Charity Group: U.S. Troops Stormed Afghan Hospital
A Swedish charity accused American troops Monday of storming through a hospital in central Afghanistan, breaking down doors and tying up staff in a search for militants, The Associated Press reports. The U.S. military said it was investigating the allegation. The Swedish Committee for Afghanistan accused the U.S. Army’s 10th Mountain Division of entering the hospital without permission to look for insurgents in Wardak province, southwest of Kabul, according to the charity’s country director, Anders Fange. Fange said Monday that the troops’ actions were a violation of the sanctity of medical facilities in combat zones. “This is simply not acceptable,” he told AP. The U.S. troops entered the hospital looking for Taliban insurgents late at night last Wednesday, Fange said. He said they kicked in doors, tied up four hospital employees and two family members of patients, and forced patients out of beds during their search. When they left two hours later, the unit ordered hospital staff to inform coalition forces if any wounded militants were admitted, and the military would decide if they could be treated, Fange said. Navy public affairs officer Lt. Cmdr. Christine Sidenstricker confirmed that the hospital was searched last week but had no other details. She said the military is looking into the incident. “We are investigating and we take allegations like this seriously,” she told AP. “Complaints like this are rare.”

90 Arrested in British Racial Clash
Authorities arrested 90 people after racially charged violence erupted between a group protesting Islamic extremism and counter-demonstrators in the central English city of Birmingham, police said Sunday. The clashes erupted Saturday when a rally by the English Defense League ran into counter-demonstrators including anti-fascists and youths of South Asian descent, West Midlands Police said. About 200 people were involved in the clashes in downtown Birmingham, police said. Television footage showed masked or hooded youths throwing projectiles and running from riot police through the diverse city’s downtown area. Police said the 90 people detained — all males aged 16 to 39 — were arrested on suspicion of criminal damage and violent disorder. It was not immediately clear how many were protesters and how many were counter-demonstrators. Clashes also erupted last month at a similar demonstration in Birmingham, a diverse city of about 1 million where nearly a third of the population is non-White. The English Defense League blames counter-demonstrators for inciting violence at its rallies. It has planned protest marches in other cities, including one next month in Manchester.

Riots Erupt in Kenya
Riots erupted Tuesday in the streets of Nairobi, Kenya, during a rally against alleged police shootings, reports the BBC. Hundreds of students held up banners and shouted slogans protesting the alleged killings of a student and two human rights activists at the hands of Kenyan police. Some protesters threw stones and looted shops during the unrest, and police sprayed tear gas to break up the crowds. Last Thursday, two human rights activists, Oscar Kamau Kingara and John Paul Oulo, were shot and killed in their cars. Their murders didn’t come too long after a spokesman for the government charged that their group was assisting a gang. Police have denied they had anything to do with the killings of the activists. A riot broke out after the murders resulted in a student protester being shot dead. Three officers were arrested following that incident. “It is extremely troubling when those working to defend human rights in Kenya can be assassinated in broad daylight in the middle of Nairobi,” United Nations investigator Philip Alston told the BBC. Alston was behind last year’s report, which accused the nation’s police force of operating death squads, reports the news service. Another report by the Oscar Foundation Free Legal Aid Clinic released last year alleges that 8,040 young people in the country have been killed since 2002 during the police battle with a criminal gang.

Taiwan to Cut Aid to Haiti

Taiwan’s government has announced that it will be cutting the amount of rice aid it usually provides Haiti, due to a bad harvest, reports the BBC. This year, the Asian nation can only afford to give 200 tons of stock rice per shipment. In 2007, Taiwan donated 5,000 tons of rice to Haiti and about 9,600 tons last year.

 As prosecutors in Oakland, Calif., ponder whether to file criminal charges against the 27-year-old White transit cop who shot to death a handcuffed young Black man on New Year’s Day, officials for the agency that employed the officer say they’re perturbed by his attitude. “Nobody’s been able to talk to [Johannes Mehserle],” Linton Johnson, a spokesman for the Bay Area Rapid Transit, said of the BART officer who fired the fatal shot. “We’ve been trying aggressively to get him to come in, but he hasn’t. It’s been very frustrating.” Read more here.

Cop accused of shooting handcuffed man quits. Hundreds of Oakland businesses are still cleaning up damage to buildings after a violent downtown protest. In a scene resembling the Los Angeles uprisings after 1992’s Rodney King beating trial verdict, about 100 people were arrested after breaking windows and trashing stores days after a 22-year-old Black man’s death. But as others had done in L.A., some of those vandalizing in outrage over the police shooting of Oscar Grant III left Black-owned establishments damaged, knowingly or otherwise. Read the rest here.