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Nitish in Mumbai for 'Bihar divas' 

Mumbai: Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar will arrive here on Saturday to participate in the ''Bihar Divas'' celebrations. 

Nitish's visit to Mumbai comes a day after Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) chief Raj Thackeray, who had earlier dared the Bihar Chief Minister to visit the financial capital, said that he has no problem with the Bihar Day celebrations in Mumbai on Sunday. 

Thackeray earlier on Friday said that he has spoken with Nitish Kumar about the issue and that the organizers have clarified that the event is not political. 
Nitish Kumar had earlier said that it was beyond his thinking as to why his proposed visit to Mumbai to celebrate ''Bihar Divas'' would hurt the emotions of the people. 
Nitish Kumar said that he would bow down before Maharashtra's land during his Mumbai visit. 

"I am going there to attend a cultural function. I am not going there due to the contact with the political outfits. I am going there as the chief minister of Bihar as the people have invited me. It is beyond my thinking that why people should have problems with functions like these. When I visit there, I will bow down before Maharashtra's land," said Kumar.

SRK row: US denies racial profiling 

Washington: Caught on the wrong foot over the detaining of Bollywood star Shah Rukh Khan at a US airport twice, Washington has asserted it was not a case of racial profiling or a pattern.

Suggesting that Khan was not "detained", but "simply delayed", State Department spokesperson Mark Toner told reporters Friday: "I wouldn`t necessarily look at this as some sort of pattern but rather two separate incidents."

"Obviously, we`ve expressed our regret about the incident and recognize that he`s a very renowned artist and humanitarian," he said.

Toner also sought to paint the detaining of Khan at New York`s White Plains airport Thursday when he arrived to receive the prestigious Chubb fellow award at Yale University as a "delay", saying "he was temporarily delayed before admission" to the US.

However, he dismissed the suggestion that it was racial profiling. "I mean, I think we all know that that`s clearly not the case. The fact of the matter is tens of thousands of Muslims travel to and from the United States every day and are not detained or delayed."

The spokesperson was hard put to explain the "reasons for delay" acknowledging that only Khan was not allowed to disembark from the plane when he arrived on a private jet with Nita Ambani, wife of Reliance Industries chairman Mukesh Ambani.
Both the Indian Ministry of External Affairs as well as the Indian Embassy in Washington have expressed their concern over Khan`s detention for the second time in less than three years, he said.

Pakistani gets jail in US for anti-India propaganda

Washington: A Pakistani man living in Virginia was sentenced to 12 years in prison by a US judge on Friday for providing support to a militant anti-India group, including making a propaganda video and posting it on YouTube in 2010. A federal judge in Alexandria, Virginia, handed down the sentence for Jubair Ahmad, 24, who pleaded guilty in December. Ahmad, who had faced a maximum sentence of 15 years in prison, also was given five years of probation. 

The group, Lashkar-e-Taiba, has historical ties to Pakistan's top spy agencies and was designated by the United States in 2001 as a foreign terrorist organization.
It has been accused of orchestrating the 2008 Mumbai attacks that killed 166 people, including six Americans.

Ahmad has admitted he communicated with Talha Saeed, the son of the LeT leader, who asked him to make a video showing his father and to include scenes of attacks in Kashmir. Ahmad made the video in September 2010 and posted it on YouTube.