The Pope Just EXPOSED Something The Catholic Church Hid for 574 Years

 

Yes, **Pope Leo XIV** has documented African ancestry.

A comprehensive genealogical study published in June 2025 by Harvard scholar Dr. Henry Louis Gates Jr., in collaboration with American Ancestors and the Cuban Genealogy Club of Miami, traced Pope Leo XIV’s family tree across four continents. The study revealed that he has deep roots in the **Louisiana Creole of color** community.

Specifically, the research found:

 * **Maternal Grandparents:** His mother, Mildred Martínez, was born to a Creole family from New Orleans’ historic 7th Ward. His maternal grandparents, Joseph Martínez and Louise Baquié, were both identified in early 20th-century U.S. records (such as the 1900 census) as "Black" or "mulatto."

 * **Colonial Roots:** At least 17 of his maternal ancestors in Louisiana are documented as having Black African heritage, with historical records using terms of the era such as *free person of color*, *mulatto*, and *quadroon*.

His overall heritage is a rich, complex global tapestry that also includes Italian (Sicilian), French, Spanish, and Cuban lineages.

### A Historical Note on the Early Church

While Pope Leo XIV is the first modern pope with documented, traceable African-American and Afro-Caribbean roots, the Catholic Church has a ancient history tied to the African continent. In the early centuries of Christianity, there were **three popes from North Africa** (the Roman province of Africa Proconsularis, modern-day Tunisia, Libya, and Algeria):

 1. **Pope St. Victor I** (189–199 AD) – The first pope born on the African continent, famous for standardizing the celebration of Easter on Sundays and introducing Latin into the Roman liturgy.

 2. **Pope St. Miltiades** (311–314 AD) – Led the Church when the Emperor Constantine ended the Roman persecution of Christians.

 3. **Pope St. Gelasius I** (492–496 AD) – Born in Rome to African parents, renowned for his theological writings and his fierce advocacy for the poor.

Because the concept of modern racial categories did not exist in the Roman Empire, ancient records focused on geographic origin and Roman citizenship rather than skin tone or racial background. However, they are historically recognized and celebrated as the three African popes of antiquity. - Gemini

“Subversion of Law and Order”: ICE Violence Escalates at Newark’s GEO-Run Jail, Delaney Hall

 

 

US military strikes another boat in Pacific, bringing death toll above 200

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The US military carried out another strike on a boat accused of drug smuggling in the eastern Pacific, killing three men. This is the third attack this week, bringing the death toll to over 200, raising questions about the legality of the operations.

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Three men killed in third attack this week amid Trump administration’s campaign against alleged drug boats

A screenshot from a US Southern Command X post. Composite: US Southern Command via X

The US military said it had carried out another strike Friday on a boat accused of smuggling drugs in the eastern Pacific Ocean, killing three men in the third attack this week and pushing the overall death toll above 200 people.

US Southern Command announced the latest strike in the months-long campaign against alleged drug boats traversing the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific with its usual language that the vessel was “engaged in narco-trafficking operations” and operated by a designated terrorist organization. It provided no evidence.

Southern Command said in its post on X that the strike came at the direction of Gen Francis L Donovan, the top US commander in Latin America, who on Friday also met with Cuban military leaders near the US Navy base in Guantánamo Bay.

While the military’s social media announcements always include video of the attacks, this appears to be the first with the footage in color instead of black and white. The video shows a small vessel floating in the ocean before it’s hit and engulfed in a fireball. It cuts to what could be the boat in flames, surrounded by a large plume of parcels or some other objects spread around it in the water.

The attack puts the death toll at 202 people from the series of US strikes that began in early September, with two other attacks announced Tuesday and Wednesday. The Trump administration has declared that the US is at armed conflict with Latin American drug cartels, saying they are behind the flow of drugs into American communities. However, the administration has not provided definitive evidence that the vessels are involved in drug trafficking, prompting debate about the legality of the operations.

Experts and human rights advocates, both in the US and globally, have raised questions about their legality, with Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International saying the strikes amount to “unlawful extrajudicial killings”.

The American Civil Liberties Union casts the assertions by the Trump administration against those it targets as “unsubstantiated, fear-mongering claims”.

 

Judge Reopens Trump’s I.R.S. Suit and Questions His ‘Weaponization’ Fund

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“A federal judge in Miami reopened President Trump’s $10 billion lawsuit against the IRS, questioning the circumstances surrounding the settlement. The judge expressed concern about the hasty deal, which established a $1.8 billion fund for victims of government “weaponization” and provided tax benefits to Trump and his allies. The judge also questioned the provision granting Trump and his family immunity from IRS scrutiny of their tax returns.

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The ruling was a blow to both President Trump, who had voluntarily dismissed the suit last week, and to the Justice Department, which used the suit to establish a fund likely intended for Trump allies.

May 29, 2026

In a stern order on Friday, a judge said that she wanted to investigate the circumstances surrounding President Trump’s efforts to settle the lawsuit in a way that benefited him and his allies.Doug Mills/The New York Times

A federal judge in Miami reopened President Trump’s $10 billion case against the I.R.S. in a striking turnabout, saying that she wanted to investigate “grievous allegations” that the hasty deal to resolve it was “premised on deception.”

The ruling by the judge, Kathleen M. Williams, on Friday to revive the case shortly after closing it was a significant blow both to Mr. Trump, who had voluntarily dismissed the suit last week, and to the Justice Department. After the president withdrew the suit, senior department officials released a pair of extraordinary agreements that settled the case by establishing a $1.8 billion fund to compensate people who claimed they were victims of government “weaponization” by Democrats.

The deal also conferred lucrative tax benefits on Mr. Trump, his family and his businesses.

Judge Williams’s decision came in response to court papers filed on Wednesday by a bipartisan group of 35 former federal judges who urged her to bring the case back to life and dig into the details of the agreement to settle it.

The former judges said that Mr. Trump’s settlement agreement raised serious questions about his “candor toward the court and manipulation of the judicial system.”

Before she closed the case, Judge Williams, an Obama appointee, had in fact questioned whether the lawsuit presented an actual conflict that she could adjudicate, given that Mr. Trump was on both sides of the suit, bringing claims against a federal agency that he controlled. When she closed it, she noted there was no “settlement of record,” but shortly after, the Justice Department released its agreement foreclosing the action.

In her brief but stern order on Friday, Judge Williams said that she wanted to investigate the circumstances surrounding Mr. Trump’s efforts to settle the lawsuit in a way that benefited him and his allies. If she succeeds in moving forward with her inquiry, it could ultimately result in questions being asked of the Justice Department leaders who signed the agreements to settle the suit — chief among them, Todd Blanche, the acting attorney general, and Stanley Woodward Jr., the No. 3 official in the department.

In her order, Judge Williams asserted that she was “empowered to investigate serious misconduct” in any case before her, and ordered Mr. Trump’s lawyers to tell her by June 12 whether the lawsuit should be formally reopened because “the court was the victim of a fraud.”

She also wanted Mr. Trump’s lawyers to respond to the question of whether he had colluded with his own government to settle the case “to avoid judicial scrutiny.”

The White House did not immediately respond to a message seeking comment.

Judge Williams pointed to reporting by The New York Times that described how the I.R.S. had prepared a 25-page memorandum outlining defenses against the suit that the Justice Department did not take up in court.

Lawyers for the former judges hailed Judge Williams’s decision.

“The judges and their counsel greatly appreciate the seriousness with which the court is addressing these grievous allegations,” said Norman Eisen, who represented the former judges for the nonprofit group, Democracy Defenders Fund. “We stand ready to work with the court as it investigates this matter.”

Mr. Eisen was joined by the law firms Platkin and Susman Godfrey.

In their filing this week, the former judges claimed that Mr. Trump had improperly used his suit against the I.R.S. as a way to obtain “unlawful private benefits” for himself and his family, and to create a fund that would dole out taxpayer money “without constitutional or congressional authority.”

They also argued that the president had tried to shield the deal from judicial oversight by rushing a settlement and “short-circuiting” Judge Williams’s ability to examine its terms.

The $1.8 billion fund has faced separate legal headwinds. A federal judge in the Eastern District of Virginia temporarily blocked the Trump administration from taking any further steps to set it up or disburse money from it. Lawmakers on Capitol Hill, including many Republicans, have also been critical of the fund, which upended G.O.P. plans to pass a party-line bill funding immigration enforcement efforts last week.

Mr. Trump, along with two of his sons and the Trump family business, first sued the I.R.S. in January, claiming they were owed at least $10 billion because a former contractor at the agency had leaked their tax returns (and hundreds of others) during the president’s first term in the White House. The Trumps claimed that the I.R.S. should have done more to prevent the contractor, Charles Littlejohn, from disclosing tax information to The New York Times and ProPublica.

Mr. Trump’s suit, as I.R.S. officials laid out in their memo and other lawyers have noted, had clear legal flaws. Potential defenses against it include that it was filed after the statute of limitations, and that it incorrectly faulted the I.R.S. for the actions of Mr. Littlejohn, previously a contractor employed by Booz Allen Hamilton. But the Justice Department never made an attempt to contest Mr. Trump’s suit. No government lawyer entered an appearance in the case.

That has fueled criticism that the deal the Justice Department struck with Mr. Trump was not a genuine attempt to avoid a loss on the merits to the president in court, but instead a scheme to provide him and his political allies with public benefits.

In a footnote, Judge Williams questioned the provision granting Mr. Trump, his family and their businesses immunity from I.R.S. scrutiny of tax returns they had already filed. She wrote that the audit protection may run afoul of Justice Department rules requiring legal settlements to directly relate to the issues in the suit.

She also noted that only Mr. Blanche signed the audit provision. The separate, nine-page agreement laying out the $1.8 billion fund was signed by Mr. Woodward and Frank Bisignano, who is serving as the chief executive officer of the I.R.S., a newly created role that is not subject to Senate confirmation.

Alan Feuer covers extremism and political violence for The Times, focusing on the criminal cases involving the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol and against former President Donald J. Trump.” 

 

5 Takeaways From a Kennedy Center Ruling That Angered Trump

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“A federal judge ordered the Kennedy Center to remove President Trump’s name from the building, citing a 1964 law designating it as a memorial to John F. Kennedy. The ruling, stemming from a lawsuit by Representative Joyce Beatty, also temporarily blocked the center’s planned two-year closure for renovations. Trump, who had renamed the center after himself, threatened to transfer it back to Congress, citing safety concerns and alleging opposition from Democrats.

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A federal judge ordered the Kennedy Center to take President Trump’s name off the building. What happens next?

May 30, 2026, 5:02 a.m. ET

President Trump, the chairman of the Kennedy Center, wrote on social media that “we are going to be working with Congress to transfer this failing Institution back to them.” Doug Mills/The New York Times

In his ruling that President Trump’s name must be removed from the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, a federal judge turned his attention to the statute passed by Congress in honor of the slain president.

Signed into law in 1964, only two months after Kennedy was assassinated, the legislation renamed what was first known as the National Cultural Center after a leader who had championed the performing arts.

“The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, designated by this Act,” the law read in part, “shall be the sole national memorial to the late John Fitzgerald Kennedy within the city of Washington and its environs.”

In his ruling on Friday, Judge Christopher R. Cooper of Federal District Court in Washington found that the president’s effort to rebrand the building after himself flew in the face of lawmakers’ original intent. He ordered that the 18 new letters added to the center’s white marble facade — which currently reads the “The Donald J. Trump and the John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts” — be removed.

The order also temporarily blocked the center from beginning a two-year closure for renovations, drawing a scathing rebuke from Mr. Trump, who has made the institution a centerpiece of his effort to transform Washington’s cultural landscape.

Here’s what the ruling, the result of a lawsuit by a U.S. representative, may mean for the future of the Kennedy Center:

Congress must be consulted on any name change.

The judge’s decision — released on Kennedy’s birthday — boiled down to a straightforward application of the 1964 law.

“Congress made clear that the Kennedy Center would serve as both the nation’s premier performing arts center and a living memorial, the sole one dedicated to the late president in the Washington, D.C. area,” Judge Cooper wrote. “The center has played those roles for over five decades.”

But as with other projects championed by Mr. Trump, such as a ballroom for which he ordered the demolition of the East Wing of the White House, the plans to overhaul the Kennedy Center did not receive the approval of lawmakers.

While the ruling left open the possibility that the president could pursue and support some aesthetic changes at the center, it professed little doubt about the law surrounding its name, which Judge Cooper said was “crystal clear.”

“Congress gave the Kennedy Center its name, and only Congress can change it,” he wrote.

An irate Mr. Trump might walk away altogether.

As he complained about the decision in a lengthy post on social media, the president threatened to abandon his interest in restoring the center.

Ticking through a number of maintenance problems he had pledged to fix, Mr. Trump wrote that he could not be “involved with a situation where danger to the Public is allowed to flourish in plain and open sight.”

He added that he had directed the Commerce Department to “allow a full and complete transfer” of the institution to Congress, which he said would take responsibility for its “operation, maintenance, and management.”

The Kennedy Center is an independent organization with its own board of trustees, though Congress allots federal funds to maintain the building. Its governance structure was at issue in the lawsuit filed by Representative Joyce Beatty, an Ohio Democrat and an ex officio member of the board. She said she had been denied a role in decision-making by allies of the president.

“Based on the fact that the Radical Left Democrats care more about opposing your favorite President, ME, than saving a dying Performing Arts Center,” Mr. Trump wrote in the social media post, “almost all of which lose large amounts of money throughout the Country, we are going to be working with Congress to transfer this failing Institution back to them so they can make a determination as to what to do with it.”

A spokesman for the White House did not respond to requests for comment about the president’s intentions. It was not immediately clear what role he believed the Commerce Department would play in administrating the center or coordinating with Congress.

A fight to keep ‘Trump’ on the marble may soon be underway.

When the board voted in December to rename the institution the Trump Kennedy Center, the letters were affixed to the building in less than a day. The new name was added to the center’s website, to signs around the building and to the television broadcast of the Kennedy Center Honors, the organization’s marquee event.

In his order, Judge Cooper gave the center two weeks to remove the president’s name from the building and official materials. The Kennedy Center’s board, which includes Mr. Trump, can appeal.

On Friday, Roma Daravi, a spokeswoman for the center, indicated it would challenge the ruling, saying that its leadership was confident that an appellate court would “uphold the board’s will to recognize President Trump’s historic contributions to our nation’s cultural center.”

The addition of his name to the building alienated some donors, audience members and artists, leading to a series of programming cancellations. But in a declaration to the court that was filed this week ahead of the ruling, Matt Floca, the center’s executive director, argued that removing Mr. Trump’s name would have the result of “fundamentally destabilizing” its fund-raising efforts and causing “irreparable harm.”

A loyalist board must make an ‘independent’ assessment.

At the start of his second term, Mr. Trump purged the Kennedy Center’s board of Biden appointees and named more than a dozen allies to the panel, including Susie Wiles, his White House chief of staff; Dan Scavino, one of his most trusted advisers; and Usha Vance, who is married to the vice president.

A year later, the president announced the center’s closure before gathering the members of the board at the White House to vote on the plan. The president made it clear that he did not expect any surprises: “It’s a little late for the board because we’ve already announced it,” he said at the time, “but these are minor details.”

In finding that the Kennedy Center board had not properly considered whether a two-year closure was a good idea, Judge Cooper noted that the decision seemed “preordained.”

The judge wrote that the board based its decision on an “insufficient, one-sided presentation of information.” If it wants to move forward with the plans, he wrote, it must take another, more serious look. Asking that the board make a “considered, independent decision,” the judge suggested that it receive input from the center’s programming and fund-raising experts, as well as its lawyers.

Preparations for the closure won’t easily be reversed.

The order halted the decision by the Kennedy Center board to “wind down” programming and “entirely” close the center’s doors for two years starting after the Fourth of July. But for the past four months, the center’s leadership has been preparing for a shuttered building.

There were major layoffs, with more expected. Engagements by several Broadway touring productions were canceled. Planning for a full 2026-27 season — which would typically include dance, classical music, jazz, comedy and more — never fully got off the ground. Most of the employees who used to plan those engagements are no longer there.

In his 94-page order, Judge Cooper seemed to acknowledge that he had no power over the center’s performance calendar. His job, he said, was to hold the center’s board to “certain minimum requirements imposed by law.”

“Beyond that,” he said, “the court will let the parties play on.”

Zach Montague is a Times reporter covering the federal courts, including the legal disputes over the Trump administration’s agenda.

Julia Jacobs is an arts and culture reporter who often covers legal issues for The Times.“

 

Inside the Ebola Epicenter, the Virus Rages With Little to Stop It

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“The Ebola outbreak in Mongbwalu, Democratic Republic of Congo, is overwhelming the local hospital and its staff. With limited resources, including test kits and protective gear, the virus is spreading rapidly, fueled by fear, mistrust, and traditional burial practices. The situation is exacerbated by the town’s location in a gold mining region and its proximity to rebel-held territory.

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A remote gold mining town is under siege, as medical workers struggle to beat back a surge of deaths and infections.

May 30, 2026Updated 6:53 a.m. ET

A relative and a medical worker caring for Christiane Bahati, a patient at an Ebola ward in the Democratic Republic of Congo, on Tuesday, shortly before she fell into a coma and died.

A relative and a medical worker caring for Christiane Bahati, a patient at an Ebola ward in the Democratic Republic of Congo, on Tuesday, shortly before she fell into a coma and died.

By Declan Walsh

Photographs by Arlette Bashizi

Declan Walsh and Arlette Bashizi reported from inside an Ebola ward in Mongbwalu, Democratic Republic of Congo, the epicenter of the outbreak.

In the cramped, dilapidated Ebola ward, a 5-year-old boy languished on a bare mattress, a tissue stuffed into his nose to stanch the incessant bleeding. His father stood over him, eyes clouded with worry.

A few beds away lay the body of Christiane Bahati, 21, who had died seven hours earlier but had not yet been taken away. Her shoes were still tucked under the bed, her wailing relatives gathered outside the ward doors.

The body, covered by a thin sheet, was highly contagious. Yet hardly anyone in the ward was protected. Relatives came and went, carrying food and water to ailing patients because the hospital had none to give them. A few wore rubber gloves or pulled a scarf across their mouths. Most had nothing at all.

At the Ebola ward in Mongbwalu General Hospital, in Ituri Province, in northeastern Democratic Republic of Congo.Declan Walsh/The New York Times

In the next ward lay the hospital’s laboratory technician, also sick. Seven other hospital workers had already died from suspected Ebola. Few of the staff members had ever been trained to fight the disease, and the most rudimentary equipment was in dangerously short supply: tests, protective suits, goggles, masks, even drinking water.

Outside, the sound of hammering broke the hushed silence. Aid workers from Doctors Without Borders were racing to erect isolation tents and disinfection stations.

Dr. Alex Bogole, a Congolese doctor in the hospital’s intensive care ward, was furious.

The virus had been spreading for months, virtually unimpeded, “and this is the best we can do?” he said, the frustration pouring through his protective gear.

This is the epicenter of the Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and the front line is completely overwhelmed.

Disinfecting the body of Bahati Ibiliabo, 22, from Mongbwalu, who had gone to the hospital one day before he died.

The Congolese Health Ministry declared the outbreak on May 15, and it has already ballooned into the third largest on record. Two weeks later, the international response is being outpaced by the virus, and there is almost nothing to slow it down. Aid groups warn that without urgent intervention, this could be the world’s deadliest Ebola outbreak ever.

Dr. Bogole was never trained for this and was angry at everyone — at the Congolese government for failing to detect the outbreak until perhaps six weeks after it began, and at the world, which has barely mobilized help here in Mongbwalu, a remote gold mining town of about 150,000 where the outbreak is believed to have started.

DEMOCRATIC

REPUBLIC

OF CONGO

“They hold meetings and meetings,” he said, struggling to contain his disdain. “What is the purpose of these meetings? People are dying, people are getting infected, people are in danger. It’s very slow.”

I arrived here with Arlette Bashizi, a photographer for The New York Times, after taking a bumpy, three-hour journey from the regional capital, Bunia, on what has become the Ebola highway, a rutted dirt road that began spreading the disease long before anyone detected it.

Giant trucks, curling through lush hills, leave blinding clouds of dust. Edgy-looking Congolese soldiers guard checkpoints that are often little more than string. Gold miners and people fleeing rebel conflict stream in and out of Mongbwalu, providing an excellent vector for the spread of the virus.

Through April and into early May, doctors in Mongbwalu found themselves fighting a mysterious disease that was taking dozens of lives in the town. It turned out to be Bundibugyo, a virus that causes Ebola. There is no approved vaccine or treatment.

As of Thursday, at least 1,077 suspected cases and 246 suspected deaths had been recorded in this outbreak, according to the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. More than 400 of those cases are in Mongbwalu, a town in the heart of gold country and surrounded by rebel-held territory here in Ituri Province, in northeastern Congo.

Ebola has swamped this hospital’s meager capacities.

Test kits for this species of the disease are very hard to come by, and there is no triage station, so arriving patients who do not have Ebola risk being infected by those who do. In fact, it is hard to know who has Ebola because test results from the regional capital, some 50 miles away, take four days or more to arrive, said the hospital director, Dr. Richard Lokudu.

By then, many patients have already died.

“I’ve been telling people that we need results immediately,” Dr. Lokudu said.

Wailing drifted into his office. Several times a day, news of the death of an Ebola patient sets off explosions of grief, he said. Relatives screamed, gesticulated and rolled around on the grass. Looking into his notebook, Dr. Lokudu produced a tally: At least 30 patients had died at the hospital over the previous 12 days. Many more had died in their homes across the town.

Beyond the hospital gates, residents were gripped by fear and confusion, he said. Mongbwalu had not been touched by the last Ebola outbreak in Ituri, which began in 2018 and did not end until 2020. Now, faced with a sudden surge in deaths, many refused to accept that the virus was real and focused their ire on the hospital, Mongbwalu General, which has 135 beds.

Some said the outbreak was a moneymaking plot concocted by Congolese doctors and foreign aid workers. Others called it a curse. Often, doctors say, the early symptoms of Ebola resemble other ailments, like malaria or typhoid, so by the time patients go to the hospital, many are already very sick and die quickly, heightening suspicion and distrust.

An angry crowd gathered outside the hospital’s front gate, where armed soldiers stood guard. “Killers!” people shouted at us when we arrived, confusing us for foreign aid workers.

Two nights earlier, assailants had burned down an isolation ward in the hospital, shortly after Doctors Without Borders put it up. In the chaos, 18 patients suspected of having Ebola fled their beds and vanished into the town, potentially spreading the virus even more.

A four-wheel drive vehicle with a smashed window was parked outside Dr. Lokudu’s office. A day earlier, angry residents had chased him through the hospital grounds, flinging rocks, he said.

“We really are in a terrible crisis,” he said.

“We’re here to save them,” he added. “They think we want to kill them.”

Other factors help explain why Mongbwalu is the center of the outbreak. Fruit bats, which scientists believe are a natural reservoir for the Bundibugyo virus, roost in huge numbers in trees on the edge of the town, introducing the risk of transmission.

Gold mining and conflict mean that a diverse stream of people is constantly flowing through the town. Miners seeking an income come here from other provinces, or even across borders, then return home. The gold business brings traders, prostitutes and smugglers.

Before the outbreak, the city was a haven in a volatile region where ethnic conflicts have raged for decades. Displaced people flock to Mongbwalu from the surrounding countryside, seeking safety. But they also go back, perhaps now with the virus.

“It’s a perfect storm,” said Dr. Esther Sterk, a tropical medicines adviser with Doctors Without Borders, who arrived in Mongbwalu this week.

Dr. Lokudu, the hospital director, believes he may have treated one of the outbreak’s first victims.

On April 6, he said he operated on a young woman who had suffered a miscarriage during a late stage of her pregnancy. As he performed a C-section, he noticed unusual splotches of blood on her organs. Six hours later, he said, the woman died. In the weeks that followed, the medics who treated her fell sick.

The anesthesiologist died on May 9, Dr. Lokudu said. The surgical assistant died a day later. Dr. Lokudu said he also fell sick around the same time, but survived. He is not sure how, though he noted that he had been vaccinated during the previous outbreak, albeit for a different species of Ebola.

“Perhaps that saved me,” he said.

Now, his focus was on the crowd at the gate. They were followers of Sylvestre Atama, a charismatic Catholic preacher who had died the day before, only hours after tests confirmed he had Ebola. His anguished supporters converged on the hospital, demanding his body to hold his funeral. Dr. Lokudu refused.

Traditional burial practices involve touching the body. Dr. Lokudu feared an unmanaged funeral could turn into a superspreader event, passing the disease to even more people. The crowd attacked Dr. Lokudu, hitting his car with stones. Although soldiers were now positioned at the gate, the threats continued.

“They absolutely want the body,” he said.

That night, as we settled into our hotel, gunshots rang out. A crowd of more than 100 men, some armed with machetes and sticks, attacked the hospital in an effort to spring the preacher’s body. The police and soldiers fired warning shots to repel them, witnesses said.

The battle went on for five hours, the police chief, Djuma Yaweli, told me. In the chaos, yet more Ebola patients left their beds and ran for safety, potentially taking the virus home to their loved ones.

The next morning, after careful negotiations, a line of soldiers accompanied Mr. Atama’s body as it wound through the town for a safe burial beside the Catholic church.

Experts at the W.H.O. say that a vaccine against this species of Ebola could take six or nine months to develop. Until then, “we must make do with what we have,” Dr. Lokudu said. “Otherwise, who will do it?”

The doors of the Ebola ward swung open. A Red Cross worker emerged, wearing the same kind of a protective suit we had put on to enter the hospital wards. Spraying disinfectant in his path, he was followed by volunteers carrying a sealed white bag.

It contained the remains of Ms. Bahati, the 21-year-old whose body had lain there for many hours after she had died.

Mourners grieved as the body bag was placed in a casket, wailing and beating themselves. “Show us her body!” one cried out.

Her husband, Héritier Alezo, watched from a distance. He still had not told their boys, aged 2 and 3, that their mother was gone. “How would they understand?” he said.

He impatiently rejected the conspiracy theories that were circulating in the streets to explain the scourge. He had the ultimate, most painful proof.

“In my opinion,” he said firmly, “Ebola exists.”

The door to the Ebola ward closed again. But there were also glimmers of hope. The ailing 5-year-old boy, Emmanuel Cyrille, fought on.

Only days earlier, he had been at school, until the teachers sent him home when he became feverish. Soon, he began to bleed.

By Friday afternoon, his father sent a message to say that Emmanuel was sitting up, asking for toys. The bleeding had stopped.

Emmanuel hoped to go home soon, he said.

Declan Walsh is the chief Africa correspondent for The Times based in Nairobi, Kenya. He previously reported from Cairo, covering the Middle East, and Islamabad, Pakistan.“

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Gullah Geechee people offered chance to save family properties passed down through generations | US news | The Guardian

Gullah Geechee people offered chance to save family properties passed down through generations

"A new South Carolina act will exempt some heirs’ property owners from increased property taxes

Melissa Hellmann

The Gullah Geechee people – descendants of formerly enslaved west Africans who retained their culture and customs – are especially vulnerable to heirs’ property issues. Photograph: Rita Harper/The Guardian

In a move that protects vulnerable people from forced property sales, South Carolina recently enacted an act that could help families keep land that has been passed down for generations. The Heirs’ Property Tax Relief Act, signed into law by Henry McMaster, the state’s governor, on 15 May, prevents counties from reassessing property values when heirs clear their property titles, or resolve disputes about the ownership.

The act allows families with heirs’ properties – land inherited by multiple owners who are not listed on the title – to transfer the title between family members without their real estate taxes increasing. Gullah Geechee people, the descendants of formerly enslaved west Africans who retained their culture and customs, are especially vulnerable to heirs’ property issues. They can lead to their homes being sold at annual auctions for delinquent tax payments, predatory development and interfamily fighting.

The legislation originated through a collaboration between the advocacy groups Lowcountry Gullah Foundation, the Center for Heirs’ Property, and Habitat for Humanity. Luana Graves Sellars, founder of Lowcountry Gullah Foundation, convened a working group of attorneys and elected officials to craft bills that addressed heirs’ property issues. Since it launched in 2019, the Hilton Head Island-based Lowcountry Gullah Foundation has helped families with heirs’ properties pay off their property taxes and hosted workshops on writing wills.

“The Center for Heirs’ Property, the [Lowcountry Gullah] Foundation and Habitat for Humanity – we’re all walking in the same direction with heirs’ property,” Graves Sellars said. “The collaboration of us coming together and using our collective strengths and voices is what made this bill possible.”

Graves Sellars’s organization also helped South Carolina lawmakers in the heirs’ property study committee produce a list of suggestions to improve heirs’ property issues in 2022. At the time, the now-deceased committee chair, Senator John L Scott, told Graves Sellars that she was “bringing up a lot of low-hanging fruit that we can just take care of”, Graves Sellars recalled. His words remained in her mind as she convened the working group, with the goal of chipping away at the issue one problem at a time.

“It’s really heartwarming to know that families who are struggling with the financial burdens that come with heirs’ property will get some relief,” Graves Sellars said. “Most people don’t understand the toll that heirs’ property takes on families from the family structure, but also financially … Unfortunately, that’s why a lot of people throw their hands up in the air and walk away from the property.”

Anita Singleton-Prather’s family nearly lost their ancestral land in Beaufort twice when her cousin who lived on the heirs’ property failed to pay the rising real estate taxes. The non-profit Pan-African Family Empowerment and Land Preservation Network and a family friend pitched in thousands of dollars to help the family retain the land. Singleton-Prather and her family now divide up the property tax payments.

“A lot of times, as Black people, we don’t like to do wills,” Singleton-Prather told the Guardian last year. “That’s one of the first steps: to decide who you’re going to will this property to, or specified in such a way to try to save it.”

Heirs’ property issues can also lead to family infighting when one person decides to sell the land and others want to stay. Herbert Ford’s family lost their heirs’ property when an out-of-state family member sold the land to a developer in 2018. Ford, a fifth-generation Hilton Head Island resident who is Gullah, said that it was unfair that his family was forced to leave their homes.

“I don’t think the entire family should be penalized because one or two persons decide they want to sell their particular interest. And if that means the developer can’t do anything with that small interest, then don’t purchase it,” Ford said. “Allow it to remain in the family and allow the family to take advantage of it.”

A clear title legally owned by one party solves the issues that many people with heirs’ properties face. The working group behind the legislation plans to continue suggesting solutions to South Carolina lawmakers so heirs can retain their ancestral land.

The Gullah Geechee community is grateful that it is now less risky to clear property titles. “People are really excited,” Graves Sellars said. “They have been recognizing the kind of impact that this will have on our communities.”

Gullah Geechee people offered chance to save family properties passed down through generations | US news | The Guardian