Elizabeth Gales via Minnesota Local History | Flickr Creative Commons

Riverside Plaza, the landmark West Bank apartment complex.

In Toronto, six men of Somali descent have been shot and killed since June. As the city searches for solutions, CBC News (Canada's version of the BBC) is suggesting that it might be able to find answers across the border, in the Minneapolis police's success reducing crime in Cedar-Riverside.

See also:
- Feature: Minneapolis Somali community facing dark web of murders: They came to escape civil war, so why are they killing each other in the streets?
- Minneapolis Somalis testifying before Congress
- Feature: Better Days: They went through hell in Mogadishu. But for 17-year-old Mohamed Abdullahi and other Somali immigrants, in Minneapolis it's still an uphill climb.
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screenshot from Dalmar Media interview

Dr. Ahmed Samatar, international studies professor and former dean at Macalester, is running for president of Somalia.

SEE ALSO:
-- Somalis walk off job at Minnesota dessert factory in protest of company's new burqa ban
-- Somali immigrant visa petitions stalling over identity paperwork
-- Money-wiring shutdown worries local Somalis

Professors tend to go on sabbatical to write a book, conduct research, or just think deeply without the distractions of teaching. But Ahmed Samatar, a professor of international studies at Macalester, has taken time off from his university duties to see if he can apply his writing, researching, and thinking to life. He's running for president of Somalia.


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Wikimedia Commons

The Council on American-Islamic Relations is preparing to file discrimination charges against Dianne's Fine Desserts for allegedly mistreating Somali workers.

About 45 Somali workers walked off their work site because they refused to follow a new dress code mandating that workers roll up their skirts so they are "15 inches from the ground," which some are calling a "burqa ban." CAIR's president says that new policy was merely a pretext for something more sinister.

"We have more going on here than just a new dress code," Lori Saroya told the Faribault Daily News. "We're hearing about an extremely hostile work environment that they've been dealing with. We're hearing the dress code was created to target the Somali employees because the company knew they couldn't comply with it so they could get rid of them. Many of these people are reporting being subjected to other forms of harassment, and it's shocking."

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Bradlee Dean buys steak sauce in south Minneapolis

Bradlee Dean came to south Minneapolis last week to pick up some steak sauce with his wife and they were shocked by what they saw.

"My wife looked around at this particular area where these foreigners live, and these are people that are trying to implement their foreign law into America," Dean told his listeners. "My wife said: 'if I didn't know where we were at, I would think we were in a third-world country.'"

Dean seemed to agree with his wife, following up by saying the neighborhood was "run down. It was beaten down. It's probably crime-stricken and yet they want to come here and bring that God to this country to lower this standard? No no no."

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This image drew Cindy Pugh's ire -- toward Somalis

Tea Party candidate for state representative Cindy Pugh uses her Facebook profile to defend Scott Walker, criticize Barack Obama, and boast about her ongoing campaign to defeat incumbent state Rep. Steve Smith, a Republican from Mound.

But she also used it recently to compare Muslim women and children clad in traditional Islamic garb to garbage bags.

Pugh shared the above photo on May 21 with the following commentary: "Disturbing ... that women & little girls are OK with dressing like this!!! What will it take for these women to stand up and say, 'NO'!? Wondering if they will ever do that?!"

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Abdinasir Abdulahi is speaking out for Somali immigrants

Local immigration attorneys are up in arms over the United States embassy in Nairobi's refusal to issue certain visas to Somali applicants.

At issue are I-130 applications by Somalis in America, which are petitions to bring over family members. United States Customs and Immigration Services has to approve the application, then sends it over to the American embassy, where the visa is provided. Somalis who have fled their homeland for Kenya have their visas processed by the U.S. consulate in Nairobi.

The problem, immigration attorneys say, is that the embassy is denying cases left and right. "It seems that they are creating these artificial walls or impediments to Somalis applying for visas," says Brian Aust, a local immigration attorney.

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Local banks recently shutdown money-wiring services for local Somalis.

​The war on terrorism is making life difficult for local Somalis.

Last month, owners of Somali money-lending businesses, called hawalas, were notified by St. Paul-based Sunrise Community Banks that they would no longer be able to wire money back home. Sunrise was the last bank in Minnesota to offer that service.

The news posed a huge problem for the area's 32,000 Somalis, many of whom have family in East Africa that rely on money transfers for basic needs.

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Bob Fletcher in his former post as Ramsey County sheriff.

​After he lost the election for Ramsey County sheriff, Bob Fletcher declared a new passion: educating law enforcement about Somali culture and history. He dubbed the new venture the Center for Somalia History Studies, and its first event -- an educational seminar called "Understanding the People of Somalia" -- takes place on Thursday.

However, in a letter sent out to several law enforcement agencies as well as the press, members of the Council on American-Islamic Relations-Minnesota called the seminar "anti-Muslim and anti-Somali," and called on those agencies to withdraw from the event.

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Somalia's civil war claims another Minnesotan.

​A suicide bomber who blew himself up in Mogadishu yesterday in an attack that killed 10 had traveled to Somalia from Minneapolis in 2008.

Abdisalan Ali had emigrated to Minnesota with his family when he was 2 years old, but was among 20 local youths who returned to the war-torn land to fight in its civil war back in 2008. He is the fourth American to kill himself in a suicide attack in Somalia.

In a clip posted by an Al-Qaida-linked militant group on Somalimemo.net today, the man alleged to be Ali urges fellow Muslims to conduct attacks in Western countries.

"My brothers and sisters, do Jihad in America, do Jihad in Canada, do Jihad in England, anywhere in Europe, in Asia, in Africa, in China, in Australia," the suicide bomber urges.

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Former Sheriff Bob Fletcher is back with an unexpected new project.

​Former Ramsey County Sheriff Bob Fletcher has kept a pretty low profile since he lost the election back last November. He returned to his post as a watch commander with the St. Paul police, surfacing only occasionally to field criticism of how he ran the department as his successor settled in.

Now he's back in the news with the launch of a surprising project.

"When I lost the election, I really had a couple projects I'd wanted to do," he says. "This was one of them."

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