AwesomeCapital

Sunday, June 15, 2025

Minn. suspect ran bogus security company, ‘struggled’ after prolonged stint in Africa: roommate

Suspected assassin Vance Boelter fronted a security firm his best friend said never existed and experienced “struggles” after returning from a three-year trip to Africa months before he allegedly turned his gun on a pair of Minnesota lawmakers and their spouses.

Federal and state authorities are on the hunt for Boelter, 57, who allegedly disguised himself as a cop before executing former Minnesota House Speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark, in their home early Saturday, just prior to shooting and seriously wounding state Sen. John Hoffman and his wife, Yvette, in their house.

Authorities are closing in on Boelter after his car was found in a rural area near his home — and neighbors reported hearing gunshots.

Friends and roommates described the accused gunman as a quiet but intelligent family man who rarely discussed politics.

But behind the unassuming façade lurked hints of a growing trouble within, which began after a three-year stint in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where he claimed to have multiple business interests tied to his security company, Red Lion Group.

“I thought his demeanor [changed], he wasn’t as cheerful as he used to be. Since he got back from Africa, I guess,” Boelter’s roommate and self-described best friend David Carlson told The Post, adding he got back four months ago and quit his job to go there.

“He came back and he was struggling a little bit. I thought it was normal struggles.”

Boelter calls himself the CEO of Red Lion Group on his LinkedIn page, where he lists the company’s home base as the Democratic Republic of Congo. But besides the passing reference, virtually no information is available about the company.

“His dream was to have a security company,” Carlson said, hinting that his dream was more rooted in delusion than reality.

“He never was or never had a security company. He wasn’t doing security for anybody — it wasn’t his job.”

Carlson noted that Boelter even had two official cars for the alleged company despite having “no clients [and] no employees.”

His bio on Red Lion Group’s since-deleted website said he worked with Minnesota Africans United, a statewide organization helping African immigrants in the state. However, the organization told The Post they never hired, paid, or contracted with Boelter, and that he never served in any official or unofficial capacity in the organization.

In a now-deleted post from last month, Boelter wrote on LinkedIn that he had just returned after a three-year stint in the Democratic Republic of Congo and was looking for work in the food service industry.

His profile mentions positions he previously held with companies including 7-Eleven, Del Monte and Johnsonville.

Carlson said his friend had a tough time landing a job after returning from his most recent overseas trip, sharing, “I thought his thing in Africa was bringing him down.”

“It’s a dangerous country and he was very involved with the community there, with the people there. He tried to help the villagers fish. He owned a fishing boat there. He was trying to help the community because they don’t have fishing boats,” he said.

Boelter’s apparent obsession with play-acting as a security operations expert extended to another dubious business venture called Praetorian Guard Security Services, ostensibly helmed by his wife, Jenny.

The company website lists Boelter as “Director of Security Patrols,” boasting he’s been “involved” with “security situations in Eastern Europe, Africa, North America and the Middle East, including the West Bank, Southern Lebanon and the Gaza Strip.”

Jenny Boelter was stopped by police several hours after the assassinations while driving a car with several relatives near Onamia, Minnesota, and briefly detained after cops found a weapon, ammunition, cash and passports.

She was held for questioning but not arrested.

As of Sunday afternoon, Boelter was still on the run. Police and federal agents swarmed a Minnesota farm community in Sibley County after discovering a car and a cowboy hat belonging to the suspected assassin.

The discovery was made on a rural road about 50 miles southwest of Minneapolis, near his last known address in Green Isle.

Hours after the bloodbath, Boelter sent a chilling text message to two friends indicating he “may be dead shortly” and saying he was “sorry for all the trouble this has caused,” ostensibly referring to the quadruple shooting targeting Minnesota lawmakers and their spouses.

Brian Liebhard, a 65-year-old retired plastics industry worker, told The Post he heard two gunshots around 2:30 a.m., compounding suspicions Boelter might have taken his own life.

“That is not something that normally happens,” he said as law enforcement searched his farm.

“I would have think they would have apprehended him by now,” he said, noting that the road has been blocked off since he got back from church shortly after 9 a.m.

Asked if he was concerned for his safety, Liebhard said “f–k no,” adding, “I would kneecap that son-of-a-bitch.”

As for whether he thinks Boelter is hiding in the vicinity of where the manhunt is underway, he put on his conspiracy hat.

“You wouldn’t think he’d be dumb enough to be out here, that’s why I think it’s a decoy,” he said.

“He ain’t hiding in the cornfields.”

https://nypost.com/2025/06/15/us-news/minn-shooting-suspect-vance-boelter-ran-bogus-security-company-and-faced-struggles-after-prolonged-stint-in-africa-roommate-says/

Spy Satellite Uncovers Massive Stealth Flying Wing At Secretive Chinese Base

China is well aware that Western spy satellites, including those operated by the U.S., maintain constant overhead surveillance of high-value military assets, such as bases and research facilities.

The deliberate exposure of a previously unseen, large, low-observable flying-wing HALE (High-Altitude Long-Endurance) unmanned aerial vehicle at the Malan test facility may not have been an accident.

Instead, it appears to be a deliberate act of signaling by Beijing to the Trump administration, highlighting the rapid acceleration of China's next-generation air combat capabilities at a time when the global security environment is rapidly deteriorating.

With the war in Ukraine ongoing and tensions in the Middle East escalating into a hot crisis, Beijing's timing suggests an intent to assert technological parity and deterrence against the U.S. Broadly speaking, the world is entering a more dangerous and unstable era — a shift from a unipolar world with the U.S. in control to a bipolar geopolitical order, where volatility is expected to intensify throughout the 2030s.

The War Zone's Tyler Rogoway cited new satellite spy images via Planet Labs that show the previously unseen HALE drone at a secretive test base near Malan in Xinjiang province.

Massive Stealth Flying Wing Emerges At Secretive Chinese Base

This appears to be China's largest high-altitude, long-endurance drone, and one that has clear low observable qualities.

Exclusive: https://t.co/NNbs6SyxCq
— Tyler Rogoway (@Aviation_Intel) June 15, 2025

"Specifically, the craft was parked outside of a sprawling new facility that was built very recently to the east of the base, connected to it by a very long taxiway leading to a security gate," Rogoway said.

Rogoway pointed out the drone's design resembles that of the B-21 Raider and possibly the U.S. RQ-180, with clipped wingtips, a domed center section (likely housing engines or systems), and possibly small vertical stabilizers to aid flight stability.

This drone may mark a significant leap in China's next-generation drone combat ecosystem, possibly supporting or integrating with other platforms, such as the H-20 bomber, J-36, and smaller tactical drones — mirroring the U.S. approach.

https://www.zerohedge.com/military/spy-satellites-uncover-massive-stealth-flying-wing-secretive-chinese-base

'In Axing mRNA Contract, Trump Delivers New Blow to Biosecurity, Former Officials Say'

The Trump administration's cancellation of $766 million

opens in a new tab or window in contracts to develop mRNA vaccines against potential pandemic flu viruses is the latest blow to national defense, former health security officials said. They warned that the U.S. could be at the mercy of other countries in the next pandemic.

"The administration's actions are gutting our deterrence from biological threats," said Beth Cameron, PhD, a senior adviser to the Brown University Pandemic Center and a former director at the White House National Security Council. "Canceling this investment is a signal that we are changing our posture on pandemic preparedness," she added, "and that is not good for the American people."

Flu pandemics killed up to 103 million peopleopens in a new tab or window worldwide last century, researchers estimate.

In anticipation of the next big one, the U.S. government began bolstering the nation's pandemic flu defenses during the George W. Bush administration. These strategies were designed by the security council and the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), among other agencies. The plans rely on rolling out vaccines rapidly in a pandemic. Moving fast hinges on producing vaccines domestically, ensuring their safety, and getting them into arms across the nation through the public health system.

The Trump administration is undermining each of these steps as it guts health agencies, cuts research and health budgets, and issues perplexing policy changes, health security observers said.

Since President Trump took office, at least half of the security council's staff have been laid off or left, and the future of BARDA is murky. The nation's top vaccine adviser, Peter Marks, MD, PhD, resigned under pressureopens in a new tab or window in March, citing "the unprecedented assault on scientific truth."

Most recently, Trump's clawback of funds for mRNA vaccine development put Americans on shakier ground in the next pandemic. "When the need hits and we aren't ready, no other country will come to our rescue and we will suffer greatly," said Rick Bright, PhD, an immunologist and a former BARDA director.

Countries that produced their own vaccines in the COVID-19 pandemic had first dibsopens in a new tab or window on the shots. While the U.S., home to Moderna and Pfizer, rolled out second doses of mRNA vaccines in 2021, hundreds of thousands of people in countries that didn't manufacture vaccines died waiting for them.

The most pertinent pandemic threat today is the bird flu virus H5N1. Researchers around the world were alarmedopens in a new tab or window when it began spreading among cattle in the U.S. last year. Cows are closer to humans biologically than birds, indicating that the virus had evolved to thrive in cells like our own.

As hundreds of herds and dozens of people were infected in the U.S., the Biden administration funded Moderna to develop bird flu vaccines using mRNA technology. As part of the agreement, the U.S. government stipulated it could purchase doses in advance of a pandemic. That no longer stands.

Researchers can make bird flu vaccines in other ways, but mRNA vaccines are developed much more quickly because they don't rely on finicky biological processes, such as growing elements of vaccines in chicken eggs or cells kept alive in laboratory tanks.

Time matters because flu viruses mutate constantly, and vaccines work better when they match whatever variant is circulating.

Developing vaccines within eggs or cells can take 10 months after the genetic sequence of a variant is known, Bright said. And relying on eggs presents an additional risk when it comes to bird flu because a pandemic could wipe out billions of chickens, crashing egg suppliesopens in a new tab or window.

Decades-old methods that rely on inactivated flu viruses are riskier for researchers and time-consuming. Still the Trump administration invested $500 millionopens in a new tab or window into this approach, which was largely abandoned by the 1980s after it caused seizures in children.

"This politicized regression is baffling," Bright said.

A bird flu pandemic may begin quietly in the U.S. if the virus evolves to spread between people but no one is testedopens in a new tab or window at first. Indeed, the CDC's dashboard suggests that only 10 farmworkers have been tested for bird flu since March. Because of their close contact with cattle and poultry, farmworkers are at highest risk of infection.

As with many diseases, only a fraction of people with bird flu become severely sick. So the first sign that the virus is widespread might be a surge in hospital cases.

"We'd need to immediately make vaccines," said Angela Rasmussen, PhD, a virologist at the University of Saskatchewan in Canada.

The U.S. government could scale up production of existing bird flu vaccinesopens in a new tab or window developed in eggs or cells. However, these vaccines target an older strain of H5N1 and their efficacy against the virus circulating now is unknown.

In addition to the months it takes to develop an updated version within eggs or cells, Rasmussen questioned the ability of the government to rapidly test and license updated shots, with a quarter of HHS staff goneopens in a new tab or window. If the Senate approves Trump's proposed budget, the agency faces about $32 billion in cuts.

Further, the Trump administration's cuts to biomedical research and its push to slash grant money for overhead costs could undermine academic hospitals, rendering them unable to conduct large clinical trials. And its cuts to the CDC and to public health funds to states mean that fewer health officials will be available in an emergency.

"You can't just turn this all back on," Rasmussen said. "The longer it takes to respond, the more people die."

Researchers suggest other countries would produce bird flu vaccines first. "The U.S. may be on the receiving end like India was, where everyone -- rich people, too -- got vaccines late," said Achal Prabhala, a public health researcher in India at medicines access group AccessIBSA.

He sits on the board of a World Health Organization initiativeopens in a new tab or window to improve access to mRNA vaccines in the next pandemic. A member of the initiative, the company Sinergium Biotech in Argentina, is testing an mRNA vaccine against the bird flu. If it works, Sinergium will share the intellectual property behind the vaccine with about a dozen other groups in the program from middle-income countries so they can produce it.

The Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI), an international partnership headquartered in Norway, is providing funds to research groups developing rapid-response vaccine technology, including mRNA, in South Korea, Singapore, and France. And CEPI committed up to $20 million to efforts to prepare for a bird flu pandemic. This year, the Indian government issued a call for grant applications to develop mRNA vaccines for the bird flu, warning it "poses a grave public health risk."

Pharmaceutical companies are investing in mRNA vaccines for the bird flu as well. However, Prabhala says private capital isn't sufficient to bring early-stage vaccines through clinical trials and large-scale manufacturing. That's because there's no market for bird flu vaccines until a pandemic hits.

Limited supplies means the U.S. would have to wait in line for mRNA vaccines made abroad. States and cities may compete against one another for deals with outside governments and companies, like they did for medical equipment at the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic.

"I fear we will once again see the kind of hunger games we saw in 2020," Cameron said.

In an email response to queries, HHS communications director Andrew Nixon said, "We concluded that continued investment in Moderna's H5N1 mRNA vaccine was not scientifically or ethically justifiable." He added, "The decision reflects broader concerns about the use of mRNA platforms -- particularly in light of mounting evidence of adverse events associated with COVID-19 mRNA vaccines."

https://www.medpagetoday.com/infectiousdisease/birdflu/116043

Tel Aviv Stock Market Rebounds After Initial Drop Amid Tensions

The Tel Aviv stock market experienced volatility following missile attacks between both sides last week. On its first trading day, the market initially saw significant declines but managed to recover and close with modest gains. Specifically, the benchmark TA-35 index closed up by 0.5% after an early plunge of 2.1%. Similarly, the TA-125 index rebounded from a 2% drop to finish the day up by 0.4%.

https://www.gurufocus.com/news/2927580/tel-aviv-stock-market-rebounds-after-initial-drop-amid-tensions

Nearly 1 million illegal immigrants have ‘self deported’ under Trump, led to higher wages

While ICE arrests and deportations have grabbed headlines, President Trump is also running a separate but complementary “mass deportation” program — one that encourages aliens here unlawfully to go home voluntarily.

And if reports are correct, that plan is more successful than anyone could have imagined.

Based on government data, my organization, the Center for Immigration Studies, has conservatively estimated there are about 15.4 million illegal aliens in the United States, a 50% increase over the four tumultuous years of the Biden administration.

That’s no surprise, given how Biden and his Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas ignored congressional detention mandates and ushered millions of illegal migrants into the United States.

Trump rode a wave of concerns about the costs those migrants are imposing on schools, hospitals, housing, and essential government services in cities and towns across the United States to a second term.

Now that he’s back in the Oval Office, it’s up to him, “border czar” Tom Homan, and DHS Secretary Kristi Noem to drive the unauthorized population down and restore credibility to our immigration system.

They’ve implemented a two-track plan to tackle this onerous task.

One of those tracks relies on arrests and deportations of aliens unlawfully here, which at the outset has focused mainly on criminals (the “worst first” strategy).

The other track is more subtle but also cheaper for taxpayers and arguably much more effective —encouraging illegal migrants here to self-deport.

It began with an Inauguration Day Trump directive requiring DHS to ensure all aliens present in the United States — legal and otherwise — have registered with the federal government, and to prosecute those who don’t comply.

By late February, Noem had implemented that registration program.

DHS next launched a multi-million-dollar ad campaign warning migrants not to enter illegally or, alternatively, to leave voluntarily now and possibly “have an opportunity to return and enjoy our freedom and live the American Dream.”

Noem also rebranded the notorious CBP One app — which the Biden administration used to funnel hundreds of thousands of illegal migrants into our country — as “CBP Home,” which aliens can use to “notify the U.S. Government of their intent to depart”.

That rebranding coincided with an offer of financial incentives for aliens who leave voluntarily, a stipend of $1,000. That’s in lieu of costly physical deportation, which can cost taxpayers $17,100 per person on average.

How effective has self-deportation been?

One way to track the program is by checking employment numbers. One financial wiz cited by the Wall Street Journal calculated a decline in the immigrant population of 773,000 in the first four months of Trump II.

The Washington Post claims “a million foreign-born workers have exited the workforce since March.” The Post frames this as “a sign of the weakening labor supply.” Yet the paper also notes, “Average hourly wages accelerated, rising by 0.4 percent over the month, to $36.24 in May, as earnings continue to beat inflation in a boost to workers’ spending power.”

In other words, with fewer illegal immigrants, businesses had to raise wages to attract workers.

But aliens will only leave if they believe Trump and Homan are serious about arrests, and employers know the feds are targeting shady businesses.

This voluntary exodus shouldn’t be surprising. When President Eisenhower launched his deportation round-up in 1954, nearly 10 aliens left voluntarily for each one arrested. A post-9/11 registration program also drove self-deportations.

DHS can’t arrest and deport 15.4 million illegal aliens, but if it simply enforces the law, many aliens will get the message and leave on their own — as hundreds of thousands apparently already have.

Andrew Arthur is the fellow in law and policy at the Center for Immigration Studies.

https://nypost.com/2025/06/15/opinion/nearly-1-million-illegal-immigrants-have-self-deported-under-trump-which-has-led-to-higher-wages/

Search This Blog