have swarmed the state seeking taxpayer handouts has led to protests from those same Somali Muslims.

A long-awaited study has confirmed the fears of Somali residents in Minneapolis that their children suffer from higher rates of a disabling form of autism compared with other children there. The study — by the University of Minnesota, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the research and advocacy group Autism Speaks — found high rates of autism in two populations: About one Somali child in 32 and one white child in 36 in Minneapolis were on the autism spectrum. The national average is one child in 88, according to Coleen A. Boyle, who directs the C.D.C.’s Center on...

Sweden is in full surrender to sharia, dying for its apathy and accommodation to the horrors of Islam. According to authorities, a 34-year-old Somali Islamist, who violently raped a dying Swedish woman and continued to rape her dead body, will not be deported. On September 27th, 2013 the man in question, along with another man, violated a Swedish woman in a garage in Stockholm. The woman slipped into an unconscious state during the attack, but was not dead at the beginning of the attack. She was actively dying, no doubt due to the extreme trauma she was under. However, she...

A senior Somali government official wants Canadians to pay closer attention to youths to make sure they are not being influenced by radical preachers trying to lure them into taking up arms in his country. Abdurahman Adan Ibrahim, a Member of Parliament and former Deputy Prime Minister, flew to Toronto last week to accompany a fellow MP who was badly wounded in an Al-Shabab suicide bombing in Mogadishu. In an interview, Mr. Ibrahim, a member of his government’s foreign relations committee, said several Somali-Canadians had joined Al-Shabab and that someone had radicalized them and financed their travel... the Canadians should...

'As soon as the pirates get a blast of Britney, they move on as quickly as they can,' says merchant naval officerIn an excellent case of "here's a sentence you won't read every day", Britney Spears has emerged as an unlikely figurehead in the fight against Somali pirates. According to reports, Britney's hits, including Oops! I Did It Again and Baby One More Time, are being employed by British naval officers in an attempt to scare off pirates along the east coast of Africa. Perhaps nothing else – not guns, not harpoons – is quite as intimidating as the sound...

Clearly this is a problem that only can be solved with more Somali settlers moving out of the Midwest and into coastal states. And then Americans can finally experience Somali piracy without going anywhere near Africa.These people are not Americans. They have no interest in being Americans. Somalis living in Knoxville — and across the country — are anxious about the new negativity being circulated around the world by the actions of a few. The forecast isn’t getting any easier. No other groups gets this treatment. This “backlash whining” in front of every story and after every crime. Now talking...

NAIROBI, Kenya Almost one month after gunmen attacked an upscale mall in Kenya, one of them has been identified as a Norwegian-Somali, officials told The Associated Press Friday, as charred body parts taken from a collapsed portion of the shopping center awaited forensics analysis to determine if they were the remains of the assailants. The suspect was identified as Hassan Abdi Dhuhulow, the first time officials have confirmed having a real name of one of possibly four attackers from the Somali militant group al-Shabab who stormed the mall on Sept. 21. Norwegian tax records show a Hassan Abdi Dhuhulow was...

Terror Group That Claimed Kenya Attack Has Recruited Americans Before Sept. 22, 2013 By BRIAN ROSS, JAMES GORDON MEEK and MEGAN CHUCHMACH Brian Ross More from Brian » ABC News Chief Investigative Correspondent Home> Investigative Unit Terror Group That Claimed Kenya Attack Has Recruited Americans Before Sept. 22, 2013 By BRIAN ROSS, JAMES GORDON MEEK and MEGAN CHUCHMACH Brian Ross More from Brian » ABC News Chief Investigative Correspondent The same group that claimed responsibility for an attack on a Kenyan mall this weekend that has claimed at least 62 lives has previously recruited dozens of Americans to join their...

A 23-year-old woman admitted Thursday that she lied to a grand jury investigating the long-running case of young men who left Minnesota to join a terrorist group in Somalia. Saynab Hussein pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court in Minnesota to one count of perjury. She admitted that in June 2009 she lied when she told a grand jury she did not know anyone who raised money for the travelers, when she actually helped raise money herself.

Farhiya Abdi Dool, 38, and Amina A Hassan, 31, each face one felony charge of unlawful voting for voting once by absentee ballot and once at a polling place during the 2012 general election ... Double voting in a federal election is a federal crime. So far, the U.S. Justice Department has been slack in enforcing this federal law which protects federal (as opposed to state) interests. Meloweese Richardson in Ohio still has not been charged with double voting. Neither has Wendy Rosen in Maryland. There are more. Why isn't Eric Holder's Justice Department enforcing federal laws against double voting?

Amanda Lindhout traveled to Somalia hoping to find a story that would launch her career as a television reporter. Four days after arriving in the country with a photographer friend, both were taken hostage by Islamist insurgents. While in captivity, she was “starved, beaten and sexually brutalized” according to her memoir of the 2008 saga set to be released next month... Lindhout spent fifteen months “of harrowing captivity” after being pulled from the car in which she was traveling by a group of masked men. During her 460-day ordeal, the aspiring reporter converted to Islam in order not to be...