Shah Rukh Khan's detention: US denies racial profiling

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Washington: The US has ruled out any pattern or racial profiling in the detention of Bollywood actor Shah Rukh Khan twice in the US in the past three years.

"I wouldn't necessarily look at this as some sort of pattern, but rather two separate incidents," State Department spokesman Mark Toner told reporters at a news conference on Friday.

Mr Khan was detained at a New York airport for over two hours yesterday by immigration officials after arriving from India in a private plane with Nita Ambani, to address students at Yale University

This is second such incident happening with the popular Bollywood superstar in the US.

Mr Khan was also detained in 2009 at the Newark Airport in New Jersey.

The State Department spokesman recommended people to take the benefit of a program in the US Embassy in Delhi under which they can inform the US officials about their stature and their travel plans to the US.

"There is a programme whereby travellers can alert, identify their status before they depart via the embassy. And that's one approach or avenue to take," Mr Toner said.

He also ruled out it being a case of racial profiling. "I think we all know that that's clearly not the case. You know, the fact of the matter is tens of thousands of Muslims travel to and from the US every day and are not detained or delayed," Mr Toner said.

Mr Khan, he said, was temporarily delayed before admission at the White Plains, New York, airport.

"He was traveling to an event at Yale University. We have obviously the utmost respect for Mr Khan and his work, both as an artist and a humanitarian, and we offer our apologies for any discomfort or inconvenience he may have suffered as a result of this incident," Toner said.

India's Deputy Ambassador to the US Arun K Singh conveyed India's sentiment on the issue to Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asia Robert Blake.

This was followed by a note verbatim on the issue.

"I offered my sincere apologies that he may have experienced. I'm not sure that it was done on a personal level," Mr Toner said in response to a question.

Source : www.ndtv.com

War on Terror

Author and Page information

• by Anup Shah
• This Page Last Updated Saturday, September 24, 2011

• This page: http://www.globalissues.org/issue/245/war-on-terror.
• To print all information e.g. expanded side notes, shows alternative links, use the print version:
  • http://www.globalissues.org/print/issue/245

It was with disbelief and shock that people around the world saw footage of the terrorist attacks in the US on on September 11, 2001 when the planes-turned-missiles slammed into the World Trade Center towers and damaged the Pentagon.
This ultimately resulted in the US declaring and waging a war on “terror”. Osama Bin Laden was eventually tracked down and killed some 10 years later. But the way the war on terror has been conducted has led to many voicing concerns about the impact on civil liberties, the cost of the additional security focused changes, the implications of the invasions and wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and more.

Samsung announces the Series 7 all-in-one, its first desktop for the US market

There must be something in the water: first Toshiba decides to give this all-in-one thing a whirl and a few months later, Samsung's jumping on the bandwagon, too. The company just added a desktop to its Series 7 lineup, making it Sammy's first all-in-one for the US market. It'll be available in two configurations, but either way you're in for a 23-inch, 250-nit display with 1080p resolution and support for two-finger gestures. Other specs include four USB 2.0 ports built into the base (along with one of the 3.0 persuasion), a 1TB 7,200RPM hard drive, a 1.3 megapixel webcam, Bluetooth 3.0 and dual four-watt speakers. And, depending on which config you choose, you'll get either a 2.6GHz Core i3-2120T CPU and 6GB of RAM or a 2.7GHz Core i5-2390T processor with 8GB of memory. Sadly, both models cap

Source: EnGadget